Santa Rosa's Coffey Park hits milestone in fire recovery

A big milestone in Santa Rosa's fire stricken Coffey Parks began Monday morning. Less than a week before the six month anniversary of the devastating fires, PG&E assembled a small army of construction crews to replace the vast system of destroyed and compromised gas and electric equipment.

Right next next to Coffey Park, PG&E created a marshaling yard to receive semi and after semi of materials needed to fully restore Coffey Park's underground gas and electric system."The underground electric lines were completely destroyed; all the equipment, the lines because of the high temperature of the fires," said PG&E spokesperson Deanna Contreras.

PG&E plans to replace 13 miles of electrical cable and 15 miles of gas lines in Coffey Park. "It's a huge job. We will work 12 hours a day, sometimes seven days a week, if need be, to get this construction project complete by the end of the year," said Contreras.

Though some of the gas lines survived, the consequences of a pipeline failure are so significant, new lines are being trenched into the street. In fact, the new underground electric lines and transformer vaults will be relocated to the same trenches along with cable, telecommunications and other utilities. All of the equipment will be brand new and, once buried, the temporary overhead power lines and street lights, put there to allow construction crews to rebuild houses, will be removed. "It was just a lot of coordination with the city and other utilities to get us to this milestone, and, we're just really eager to help Santa Rosa rebuild and our customers rebuild and recover," said Contreras.

PG&E's actual target date to finish this enormous job is October, but the company is saying end of the year so as not to over promise and under deliver.