Lathrop Irrigation District, PG&E speak on power outage over hot weekend
LATHROP -- Rising temperatures mean more air conditioning. For hundreds of residents in Lathrop's River Islands, they had to sweat it out over this weekend's high heat.
"Everyone was able to freeze their water, or go out to the pool, or make other arrangements -- so it's pretty good," Donna Cunningham said.
"It always seems to happen on the hottest day of the year though," Frank Cunningham added.
For about nine hours on Saturday, residents didn't have power.
According to Lathrop Irrigation District (LID), this was a test of their switch at their substation that powers the relatively new development of River Islands.
The test is federally mandated and happens once every five to six years. Its purpose is essential.
"It keeps all our stuff safe in our switch yards," LID General Manager Erik Jones explained. "That way our power isn't interrupted if there are surge fires, whatever kind of keeps it, you know, safe for us. They have to test those. Usually it's every five, six years, but it's a federally mandated test."
According to LID, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) reached out to them earlier this year, saying they needed time to test the switch. With Lathrop only having one switch, they didn't have a choice but to shut off power for hours.
That outage was scheduled months in advance, and it just so happened to land on a weekend with scorching temperatures.
"It was either a Thursday or Memorial Day. Obviously, because of Memorial Day, the weather was a lot nicer, but there's a lot that's a big holiday and it would have been probably a lot worse if we chose that day," Jones said.
CBS Sacramento reached out to PG&E about the timing of the outage.
They sent a statement reading: "Our preference was to conduct this work in the evening when it is cooler in order to have the least amount of impact on our customers."
Why wasn't the outage delayed?
LID said that by the time it got PG&E's request, they had already sent out their 30-day notice to residents and didn't want to postpone the test later into the hot summer months.
"We have to notify within 30 days of any interruptions, if we can," Jones explained. "We tried to give the best warning we could. When they scheduled the day of May 31, who knew it was gonna be 105 that day? It's just the way Mother Nature works this time."
LID was able to turn the power back on before the original outage timeline.
As of right now, there are no other outages planned.
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