8 hours ago
Grass fire shuts off power at Sacramento's Riverbank Marina, impacting businesses
On a red flag warning day, a brush fire caused several businesses to shut down at the Riverbank Marina in Sacramento after losing power.
Hungry customers were greeted by signs that read "Closed due to outage."
"I got a front row [parking] spot and I was like, how did that happen? And now I know why, right," said sacramento resident Lori Organ.
A grass fire broke out across the street from the marina Saturday morning. Sacramento Fire said they were able to contain it at one acre, but some power lines were damaged, causing outages at nearby restaurants and businesses.
We were really excited about this weekend. Obviously, 80-degree weather. We only have about 12 or 14 Saturday's for the summer, so it's a huge impact," said Trevor Shults, owner of Crawdads on the River.
Crawdads on the River, one of the several restaurants closed due to no power, had to cancel their saturday live music event. The owner of the restaurant is also thinking about his employees during peak season.
Everyone was hoping to make money. We are a seasonal business, we're open year-round, but these summer months are where we make our bread and butter," said Shults.
Sac Fire said the fire initially broke out near a power pole. It's unclear at this time what the cause of the fire was, but SMUD was on scene making repairs to the power lines for hours.
"Fires start by accident all the time, it's just that time of year to be extra careful," said Archambeault.
One company being extra careful is PG&E. They've had power shutoffs in place since Thursday. More than 11,000 customers across 16 counties have been impacted across Northern California. The reason for the shutoffs is so the wind doesn't knock trees into power lines or take power lines down altogether, potentially sparking a fire. PG&E said they understand it's hot out and people want their a/c but the shutoffs are for safety.
"We know that for some customers it's an inconvenience. We know for others it's actually more than that because they rely on life-saving medical devices and other things that require electricity. So we certainly don't take decisions like this lightly, but the idea is to prevent catastrophic wildfires that can cause even more significant damage," said PG&E spokesperson Jeff Smith.
"Sometimes we have to shut off power and hopefully it's not for a long time. And again the wind has died down," said Archambeault.
Crawdads on the River said they will be open for business as usual on Sunday.
PG&E said as high-risk fire conditions begin to dwindle into Sunday evening, they are hoping to get everyone's power fully restored.
