Cities left without power start looking for ways to prevent future outages.

Four days after high winds on March 9 took out power for 37,000 residents in the Monterey area, PG&E crews were busy in Carmel with a backhoe and other equipment replacing two poles that had snapped after a large Monterey pine fell. It was one of approximately 40 trees that tumbled in Carmel and one incident among dozens on the Monterey Peninsula that kept most of the small village in the dark a day after neighboring cities. Some areas were still dark on Monday, March 13, as the next storm arrived.

Carmel City Administrator Chip Rerig says he’s grateful for the workers piecing back together the town’s power lines, but he has questions for their employer. “It was odd for us because PG&E was so prepared and organized for the January storm, but they didn’t appear to have anybody staged and prepared for this storm,” Rerig says. “There was adequate warning. Why they weren’t better prepared remains a topic I need to take up with PG&E,” he says.

PG&E Senior Public Safety Specialist Stewart Roth says crews were as ready ahead of the March 9 storm as they were in January, but it differed this time with higher gusting winds and saturated ground. “This was a totally different event,” Roth says.

In addition, Roth says safety regulations require PG&E to pull crews out if winds are over 30mph. Another source of delay is workers having to make safe areas for police and fire by de-energizing downed lines. In January, crews were able to start repairs faster.

Regardless of those issues, Pacific Grove City Manager Ben Harvey says he wants to have a conversation with PG&E officials about a future investment in beefing up local infrastructure, especially in light of recurring extreme weather. “We all need to face the reality of these stormy, rainy winters,” Harvey says. “It’s causing us to think, what sort of redundancy do we need to come up with?”

In Monterey, where city officials counted 32 downed trees causing 12 street closures – including on Del Monte Avenue, where two transmission lines carrying power to a large area of Monterey County came down – and 136 calls to the Monterey Fire Department over a 24-hour period, City Manager Hans Uslar is talking more seriously about undergrounding power lines. It’s a lengthy and expensive proposition but Uslar is ready to consider it.

“The community has to get its ducks in a row and decide, how do we finance that?” Uslar says.