Power and money were lost in a PG&E shutdown. Businesses want to know why.

Ordinarily at around 6:30pm, there is a healthy buzz of diners at Carlitos Steakhouse and Bar in Gonzales. But instead, on Oct. 28, bartender Jennifer Yniguez is tending to the few patrons at the bar and dumping food. Two days prior, Pacific Gas & Electric implemented a public safety power shutoff. The shutdown, which is done as a precaution in wildfire-prone areas, affected about 6,000 customers in Soledad and Gonzales, and another 400 in North County.

From a large metal table in the center of the room, Yniguez threw everything – cheeses, salad dressings, mayonnaise, burger meat – into the trash can. “We got a lot of calls from people asking if we were open,” she says. They are, but the food loss has effectively shut down the kitchen side of things; Yniguez estimates she won’t be fully open again until Friday, Nov. 1.

A Foods Co manager estimates the Soledad store lost around $160,000 worth of perishable goods, including the entire meat department. Winemakers are in the middle of grape crushing season, and had to halt harvesting and processing for several days. It’s a short window for harvest, with employees generally working six – or seven-day work weeks.

“The shutoff has been difficult for merchants,” Soledad Mayor Fred Ledesma says. “I think about the produce and grape harvest and I think about not only about losing products, but also wages. These are wages people are depending on.”

The outage lasted for about 36 hours, and power started coming back on the morning of Oct. 28, after a hot weekend without air conditioning. But residents and business owners alike are wondering why urban areas were selected for the shutoff in the first place – both Gonzales and Soledad are far from any major wildfire risk, surrounded by agricultural fields rather than forest or grasslands.

PG&E officials did not give the Weekly an answer as to what triggered the shutoff in South County cities. Instead, a spokesperson asked a Weekly reporter where the power lines are in Soledad.

Grower-Shipper Association President Chris Valadez is also asking those questions so he knows how to best coordinate with grower members next time.

“PG&E is often the antagonist to these stories,” he says, noting the company did provide notice of potential for shutoffs, but never a reason. “If this a regular thing every year, that means potential disruption of 48 to 72 hours, 65 to 75 days a year, right? We’d like to know what to do. It’s not a stable system.”

Asaf Shalev and Nic Coury contributed to this report.