Letter: Repair crews deserved better

EDITOR,
I would like to give a heartfelt thank you to all the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. field workers who have shown a level of professionalism like no others.
They worked long, hard hours in dangerous conditions to restore power as soon as possible. What is not so obvious are the non-storm-related obstacles they had to overcome to do their job.
One example is the shortage of manpower and standard repair materials that, according to the outage hotline operator, were still being waited on to arrive two days after the first storm hit. Not like we didn’t know three severe storms were coming back-to-back well ahead of time, and materials should have been in the local yards as standard practice for wintertime preparations.
Another example is specific to the downed tree on Highway 9 near the elementary school. The tree fell around 8:30 a.m. Tuesday. The tree was cut up and PG&E crews were on site within 45 minutes. There were six to eight service trucks and about 15 personnel on scene. Work on repairing the power pole and lines did not actually start until about 3 p.m.
When one of my neighbors asked the field crew what the delay was, the frustrated worker said, “We have to wait for legal to approve the repair.” Hmm — lines down, more storms coming in. What is there to approve?
I seriously would like an official reason from PG&E why crews were standing around for almost six hours in a storm and customers were without power at the start of three major storms, while some lawyer in a warm, dry office couldn’t approve the obvious.
This unnecessarily put their workers at further risk by shifting high-voltage work to after dark and delayed other repairs in the valley as a whole.