Pacific Gas and Electric Co. informed campus leaders this afternoon that it appears unlikely that main campus and our other Santa Cruz County locations will be included in the utility’s Public Safety Power Shutoff set to begin early Wednesday. The large-scale power shutdown involves pre-emptively cutting power to large areas up and down the state to prevent downed power lines from potentially sparking wildfires over the next two days, when extremely high winds are forecast.
While no shutdowns are planned for main campus, our Coastal Science Campus, our research facility on Delaware Avenue, and at our Scotts Valley Center, please check your email and/or the campus website throughout the evening for additional updates.
The one UC Santa Cruz location expected to lose power is the university-managed Lick Observatory on the top of Mount Hamilton, just east of San Jose.
PG&E officials have said shutdowns will likely begin early Wednesday in the northern reaches of the state, then progress south. This is the first time PG&E has done a large-scale power shutdown and the utility is not saying how long power might be out, only that it could be up to five days before all users have power restored.
A shutdown of this magnitude obviously has large ramifications for our entire campus community, even if campus does not lose power. We have thousands of students, staff, and faculty who live in the surrounding community, many of whom are also likely to be without power at their homes starting Wednesday.
Due to the dynamic nature of this situation, students, staff, and faculty also are asked to log on to the campus website, if they are able, to see if the situation has changed overnight. The campus will be providing updates about what unfolds at ucsc.edu/status and on 831-459-INFO.
