MOUNTAIN AREAS — Two separate power outages knocked out electricity to more than 16,000 PG&E customers in eastern Madera County on Tuesday afternoon.
The dual shutdowns happened just before 2 p.m. and reportedly impacted utility customers in the Coarsegold, Ahwahnee, Oakhurst and Wawona areas.
Shortly after 3 p.m., PG&E confirmed that power had been restored to 14,000 customers in the area, with about 2,000 homes in Ahwahnee still without power.
One of the outages affected 9,431 customers from the Coarsegold area to Bass Lake. Service in most of that area has been restored, according to PG&E.
A second, separate outage impacting an area from Oakhurst north through Wawona, cut power to 7,135 customers. PG&E says the electricity to customers still without power should be back on by 8:15 p.m. Tuesday night.
Traffic was snarled at signals in Oakhurst and some businesses were closed briefly, including Vons and Raley’s grocery stores. Signals were restored to operation by about 3:30 p.m. and both stores have since been reopened.
By 4:30 p.m. power had been restored to all but fewer than 200 customers in the Coarsegold area.
The cause of the transmission level outages are under investigation, according to PG&E.
To see the map and for more information, visit PG&E.com/outages.
