MOUNTAIN AREA — Two massive power outages temporarily impacted more than 14,000 PG&E customers Monday night in the Oakhurst, Coarsegold, Ahwahnee, Raymond and North Fork areas.
During the outage, which lasted for about an hour and a half, the company reported 7,136 customers were without power in the Oakhurst area and 7,718 customers lost power in the Coarsegold area.
The outages hit around 6:30 p.m.
But by 7:40 p.m. Monday night, PG&E reported that power had been restored to nearly all of its mountain area customers.
Update: Tuesday morning, PG&E officials confirmed that the cause of the power outage was downed power lines, the result of a fatal crash that happened about 6:15 p.m. near Road 22 and Avenue 24 in Chowchilla.
According to CHP, the accident, which claimed two lives, happened when a Toyota Rav 4 ran a stop sign and t-boned a Saturn Relay.
CHP is reporting that the victims, who were in the Saturn, were a 45-year-old female and a 50-year-old female. Both were residents of Chowchilla.
The occupants of the Toyota, a family of four tourists from the United Kingdom, reportedly were heading to Yosemite National Park when the accident happened.
CHP reported one of the Toyota’s occupants was transported to the hospital with major injuries.
The impact of the crash caused both vehicles to overturn, taking out a power pole, which ended up in a nearby ponding basin, creating safety and access issues Monday night for first responders.
