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| "No Power? No Problem!" at the Book Seller in Grass Valley | |
Booksellers throughout Northern California were some of the many businesses caught up in widespread, mandated power outages Wednesday and Thursday as Pacific Gas and Electric Co. shut off power to wide swaths of Northern California due to strong Santa Ana winds and high wildfire risk.
PG&E, which filed for bankruptcy in January due to liability from wildfires that its own aged and faulty equipment started, began shutting off power late Wednesday. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, at the outage's peak 726,000 customers, accounting for some 2 million people, were left without power, and 34 counties were affected.
As of roughly 4 p.m. PDT yesterday afternoon, PG&E completed the shutdown and began the process of restoring electricity, but many customers were expected to still be without power at least overnight, as the utility service had to inspect its network for signs of damage before powering it back on.
The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association offices in Sonoma were without electricity, as were many booksellers throughout the Bay Area and Northern California. And many of those without power reported attempting to stay open for as long as there was daylight.
Bel & Bunna's Books in Lafayette, about 13 miles of east of Oakland, was without power but had a good day and a well-attended storytime. Ink Spell Books in Half Moon Bay, about 30 miles south of San Francisco, was completely without power, as was The Book Seller in Grass Valley, more than 50 miles northeast of Sacramento.
Some booksellers were lucky: Green Apple Books in San Francisco had electricity, as did the three Pegasus Bookstores in Berkeley and Oakland. The Cook's Bookcase in Santa Cruz, meanwhile, never lost power, and neither did Spellbinder Books in Bishop, in the Eastern Sierra near the Nevada border.