PCG PG&E Corporation

By Ian Lovett 

EUREKA, Calif. -- Searches for batteries turned into shoving matches.

Residents shopped in supermarkets with flashlights. Looters ransacked a liquor store.

Lines for gas snaked around the block and power generators sold out as soon as they arrived.

For roughly 24 hours, Humboldt County was blacked out, part of the planned outages by PG&E Corp. that have left more than 700,000 California households and businesses without electricity in an effort to prevent active power lines from sparking wildfires.

Humboldt was the only California county to lose power in its entirety, making it particularly difficult for residents to drive to other cities -- which could be hours away -- where they could charge phones, access light and heat, or shop.

In addition, Humboldt's outage was announced only about 12 hours before it began early Wednesday morning, a full day less warning than some other regions received.

The mayhem broke out before the lights were even cut.

Peter Nelson, one of the owners of the Savage Henry Comedy Club, walked into Costco on Tuesday afternoon for what he thought would be a normal shopping trip to stock up on snacks for a festival he was hosting this week.

"As I stepped through the door, some guy shoved me, like really hard," Mr. Nelson, 30 years old, said. "As I went to look at who shoved me, I realized it was just mayhem. Everyone was shoving everyone."

The lights began to go out around midnight on Tuesday night.

At 4:43 a.m. Wednesday, Amy Simpson, the owner of Red's Liquor and Market, got a phone call from her security company. The store's alarm had been tripped.

Ms. Simpson, 45, didn't head immediately to the store, fearing for her safety in the dark. When she got there, she found burglars had broken one of her glass doors, and stolen 16 rolls of lottery tickets, six cartons of American Spirit Cigarettes, cigarette lighters, condoms and ice cream.

The power outage meant that the store's siren -- which might have scared the looters away -- didn't go off. She said the losses could total up to $6,000. But could have been worse; the cash drawer the thieves emptied had just $13.50 in it.

She said PG&E told one of her co-workers on Tuesday afternoon that some parts of Eureka would keep power.

"When we called, they should have said, 'prepare for the worst,' not, 'only this area will be out,'" she said.

The company said Humboldt was added to the blackout list because of changing weather patterns, and residents were told as soon as possible.

Since Humboldt is a rural area, many residents have power generators, in part to deal with occasional blackouts.

The blackout set off immediate fears of fuel shortages, said Rex Bohn, a Humboldt County supervisor who lives outside Eureka, the county seat with a population of 27,000. Lines at the few gas stations that had power wrapped around the block from Tuesday afternoon onward.

When Costco opened Wednesday morning, the rush immediately began anew. The store had 20 generators for sale.

"They were gone in five minutes," Mr. Bohn said.

Without power, however, most businesses were closed Wednesday. The traffic lights, which have backup batteries that can keep them running for about 12 hours, Mr. Bohn said, flickered out one-by-one.

In Garberville, in the far south of Humboldt County, shoppers continued visiting Rays Food Place grocery store after sunset, even though the lights were out. They were let in four at a time to prevent looting, and had to use flashlights to navigate the store and pay with cash, said Steven Cohn, an employee.

In other parts of the state, PG&E set up community centers where residents without power could charge their phones or get bottles of water. No such centers were open in Humboldt Wednesday.

Cami Kane, a 39-year-old manicurist whose salon stayed closed Wednesday, spent most of the day trying to get her two generators up and running at her home in McKinleyville, north of Eureka. She didn't succeed, and by sunset, the house was getting cold as the outdoor temperature dropped into the 40s. She took her 2-year-old son, Hunter, out to get food at Toni's, one of the local restaurants running on a generator.

She found the place mobbed; the wait for a cheeseburger was 90 minutes.

Bryan Headlee, 39, was also waiting there for food with his 4-year-old daughter, Spirit. He had been staying at a local hotel, but since the power was cut, they had no heat. "No heat, no hot water -- I'm literally paying $75 a night to sit in the dark with no hot water," he said.

Mr. Headlee said he was keeping his phone off to save battery power, in case he needed it in an emergency.

By 8 p.m. Wednesday, downtown Eureka was completely black, with all the streetlights out and almost no businesses open. Unable to see the traffic lights, some cars drove right through them, only to slam on the brakes when they saw someone coming the other direction.

"Driving's been crazy," Mr. Nelson, the comedy club owner, said.

His club was among the only businesses with its lights on. He said he got a generator from his "grower friend," a reference to the large marijuana industry in the area. The blackout was a boon for business, he said. With so few other businesses open, his place was packed.

On stage, one comic joked that he grew up in this area with prolonged blackouts -- no big deal. The next one said that was only because the other comedian's parents didn't pay the bills.

At around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday night, lights in town began to flicker back on, block by block. Traffic lights went from dark to flashing red.

Several people outside the comedy club stepped inside, and told the owners to turn on the lights. The room lit up and the bar erupted in cheers.

Write to Ian Lovett at Ian.Lovett@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 10, 2019 19:02 ET (23:02 GMT)

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