PG&E power blackouts close courthouses in 7 counties

Courthouses in seven counties were closed Thursday and will remain closed until further notice, due to the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. power shut off.

Anticipated wind activity has heightened hazardous weather conditions, prompting more shut-offs as the planned roll out of outages entered its second phase Wednesday evening and continued to affect multiple courthouses Thursday. Additional counties added to the list of affected areas, included Alameda, Santa Clara, Calaveras and Solano.

According to PG&E, restoration commenced early Thursday in some affected areas — approximately 126,0000 customers got their lights back on. There were about 600,000 customers still without power as of Thursday afternoon, according to the utility’s website.

Bob Fleshman, court executive officer for Napa County Superior Court, said the courts were open Thursday, except for the juvenile courthouse, which lost power on Wednesday.

“Juvenile court still has no power as of now, and we’re anticipating a multi-day outage, so we just closed it for the week,” said Fleshman. Juvenile matters have been transferred to the criminal division, which is unaffected. No cases have been impacted, “other than moving them 1 mile to the east,” he said.

In Santa Clara County, the Morgan Hill courthouse remains closed until further notice, according to spokesman Benjamin T. Rada. Some cases had to be transferred to the Hall of Justice in San Jose, which was unaffected.

Lake County Superior Court’s Clearlake branch, which handles mostly small claims, traffic, evictions and child support, was closed Thursday, but the main Lakeport branch will remain open, according to senior court clerk Luanne Hayes.

El Dorado Superior Court continued to operate calendar matters Thursday, but no telephone or computer access was available to assist the public.

Nevada City Court House in Nevada County will remain closed through the week, according to the court’s website. All cases have been continued until next week.

Tehama, Placer and Calaveras courts remained closed Thursday. Tuolumne County Superior Court was open but with limited availability due to the outage. Humboldt was back up and running Thursday and will remain open Friday until conditions change, according to executive officer Kim Bartleson.

The Judicial Council has helped coordinate emergency closure orders for Tehama, Calaveras and Nevada, according to public affairs analyst Blaine Corren.

Counties unaffected by the outage and remained open as of Thursday include Alpine, Sonoma, Contra Costa, Mariposa, San Joaquin, San Mateo, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Stanislaus, Amador, Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Marin, Shasta, Sierra, Solano, Trinity, Yolo and Yuba.

Fanned by strong Santa Ana winds, multiple fires did break out in Riverside and San Bernardino counties on Thursday afternoon in the middle of a shutoff initiated by the Southern California Edison Co. Outages commenced Thursday in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura and Kern counties, but all courts remained open and plan to remain open until further notice.