6 courthouses closed down because of PG&E power shut-offs

At least six courthouses in Northern California were closed Monday and might remain shuttered longer as a result of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.'s latest power shut-offs.

Sonoma County Superior Court was closed because of the Kincade Fire, which had burned more than 66,000 acres in an area, near Santa Rosa, that was ravaged in 2017 by the Tubbs Fire. Other courthouses impacted Monday by the shutoff were in El Dorado, Lake, Mendocino, Nevada, Santa Clara and Solano counties. Sonoma County court facilities were under mandatory evacuation, and all hearings scheduled for Monday were rescheduled, according to court executive officer Arlene Junior.

The court arranged to have all emergency ex parte applications and emergency requests for temporary restraining orders heard at 10 a.m. at the Petaluma location.

The Sonoma County court was expected to remain closed Tuesday, Junior said.

PG&E's equipment has been blamed for several deadly wildfires in recent years. The utility announced over the weekend it had de-energized electrical lines for public safety. The outages were expected to impact about 940,000 customers in portions of 38 counties in the northern and southern Sierra Foothills, the North Bay and Mendocino, the Bay Area, the central coast and Central Valley.

El Dorado County canceled jury services starting Tuesday at the South Lake Tahoe branch. PG&E notified the court of a potential outage scheduled to last through Tuesday, according to the court website.

Placerville Main Street Branch courthouse was also closed Monday and will remain closed Tuesday. Jury summons for Placerville were canceled for Tuesday.

Lake County Superior Court's Clearlake branch was closed Monday and will remain closed until power is restored, according to the court website. Lakeport Court offices were open Monday and will remain open. Clearlake matters scheduled for Monday were heard at Clearlake City Hall.

Mendocino County Superior Court's Ukiah and Fort Bragg locations were closed Monday. Nevada County Superior Court was also closed.

"We understand that PG&E is currently hoping to restore power before the planned Tuesday morning public safety power shut-off," said Nevada County Superior Court executive officer Jason Galkin. "We will be closed on Tuesday in Nevada City but open in our Truckee branch location."

Santa Clara County Superior Court's Morgan Hill location was closed. A scheduled jury trial was moved to Department 54 at the Hall of Justice in San Jose. The in-custody arraignment calendar was moved to Department 53 at the Hall of Justice, and other matters were continued to next month, according to spokesperson Benjamin T. Rada.

Solano County's Vallejo courthouse, along with the clerks' offices of the criminal and traffic divisions, was closed, and all matters were heard at the Fairfield location. Vallejo will remain closed Tuesday.

Courts in counties that were a part of the power outage zone but were open Monday included Alameda, Alpine, Butte, Colusa, Contra Costa, Fresno, Glenn, Humboldt, Kern, Marin (limited services), Mariposa, Napa, Placer, Plumas, San Joaquin, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Stanislaus, Trinity, Tuolumne and Yolo.

PG&E announced over the weekend it was continuing to monitor new, potentially widespread strong and dry winds predicted for Tuesday morning through midday Wednesday.

However, courts that were open Monday plan to be open again as long they have power.

Alameda County Superior Court executive officer Chad Finke said none of his courthouses have been within PG&E's outage zone for the last two wind events, and unless the current event worsens, the courts would remain open.

"We don't have the ability to run long term on generators," said Finke. "I think that's unlikely based on what happened the last two times. If we did have to close, the most likely locations appear to be our Dublin courthouse and our Juvenile Justice Center in San Leandro."

Trinity County court executive officer Staci Holliday said it would be premature to speculate what the courts could experience from the wind activity, but she planned to remain open "unless a dangerous situation presents itself."

"As long as we have power, I would never expect to close," Holliday said.

"Despite the widespread impacts throughout the Bay Area, Napa's court facilities all have full power," court executive officer Robert Fleshman said Monday, adding he did not "have any reason to believe that we'll be affected" by winds later this week.

Court executive officer Hector Gonzalez said Tuolumne County facilities were open with limited services, and servers were shut down.

"We're still doing everything we can, like accepting filings and holding hearings, but we're just doing everything manually on paper," said Gonzalez.