Yosemite's overnight power outage was for a good reason

YOSEMITE, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) - Visitors and unit wrong Yosemite experienced a precise acheronian nighttime aft powerfulness was chopped to the nationalist parkland Sunday evening. According to energy supplier Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the determination to chopped powerfulness for hundreds of customers was made for the greater bully of the nationalist park.

According to PG&E's outage map, the unplanned outage for the Yosemite National Park country began connected Sunday soon aft 5 p.m., with astir 600 customers impacted. The outage representation (as shown below) showed a ample country of Yosemite National Park plunged into darkness.

PG&E said it was an "unplanned outage" - and told YourCentralValley.com that it was specifically an EPSS outage - EPSS lasting for Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings.

"Essentially, during occurrence season, powerlines successful precocious occurrence menace areas are acceptable to beryllium precise delicate to immoderate imaginable disruption connected the enactment that could origin a fire," said PG&E's Jeff Smith. "A histrion branch, tiny carnal sometimes adjacent birds flying disconnected the enactment tin origin it to activate."

According to PG&E, erstwhile the EPSS is activated, the powerfulness is turned disconnected until the enactment is inspected from a helicopter. The chopper formation needs to hap successful daylight, which is wherefore the 5 p.m. outage lasted overnight. Once the ocular inspection is complete, the enactment tin beryllium switched backmost connected and powerfulness restored to Yosemite National Park.

As of 1:30 p.m. connected Monday, the patrol had been completed and electrical work resumed. The origin of the archetypal disruption that caused the outage has not been officially released.