Tiburon Peninsula businesses brace for potential days-long blackouts

For Waters Edge Hotel in downtown Tiburon, an extended power outage would mean more than the guests not having overhead lights or hot breakfast in the morning. “We wouldn’t be able to access to our reservation system or program key cards for our rooms,” says hotel General Manager Justin Flake. “We would have all kinds of cancellations. It would be incredibly hurtful for our business.” Businesses in Tiburon are grappling with how they might handle the forced power outages that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is warning could be longer and more frequent this fire season. As part of its efforts to prevent wildfires during extremely dry and windy weather, the electric company has said it will cut power to utility lines in areas at high risk of igniting, resulting in forced outages that could last up to five days at a time. The Tiburon Peninsula could go dark during shutoffs as far away as Sonoma County.

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