The Arroyo Grande community woke up to sunshine and a rainbow Monday morning. However, many people in the area of The Pike found themselves still without power after strong winds brought down trees and power lines on Sunday.
“We’ve been since yesterday morning without access to our neighborhood, without power, without hot water, without anything,” said resident Michael Byrd.
Some residents were surprisingly prepared for the outage, like Joshua Alton, who used a camping generator to power his home.
“Last night, I was able to plug in and we were able to take a hot shower using the generator," Alton said. "It's actually a pretty useful thing to have lying around.”
But for others on Garfield Place, like Byrd, a hot meal the day after the storm was the only thing they could think about.
“We’re just hungry,” Boyd said.
PG&E workers were working to repair the poles brought down by a fallen eucalyptus tree that also damaged a car and the roof of a home.
”It’s not an easy fix only because of the scope of this project when you have 11 poles that were taken out," said Carina Corral, PG&E spokesperson. "It's going to be a huge undertaking here. Our crews are a credit to our crews. They've been working in the eye of the storm.”
But another issue kept people from even being able to drive away from their homes as a fallen AT&T communications line left them with no choice but to find other ways to get to where they needed to go.
“My wife's going to stay home with our daughter because we have a nanny. They can't get to us," said resident Mark Brostman. "I'm going to go borrow a car to try to get to work.”
AT&T workers were also on site Monday morning, working alongside PG&E crews to lift the fallen communications line and restore access for the community.
Lined with dozens of eucalyptus trees, The Pike was covered in debris Monday — a common sight after storms, according to neighbors.
“Typically, when the storms come in, yes, the road looks like it does now,” Alton said.
With debris cleanup underway, power was expected to be restored to the remaining 225 PG&E customers by 10 p.m. Monday. Around 4,000 customers in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties were also still without power Monday.
“We just really want to thank our customers for hanging in there with us,” Corral said.
