Update: Power back on for 7,000 in NE Fresno, as well as for residents in Auberry

Pacific Gas & Electric workers restored power to about 7,000 customers in northeast Fresno Tuesday night after the lights were knocked out by a lightning strike just before sundown.

Spokesman Denny Boyles said power was back on by about 6:30 p.m. He confirmed lightning was the cause, but added the utility has the technology to limit the damage a lightning strike can cause. But power can still go out during a thunder storm.

The area impacted was in an area just north of Bullard Avenue to well up the Highway 41 corridor and to the west.

By 8:30 p.m. about 2,000 customers regained power in the Auberry, where lightning was also suspected to be the cause.

It was the second significant outage of the day in Fresno, with over 2,000 customers downtown losing power for about an hour Tuesday afternoon in downtown Fresno after a squirrel got into some equipment, PG&E said.

The northeast outage left voters in the dark at two vote centers, at Buchanan High School and Clovis Community College’s Willow/International campus.

The outage slowed the processing of voters by about 25 percent of normal speed, according to Fresno County Clerk James Kus. He said officials might begin redirecting voters to other centers. But he cautioned those centers might also be busy. Lights were later back on at the voting center.

This story was originally published November 8, 2022 at 5:12 PM.