Roads & Transportation

PG&E crews perform spectacular aerial repairs to pole and transformer across from Cal Fire in Fort Bragg

Power is out at the south end of Franklin Street and the east side of Main Street. I discovered this driving home after work about midnight, one of the more dramatic scenes to come upon in a little town like ours. There were three workers high in the air on buckets and several blocks were closed to pedestrians. I drove around and found a few blocks out, including the Food Bank and my old warehouse at 900 N. Franklin. Very dark down there in Fort Bragg’s industrial row. But not much else was out.

Most young people have only read about news reporters in books, and they dont read books. There are influencers, but the whole idea of some guy showing up at midnight with a huge camera brought me stares and suspicion. I finally found a guy to talk to and he agreed it was a hell of a picture if I did it right.

I went home and looked up the outage and PG&E’s website says its a planned outage involving a major fix that they did overnight. PG&E’s map of the outage was useless, showing almost the entire city, but only less than 50 people impacted. I drove through the city on my way home from the hospital and saw no outages, other than in the blocks south of the awesome display of flying workmanship. So its not really a big story but nice to know this was well planned on a Sunday night and these guys and possibly gals got up and did this needed work. Good job Ya’ll. I have a big story coming out tomorrow morning in mendocinocoast.news.

So check back!

The PGE map of the power outage was Unintelligible
Start your day with Company Juice in Fort Bragg, California

Frank Hartzell

Frank Hartzell has spent his lifetime as a curious anthropologist in a reporter's fedora. His first news job was chasing news on the streets of Houston with high school buddy and photographer James Mason, back in 1986. Then Frank graduated from Humboldt State and went to Great Gridley as a reporter, where he bonded with 1000 people and told about 3000 of their stories. In Marysville at the Appeal Democrat, the sheltered Frank got to see both the chilling depths and amazing heights of humanity. From there, he worked at the Sacramento Bee covering Yuba-Sutter and then owned the Business Journal in Yuba City, which sold 5000 subscriptions to a free newspaper. Frank then got a prestigious Kiplinger Investigative Reporting fellowship and was city editor of the Newark Ohio, Advocate and then came back to California for 4 years as managing editor of the Napa Valley Register before working as a Dominican University professor, then coming to Fort Bragg to be with his aging mom, Betty Lou Hartzell, and working for the Fort Bragg Advocate News. Frank paid the bills during that decade + with a successful book business. He has worked for over 50 publications as a freelance writer, including the Mendocino Voice and Anderson Valley Advertiser, along with construction and engineering publications. He has had the thrill of learning every day while writing. Frank is now living his dream running MendocinoCoast.News with wife, Linda Hartzell, and web developer, Marty McGee, reporting from Fort Bragg, California.

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