Lights Back On For 65,000 Left In Dark By High Winds In Sacramento

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) - SMUD crews battled continued wind and rain to respond to downed trees and power lines across the region that knocked out power to as many as 65,000 throughout the region.

"I just opened a bottle of wine, I got the candles lit and the fireplace going," said Linda Petta, who lives in East Sacramento.

She's one of thousands in the Sacramento area who lost power on Friday and spent time in the dark. Over on El Camino Avenue, a power line landed on an overhead wire near the Swanston station, bringing the Sacramento Regional Transit to a halt. SMUD crews spent most of the day responding to various outages in East Sac, Natomas and Arden Arcade.

A huge tree crashed onto power lines on Hurley Way, blocking traffic in the intersection of Hurley and Bell Avenue for hours. Anthony Moore lives across the intersection and had to figure out a new way to get home.

"A huge inconvenience but I know things happen," he said. "You know, you can't stop what Mother Nature does."

"It took a long time just to get here," said Tiffany Tabali.

Traffic on her street was so backed up because of the downed lines that her roommates had to get out and walk home.

They're home now so that's all that matters that they made it safely."

SMUD contractors took their time to figure out how to take down the tree while I remained on top of live power lines.

"Well we had to get the tree crews here, we had to get the line tree here without anybody getting electrocuted on the high voltage," said Darrell Daniel, with Mowbray's Tree Service.

Tabali told CBS13 she was just surprised the power wasn't out for hours.

"For like 20 minutes, not too long but they got it working now!" she said.

A SMUD spokesperson told CBS 13 once the tree is gone, crews still have to fix the damaged pole and surrounding lines which will take several more hours to complete.