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Sacramento Weather: Power Still Out For Hundreds

PLACERVILLE (CBS13) — On the ground and up in the trees, power crews worked through rain and snow to turn the lights back on for hundreds in the El Dorado County foothills still in the dark, Saturday.

Charlie Robinson had been without power since Monday when he says the storm dumped more low snow than he's ever on his property.

"Actually, this is probably the worst snow we've ever had here, and I've been here for over 22 years," Robinson said.

The winter blast knocked down trees and power lines and took out part of Robinson's driveway bridge.

"I said, well that takes care of that, I'm not going anywhere. And it ripped the polls down and ripped the wires off the house," he said.

But Robinson was ready.

"I was prepared for Y2K. Remember Y2K? Well, I bought 100 gallons of gas and had that in drums behind my house. So I've been burning 19-year-old gas in my generator," he said.

His neighbor, Steve Payne, has a generator too and is thankful for it.

"I got a microwave, I got the internet going, I got the TV going, so life's not good, but it's OK," Payne said.

And Payne says it helps that he can actually see and speak the power crews, working hard near his house to restore the juice.

"Many of them said that they have been pulled off of the Paradise disaster to come down here because of the damage here. It's just incredible, there are poles down everywhere," he said.

Robinson and Payne said they shared supplies and resources to make things just a little bit more comfortable during the outage.

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