Bay Area Dental Office Power Outage Plan: PG&E Shutoffs, Sudden Blackouts and Earthquakes

At 1:09 p.m. on Saturday, 20 December 2025, PG&E began recording a major outage in San Francisco. A fire had broken out at its Mission substation, and two hours later about 130,000 customers were without power. The last of them were restored at 4:31 a.m. on Tuesday, 23 December.

If you are weighing who should help run that plan, Legend Networking's page on dental IT support in San Francisco explains how it works with offices in the city. The wider regional picture, from building types to internet, is in our guide to dental IT in the Bay Area.

That weekend in December 2025 is the reason this page exists. Many offices think of power planning as a wildfire-season task for practices in the hills. The Mission substation outage hit the Richmond District, the Presidio and parts of downtown, and some businesses spent days deciding whether to call staff in as restoration estimates moved. Whether your suite sits in the Sunset, in the Oakland hills or in downtown San Jose, the aim here is a written plan your office manager can run without you.

Which outages hit Bay Area dental offices, and how much warning comes with each?

Four kinds of outage matter most. A PG&E Public Safety Power Shutoff usually comes with notice a day or two ahead and a final warning hours before. A substation or grid failure comes with none. A fast-trip outage on a fire-risk line comes with none. An earthquake comes with none. Each needs different preparation.

The difference in warning drives everything else. With a shutoff watch, you have time to shut down cleanly, move patients and export the schedule. With the other three, whatever was not prepared in advance is not going to be prepared.

What the utility and the regulator say

• • Public Safety Power Shutoffs. The California Public Utilities Commission describes them as utilities temporarily turning off power "to specific areas to reduce the risk of fires caused by electric infrastructure." PG&E's July 2026 notification scripts say that, when possible, it notifies customers two days, one day and just before shutting off power, with a "Watch" one or two days ahead and a "Warning" one to four hours ahead. As of November 2026, PG&E also says the first alert may come only on the day of the shutoff, because forecasts change. Check PG&E's current notification page, because its practice can change.
• • Fast-trip outages. The CPUC calls these Protective Equipment and Device Settings, "commonly known as fast trip." On lines in fire-risk areas, protective devices are set to cut power within seconds when they sense a fault, such as a branch touching a line. The CPUC says these are "unplanned outages for which advance notification is not possible."
• • Grid failures. A failed substation, a damaged pole or an equipment fire can drop power anywhere, including the flat city core, with no notice. The San Francisco outage of 20 to 23 December 2025 is the large local example.
• • Earthquakes. No notice, and the building itself may be unsafe to enter.

Table 1. Warning versus no warning: four Bay Area outages and what each demands

Smoke days can also close an office while the power stays on. The same remote-schedule and call-tree steps cover them.

What a real shutoff watch looked like in July 2026. On 14 July 2026, SFist reported that "Alameda, Contra Costa, and Marin counties are on PSPS watch" for the following two days. The projected areas included land north of I-580 near Altamont Pass, northeast of Livermore, a small area north of Clayton, and parts of Mill Valley. The next day ABC7 reported that about 7,800 customers in 10 counties could be affected, more than 2,000 of them in Marin County, with the Mill Valley shutoff planned to start at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday and power targeted to return by 10 a.m. Thursday. For a dental office in that footprint, the timing meant an afternoon schedule cut short and a morning schedule at risk. That is the pattern to plan for at the edges of the region: Walnut Creek, Concord, Pleasanton, Livermore and Marin.

Who delivers your power: PG&E or a city utility?

Most Bay Area dental offices get their power delivered by PG&E, even when a community choice program such as CleanPowerSF or Ava Community Energy supplies the electricity. PG&E still handles outage response. A few cities run their own utility, including Palo Alto and Alameda, and those offices sign up for alerts with the city instead.

This matters because your alerts, your outage map and your restoration estimates all come from whoever owns the wires to your suite. Setting up PG&E alerts for an office in Palo Alto helps little; skipping PG&E alerts because your bill says CleanPowerSF leaves you blind.

Community choice programs. PG&E's own page says the electricity for these programs travels "over PG&E's transmission and distribution system" and that "PG&E will continue to provide meter reading, billing, maintenance and outage response services." As of November 2026, programs PG&E lists in the Bay Area include CleanPowerSF, San Jose Clean Energy, Silicon Valley Clean Energy, Ava Community Energy (in the East Bay), Marin Clean Energy and WestLight Energy, formerly Peninsula Clean Energy.

Table 2. Who handles outages for your address

Who is on the account? Alerts follow the account. If the practice pays power, add the office manager's phone to the account's alerts today. If the building does, the landlord hears about a shutoff first; agree in writing how and how fast the building manager will pass alerts on, and add a staff phone to Address Alerts for the suite as a second line.

How do we get PG&E shutoff alerts for the office, and who should receive them?

Sign up for PG&E Address Alerts for the office's street address, add the 7-day shutoff forecast and the outage map to the front-desk computer and two staff phones, and route alerts to the office manager, the owner and your IT provider. An alert that only reaches the owner's home phone is easy to miss.

As of November 2026, PG&E says its Address Alerts can warn you of a possible shutoff "at any address that is important to you," by phone and text. That is the feature a dental office needs, because many owners only receive alerts for their home. PG&E also publishes a 7-day PSPS forecast and an outage map that shows affected areas and estimated restoration times.

Who gets the alerts

For South Bay and Peninsula offices. Offices whose bills show PG&E, San Jose Clean Energy or Silicon Valley Clean Energy are on PG&E lines, so the same Address Alerts apply in San Jose, Sunnyvale or Mountain View. If you are comparing support for offices in that area, Legend's page on dental IT support in Silicon Valley covers how it works there, and the companion guide to Silicon Valley dental managed IT covers plan scope and monitoring.

What should happen in the office when a shutoff watch is issued?

Treat a Watch as a deadline: confirm the last good backup and when a restore was last tested, export tomorrow's schedule and patient phone list, charge laptops and phones, check the battery backup, plan the shutdown order for the server and imaging computers, and decide how patients will be told.

The Watch, one or two days ahead when possible, is the most valuable warning you will get. Use it.

The day-before checklist

1. 1. Backups. Ask your IT provider to confirm the last successful backup and the last time a restore was tested. If the answer is vague, ask for a test restore today.
2. 1. Schedule. Export tomorrow's schedule and the patient phone list to a place you can reach from a phone without the office network.
3. 1. Charge. Laptops, staff phones and any portable hotspot.
4. 1. Battery backup. Run the UPS self-test if it has one, and check that the units protecting the server, firewall and phones show a healthy battery.
5. 1. Shutdown order. Write the order down: save and close charts and images, close imaging software, shut down operatory and imaging computers, then the server, then the network last. The national guide to server shutdown mistakes to avoid covers what goes wrong.
6. 1. Phones. Decide where the main number forwards and test it.
7. 1. Patients. Decide whether to move tomorrow's patients now or wait for the Warning, and draft the message either way.
8. 1. Refrigeration and clinical items. Follow your own clinical protocols for anything temperature-sensitive.

When power returns, bring things back in reverse order: network first, then the server, then workstations and imaging. The national article on when to restart and when to power cycle explains the difference.

What did the December 2025 San Francisco blackout show about outages with no warning?

It showed that a long outage can hit the dense city core with no notice, that restoration estimates can move several times, and that the hard decision for a business is whether to call staff in. Offices that had a battery-protected shutdown, a schedule copy outside the building and a call tree were in a far better position.

What happened, in PG&E's words and the record. PG&E reported that the outage began at 1:09 p.m. on Saturday, 20 December 2025 and peaked about two hours later at roughly 130,000 customers, in the Presidio, the Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and small areas of downtown. The San Francisco Standard located the fire at the Mission substation at Eighth and Mission streets, and reported lingering outages in Civic Center and SoMa and scattered pockets in the Outer Sunset and the Marina. PG&E's updates show about 95,000 customers restored by 11 p.m. that Saturday, all but about 17,000 by noon Sunday, about 3,800 still out at 5 p.m. Monday, and full restoration at 4:31 a.m. on Tuesday. PG&E applied a $2,500 bill credit to affected business customers automatically for that outage. As of November 2026, its outage page said the root cause remained under investigation.

The lesson for a dental office. KQED reported that PG&E "issued multiple inaccurate estimates" for when power would return, and that some businesses could not decide whether to ask their staff to come back. The SF Standard quoted a resident whose expected restoration time moved from noon to 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. in a single day. For a practice, that uncertainty lands on Monday morning: patients booked, staff on the way, and no clear answer.

The first hour of an outage with no warning

1. 1. Note the time the power dropped and check the utility's outage map from a phone.
2. 1. Let the battery backup carry the server and network while staff save and close open charts and images.
3. 1. Shut down imaging computers, then the server, in the written order, unless your IT provider has set the server to shut itself down on battery.
4. 1. Forward the main number to a staff cell phone if the phone system is down.
5. 1. Tell patients in the chair what is happening and finish only what can be finished safely.
6. 1. Message your IT provider so someone is watching for the office to come back online.
7. 1. Set the decision time for the next session, using the call-back rule below.

What to have in place before the next one:

• • A battery backup that buys a clean shutdown. The goal is a few minutes of runtime so the server shuts down in order. Running the office on battery is out of reach for a UPS.
• • A schedule copy outside the building. If the practice software is local, an export or a cloud copy lets the front desk call patients from home.
• • A call tree with a decision time. One person decides, by a set time, whether the office opens.
• • A written call-back rule. The decision tree in the next section.

The same planning applies across the bay. Offices in Oakland, Berkeley and Walnut Creek face the same grid risk plus the shutoff and fast-trip exposure of the East Bay hills. Legend's page on dental IT support in the East Bay explains how support works there.

Should we call staff in if PG&E keeps changing its restoration estimate?

Decide with a written rule, set before the outage: if power is not back by a fixed time, the clinical team stays home and the front desk works remotely, provided phones forward and the schedule is reachable. Change the plan only if the building manager confirms power and access. Chasing each new estimate costs more than a firm call.

Staff time is expensive here. In May 2025 the mean annual wage for dental hygienists in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metro area was $180,520, against $98,990 nationally, and dental assistants in the same metro averaged $64,900 (BLS). Paying a full team to wait in a dark office is a real cost; so is losing a day of production because nobody made a decision.

Table 3. The call-back decision tree

Three outcomes come out of the tree: open, calls only (remote front desk, clinical staff at home or on standby) and closed. Agree on the decision time and who makes the call in advance, and put it in the staff handbook. The table covers operations only. Check your own employment and pay obligations with your advisor.

Can a generator run the office, and will the UPS accept it?

A generator can keep part of an office running, but sizing and wiring belong to a licensed electrician, who connects it through a transfer switch. On the IT side, some battery backup units are sensitive to generator power, so ask your installer whether your UPS model accepts it before you rely on the pair.

Generators come up after every long outage. Here is what to sort out on the IT side.

What a generator might power, in order

1. 1. The network core: firewall, switch and internet equipment, so phones and cloud software work.
2. 1. Phones: the phone system, or let calls forward to cell phones instead.
3. 1. One front-desk computer: to reach the schedule and take calls.
4. 1. The server, if needed: only if the outage will be long and the practice must keep working from local data.

Imaging units, cone-beam scanners and most operatory equipment are usually left off during an outage. Treating patients on generator power raises clinical and safety questions beyond IT, so make that decision with your equipment vendors.

Questions for the electrician and the IT provider

• • How will the generator connect to the building? Ask for a transfer switch installed by a licensed electrician.
• • Does our battery backup model accept generator power, or will it stay on battery and drain?
• • Who starts the generator, and who checks the server before it is restarted?
• • Does the landlord allow a generator, and where may it sit?

When is it safe to switch a dental office's technology back on after a Bay Area earthquake?

Once the shaking stops, staff and patients come first; use your emergency plan and get out if the structure looks damaged. Equipment stays off until the building is cleared. Then check the rack, cables and any water, power up in order, confirm the backups and use the offsite copy if local data is lost.

The U.S. Geological Survey's earthquake outlook for the San Francisco Bay region estimates a 72 percent probability of at least one magnitude 6.7 or greater earthquake somewhere in the region before 2043, and puts the probability at 33 percent for the Hayward or Rodgers Creek faults alone.

Before the quake: three things that make recovery possible

• • Secure the gear. The rack, server and battery backup should be fastened down by a qualified installer, and nothing heavy should sit on a shelf above them.
• • Keep a copy far away. An offsite backup stored outside the Bay Area protects you if the region's data centers or your building are affected. Ask your provider where the copy lives.
• • Know how to work from home. Staff should know how to reach the schedule and phones without the office.

After the quake, once people are safe

1. 1. Keep everyone out until the building is cleared.
2. 1. Look at the closet before touching anything: fallen equipment, pulled cables, water.
3. 1. If the gear looks sound and power is stable, power up in order: network, server, workstations.
4. 1. Check that the practice software opens and the latest data is there.
5. 1. Confirm the last backup ran, and ask your provider to check the offsite copy.
6. 1. Restore from the offsite copy if local data is damaged or missing.

Southern California practices on SCE can read our Los Angeles earthquake and power-outage plan, which covers that region's utilities and risks.

How can patients still be rescheduled when the office has no power?

Keep the schedule reachable without the office: through cloud practice software, a remote session to a server that is still running, or an exported list made the day before. Forward the main number to a staff cell phone, and use your texting or reminder platform from a phone to move appointments.

With no power, the server and front-desk computers are down, and on-premise phone systems may be down too. The patients still need to hear from you.

Three ways to keep the schedule reachable

Phones. Cloud phone platforms usually offer call forwarding in their admin portal or mobile app. Rehearse it on a quiet afternoon so the front desk knows the steps. When the lights are on and only the line is dead, follow our national steps for what to do when the dental office internet is down.

Messages. Keep a short template ready: the office is closed due to a power outage, we will call to reschedule, and how to reach the dentist for an urgent problem, following your own clinical policy.

Where does managed IT fit in an outage plan?

Managed IT makes the plan work in practice. Monitoring sees when the office drops offline, the provider confirms backups and helps with the shutdown and restart order, and an offsite copy is kept current. It does not stop the outage, so ask any provider what they do before, during and after one.

At Legend Networking, systems are covered by 24/7 monitoring, and the helpdesk is staffed 24/7 at 1-800-794-1588, one general number. Legend publishes "In-house engineers; no outsourced first-level triage." Its model reads "Onsite dispatch by appointment across served dental markets; remote-first nationwide." Day-to-day software and support issues are handled remotely; cabling, installations, equipment moves and new-office build-outs are scheduled onsite by appointment. As of November 2026, backup protection is from $39.99 per month (storage-dependent). Legend has 22+ years in dental IT (since 2004), and as of November 2026 its reviews stood at 4.8 rating · 173 Google reviews.

The national pages go deeper: backup and disaster recovery for the service, and the dental backup and disaster recovery checklist for the steps. A second internet path, so the office stays reachable when one carrier goes down, is covered in dental office network cabling in San Francisco. When you compare providers on how they handle outages, our guide to choosing a dental IT provider in the Bay Area lists what to ask.

Want someone to look at your own closet, backup and alert setup before the next outage? Ask for a Free Dental IT Assessment.

What to ask your IT provider

Key takeaways

• • Plan for four outages with different warning: PG&E shutoffs, grid failures, fast-trip outages and earthquakes.
• • Check your bill: most offices are on PG&E lines even with a community choice program; Palo Alto and Alameda run their own utilities.
• • Register the office address for PG&E Address Alerts and route alerts to the office manager, the owner and your IT provider.
• • Use a Watch as a deadline: backup, schedule export, charge, shutdown order, patient message.
• • The 20 to 23 December 2025 San Francisco outage showed that shifting estimates make the call-back decision the hardest part; write the rule in advance.
• • After a quake, wait for the building to be cleared, inspect the rack and cables, restart in order and confirm the offsite copy.

Sources

Every source was opened on 9 November 2026.

• • PG&E, Mission substation outage page.
• • The San Francisco Standard, "San Francisco blackout: what we know," 22 December 2025.
• • KQED, "San Francisco supervisors probe PG&E after widespread winter power outages," 12 February 2026.
• • PG&E, Public Safety Power Shutoffs page and July 2026 PSPS event notification scripts.
• • California Public Utilities Commission, Public Safety Power Shutoffs page and Protective Equipment and Device Settings page.
• • SFist, 14 July 2026, and ABC7 News, 15 July 2026, on the July 2026 shutoff watch.
• • PG&E, Community Choice Aggregation page.
• • City of Palo Alto Utilities, About CPAU; Alameda Municipal Power website.
• • U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2016-3020, Earthquake Outlook for the San Francisco Bay Region 2014-2043.
• • U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025.