It's hot, hotter, HOTTEST

By Tony Hicks

June 16, 2000 Web posted at: 10:26 AM EDT (1426 GMT)

CONTRA COSTA, California (Contra Costa Times) -- A relentless heat wave, which is being blamed for one death, left tens of thousands without power Wednesday, buckled freeway lanes, sent dozens of fans for medical help at Pac Bell Park and left the Bay Area with a heat-induced hangover.

Residents opened hydrants to try to beat the heat

Temperatures hit records all over Northern California, prompting emergency warnings from cities and an intentional power shut-down that left nearly 100,000 PG&E customers wanting.

The thermometer told the story in the East Bay: 114 in Pleasant Hill, 113 in Antioch, 111 in Castro Valley, 105 in Richmond, according to the National Weather Service. In San Francisco, the 103-degree heat tied the all-time record for any day, set in 1988.

Forecasters said temperatures inland are expected to continue in triple digits through the weekend, with some cooling at the coast.

"This is just an extra-powerful high pressure system. It's really warm air up there and the sea breeze is shut off," said Shane Snyder, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "You don't mess with it, you'll just run out of water in your body."

The heat may have played a role in the death of an elderly Pleasanton man, police said. The man, in his mid-70s, was found near Moller Ranch Drive after a noontime walk with his wife.

The man, whose name wasn't available late Wednesday, apparently had a history of high blood pressure, police said.

"We don't know exactly what caused (his death)," said Lt. Chris Dickinson of Pleasanton police. "But it's probably just too much for an elderly person with a medical condition to be walking around in this heat."

Few people were left unaffected by the sweltering heat. At an inopportune day baseball game at Pacific Bell Park, 34 people were treated for heat exhaustion. One fan was hospitalized with a body temperature of 106 degrees.

On Interstate 80 in Fairfield, 109-degree heat buckled three of the four eastbound lanes just before 4 p.m., said Caltrans spokesman Jeff Weiss, leaving only the slow lane open.

"It's impassable, basically," Weiss said. "It's a disastrous time of day for this to happen."

Weiss said crews were able to repair one lane by 5 p.m., but were still working to get the other two open by 7:30 p.m.

"It rose enough to cause accidents if motorists drove over it," he said.

Some Bay Area companies, including Lawrence Livermore and Sandia/California laboratories, helped PG&E by shutting down non-essential operations.

But there wasn't enough co-operation to prevent PG&E from rotating one-hour outages throughout the Bay Area

Tom Collins, a PG&E spokesman, said the outages began at 1 p.m. and ended about 4:30 p.m., affecting 97,000 customers, but none for more than about 90 minutes.

Ordered by the state agency that manages power usage throughout the state, the outages were needed to protect the power grid from collapse, said Collins. The utility has never been forced to rotate outages to this extent, he said.

"We ran into record-breaking megawatts during this super-record-breaking heat," he said. "We're sort of calling it a heat storm. This is pretty major."

About 1,700 homes in Pleasant Hill were left without electricity late Wednesday night due to a heavy demand for electrical power that crippled underground cable lines and disabled transformers, PG&E spokeswoman Maureen Bogues said.

Another 4,000 homes in Clayton, Concord, Danville and Walnut Creek also suffered power failures late Wednesday night, Bogues said.

The heat and related fire danger closed both Mount Diablo and the Los Vaqueros Watershed, the first time weather closed the 18,500-acre space since it opened to the public in December. The closure is expected to last until at least Friday

Throughout the day, fire and police officials and hospital workers in the East Bay were busy handling heat-related health problems, standing ready for fire dangers and trying to keep up with people wrenching open fire hydrants to beat the heat.

Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Oakland and Richmond were among several East Bay hospitals reporting a noticeable increase in patient volume, including many patients with chest pains and fainting spells.

A staff member at Verde Elementary School in North Richmond collapsed from heat exhaustion while supervising kids on the asphalt playground after school. She was taken to Kaiser in Richmond for treatment.

In a Pleasanton office building on Hopyard Road, two women were trapped in an elevator for 30 minutes due to PG&E's "rolling brownout." Rick Bodley of the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department said the women were not hurt.

Some people were simply unable to flee the sun.

Ed Macumber, a captain with the Contra Costa Fire Protection District, said his station in East Contra Costa had responded to four heat-related calls, including homeless people who "don't have anywhere to go to hydrate themselves."

Macumber said two others collapsed in grocery stores, including one man who didn't have air conditioning in his car and overheated when he went into an air-conditioned grocery store.

Shaun Wilson, homeless and hot on Mt. Diablo Boulevard in Lafayette, said he recently left Seattle for the Bay Area, partly for the moderate climes. On Wednesday there was no escape.

"There's rain all the time up there and we can't work when it's raining," said Wilson, an ironworker. "I was in Marin yesterday and a sign said it was 115. I figured I'd come to the East Bay to get away from the heat."

Bob Grady, the owner of Pittsburg Door Company, was approaching the Caldecott Tunnel when his truck overheated. Ninety minutes later, he was still waiting for help on the westbound shoulder.

"I might be here another couple of hours until they come and get me, but I had my drink of water before I left the office," said Grady, of Pleasant Hill. "Twenty years in this business and this is the first time I've had to sit on the side of the road."

Many construction workers came to work early to finish as much work as possible before things got unbearable.

"We're watching everyone closely, to look for signs of heat exhaustion," said crew leader Mark Campbell, an Alameda County Public Works employee laying asphalt on Livermore's Tesla Road. Campbell said the scorching heat shortens workers' tempers.

"In this weather, attitudes heat up quickly," he said.

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