PG&E customers still waiting on December outage payments amid more San Francisco outages this week

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — Nearly a month after San Francisco’s massive multi-day December power outage, many PG&E customers are still waiting to hear from the utility company about their damage claims.

This comes as many of those same customers are dealing with two more planned outages this week, to make final repairs to the damage done by the December outage.

In December, PG&E said it was sitting aside $50 million to compensate affected residents and business owners, however, many we talked to on Monday say they have still not heard anything from the utility company.

RELATED: PG&E planned outages in SF for substation repairs this week forcing some businesses to close

The utility says the repair work would happen in two waves.

The first shutoff happened overnight Monday, and affected about 3,600 customers in the Civic Center area. The utility said it could have lasted up to 12 hours, but power was restored by 8 a.m.

The second outage in the Richmond & Sunset Districts is scheduled at midnight Tuesday, and will affect 14,000 people. That shutoff is expected to last two hours.

The planned outages are creating more pain for local businesses in those areas.

The owner of Vietnam restaurant, Lam Hoa Thuan, on Irving Street, which also serves Chinese and Cantonese food, says in his 36 years in business, 26 in this location, his recent December loss was one of the most memorable.

Lam said his business lost more than $10,000 worth in food after the 40-hour PG&E power outage in December. He said he just threw the food away.

Restaurants up and down Irving Street experienced the same thing in December. The timing catastrophic as many were preparing massive food orders for the winter solstice celebrations.

This time, they’re ready.

“I think it’s okay because it’s only 2-3 hours,” said Patty Lam, waitress at Lam Hoa Thuan.

Down the street, William Liu is the owner of Tuna House. He intentionally kept inventory thin on Monday.

“Tomorrow morning, I (will) come back to check make sure everything is right,” he said.

Like his neighbor, Lam, Liu also estimates his business lost $10,000 in December.

“I submit the claim already and also they send me back the claim number,” Liu said.

By phone, Irving Seafood Market’s manager also told ABC7 News she submitted a claim to PG&E and is now waiting.

It’s unclear what, if any reimbursement, these businesses will receive or when. They’re just glad they won’t be caught in the dark again.

MORE: SF’s Sunset District business owners meet with PG&E after weeks of blackouts

In the Civic Center areas on Sunday, ABC7’s Cornell Barnard talked with two restaurants who were forced to close Monday because of the planned outage.

“At least they gave us a heads up this time,” said Gaby Gomez manager of Sam’s Restaurant.

Gomez said she has no choice but to close Sam’s and its sister cafe, Haru on Monday.

“It’s a day of sales we’re losing, but at the same time, I don’t want to take the risk of what happened last time when we were in the middle of operations and power shut off and we had to throw away product. Better safe than sorry,” Gomez said.

Gaby said back in December, the power was out around the Civic Center for three days.

PG&E said the outages will allow them to finish repairs and testing of the equipment at its Mission substation, where a fire on Dec. 20 resulted in a third of the city losing power for up to 72 hours. Since the outage, PG&E has been using temporary generators to keep customers in service.

MORE: San Francisco power outage renews city’s interest to acquire PG&E’s assets for public power system

In a statement, PG&E said in part: “When we return to normal operations, we expect this will help avoid some of the brief outages that customers have experienced over the last couple of weeks… we know these outages have been frustrating.”

Some traffic lights may not be operating on Tuesday morning. The city reminds drivers to treat them as a four-way stops.