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Le’Troy Andrews, 74, had to crawl from his bedroom to his front door during the PG&E power outage on Saturday night to let paramedics into his Inner Richmond apartment. He thought he was having a stroke.
Andrews, a former Air Force medic who lives alone with his dog, Cooper, underwent brain surgery last August, and also has congestive heart failure. His apartment had lost power earlier that afternoon. When he went to bed that night, he didn’t use his CPAP machine — a device commonly used to treat sleep apnea — since there was no electricity.
Around 10:30 p.m, he called 911 with stroke-like symptoms.
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After he struggled to let medics in, and they stabilised him, Andrews asked to be taken to the hospital. He was transported to University of California, San Francisco Health Stanyan Hospital, where doctors said the neurological episode was likely brought on by stress, but were unable to provide a clear diagnosis.
“I was frightened because I’m much older, and my body and my reflexes and everything are different,” he said. Most of Andrews’ family is on the East Coast, and his few friends were scattered throughout the city, many busy with the power outage themselves.
Seniors across the Richmond District felt cut off from the outside world on Saturday and Sunday, with no electricity or even cell phone service.
The PG&E outage left about one-third of San Francisco residents without power and was, in part, attributed to a fire in one of the company’s substations at Eighth and Mission streets. While power returned for most on Saturday, the company’s outage map showed large areas of the Richmond in red, without power, well into Sunday evening.
As of Monday evening, power had almost completely returned.
In a three-story building a stone’s throw from Balboa Street in Outer Richmond, senior residents described a nightmare 48 hours without electricity or information from the city.
Many of the residents on the top floor of the building are over the age of 65, with mobility issues and disabilities. When the power went out, a lot of them were ill-prepared: No fully charged mobile phones, flashlights or backup batteries.
Without a working elevator, a stairwell that had a railing only on one side, and no emergency lights in the common areas, most top-floor residents could not step out of their homes.
“We were all scared. We felt abandoned by the city, and by our landlord,” said Nancy DeStefanis, 77, who uses two canes and lives on the building’s third floor.
DeStefanis remembers messaging the in-house resident manager and her landlord multiple times, when she did have power and cell service, but received no response for more than 24 hours.
Later, residents learned that the resident manager had left the premises because of a health problem that required electrical devices.
A younger resident, who did not want to be identified, was instrumental in organizing support for the seniors, they said. She described them as “cold, anxious and panicking,” and said that if neighbors like herself had not checked in, the situation could have been dire.
The resident collected everyone’s phones and went to charge them at her sister-in-law’s house elsewhere in the city. Another neighbor, who himself had a leg injury, drove to buy portable power banks from a nearby store, all in the pouring rain.
Christina Cordi, 72, is DeStefanis’ neighbor and has rheumatoid arthritis. She pays $1,150 every 90 days for medicines that must be refrigerated at all times. She couldn’t afford to lose her stock.
Eventually, a younger neighbor went out to buy some ice, and the residents created a makeshift icebox to keep Cordi’s medicines cool.
Christina Cordi’s rheumatoid arthritis injections that had to kept cool during the PG&E power outage. Photo by Anusha Subramanian.
Since most of the outreach by the city departments was done via social media and cellular networks, residents did not receive much information once their phones died or lost signal. There were numbers to call for help, but DeStafanis wondered: How could you call them when the phones were dead?
“If you’re gearing all of your outreach toward social media, the tech-literate and the able-bodied, that’s not covering the whole city,” said the neighbor who helped organize support for the seniors. “It’s definitely not covering a good chunk of D1.”
Residents were not aware that they could call 211 for a hotel stay, for instance, as advertised by Mayor Daniel Lurie and Supervisor Connie Chan in an Instagram video.
When PG&E set up the Richmond Rec Center on Sunday with water, charging outlets and other resources, it didn’t make much of a difference to the seniors — they didn’t know how to get themselves there.
Cordi and DeStefanis remember freezing the first night and sleeping under piles of comforters to get warm after the resident manager had told DeStefanis that the heat wouldn’t work — which, it turned out, was incorrect.
The property manager also seemed to believe the building did have electricity, slowing response to the tenants.
Margaret Rosano of Rosano & Co., the company that manages the property, said that when she checked the PG&E outage map on Saturday evening, the building still had power.
She later realized it was not true, she said: At 4:50 p.m. on Saturday, the PG&E outage map showed most of Outer Richmond, including the building in question, without electricity.
The PG&E power outage map as of 4:50 p.m. on Dec. 20, 2025.
In an email sent to DeStefanis at 12:24 p.m. on Sunday, Rosano wrote that there was a box of emergency supplies in the building and Rosano was “checking on the status and location of that.” She also said that there may be additional blackouts, and that she would send information soon about onsite supplies.
As of 4:30 p.m. on Monday, tenants Mission Local spoke to had not received any more information.
Even now, residents are in a flurry, preparing so they don’t get caught off-guard again. They are ordering batteries from Amazon, stocking up on non-perishable foods and wrapping up errands before the possibility of another PG&E outage.
“If it wasn’t for the neighbors,” DeStefanis said, “we would all be up shit creek with no paddles.”
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