Page 380 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

Peterson rental generators supported the fire fight & cleanup effort in November 2018
PETERSON GENERATORS POWER PARADISE
In the aftermath, Melchiori delivered generators to PG&E and several agencies in the area for traffic control, communications, lights, and water. “As Peterson Power, we basically turn into first re- sponders because we run in while everybody else is running out. We supply power for whatever the first responders need because they can’t do much without eyes or ears. It was so dark up there that they needed traffic lights for all the crews driv- ing through the area. At one point, we had twen- ty-eight rental generators from Peterson up there. I had them all mapped out on my phone. They were all over town.”
Peterson generators also helped power the water districts and sanitation department so the sewers wouldn’t back up and overflow. Rental generators powered buildings and businesses that had sur- vived. Grocery stores salvaged their cold stores with backup power. Gas stations pumped fuel with rental power to keep the emergency efforts mov- ing. And two Verizon sites, one in Paradise and one in Magalia, went back online with Peterson generators.
“We rolled into one of the biggest churches in Paradise, the CMA church, with an XQ200 and helped power up the first building, which they used as their command center,” says Melchiori. “That’s where they started discussing the scope of the
disaster, getting their plans together, and talking logistics.” It’s also where they brought Governor Brown in to view the damage and assess for emer- gency status.
CRESCO RUSHES TO MEET DEMAND
Once the fire was contained in town, PG&E es- tablished a laydown yard fifteen miles north of Oroville. They brought in over one hundred gener- ators (25-800kW) from various rental companies, including Peterson. They also had fifty vacuum trucks that ran throughout Paradise, cleaning up the sewers and water lines, sucking up the sludge of debris. Within four days, PG&E took over Tus- can Ridge Golf Course, which had burnt through, and set up a huge camp there. “It was like a city,” recalls Shane Rains, Cresco’s Oroville store man- ager. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. They had food trucks and tents, barracks and campers. It was insane.”
In the coming days, Oroville hosted a number of work camps, housing up to 1,500 people each in FEMA trailers. “We were getting calls two or three times a day from guys from all over the Unit- ed States coming in and needing a large track skid steer and a large excavator. All our hotels were full; no rental housing was available. In the evenings, there’d be a hundred contractor trucks parked out front of every hotel in town. Same with the camps. It’s just amazing where all these people came from.”
378 | PETERSON: 85 YEARS AND GOING STRONG