Thousands of people in California wake up in the dark after Pacific Gas & Electric starts shutting off households’ power to prevent what the utility called an unprecedented wildfire danger from powerline sparks.Pacific Gas & Electric said it cut power to more than 500,000 customers in northern California on Wednesday to prevent its equipment from starting wildfires during hot, windy weather. (Jeff Chiu, File/Associated Press)Thousands of people in California woke up in the dark Wednesday after Pacific Gas & Electric started shutting off power to households to prevent what the utility called an unprecedented wildfire danger. PG&E said it cut power to more than 500,000 customers in Northern California and that it plans gradually to turn off electricity to nearly 800,000 customers to prevent its equipment from sparking wildfires during hot, windy weather.A second group of about 234,000 customers will lose power starting at noon, the utility said. The utility plans to shut off power in parts of 34 northern, central and coastal California counties to reduce the chance of fierce winds knocking down or toppling trees into power lines during a siege of hot, dry, gusty weather. Gusts of 56-72 kilometres per hour were forecast to sweep a vast swath of the state, from the San Francisco Bay area to the agricultural Central Valley and especially in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where a November wildfire blamed on PG&E transmission lines killed 85 people and virtually incinerated the town of Paradise. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention said it increased staffing in preparation for extreme fire weather. Watch: Here’s how some are coping with the wildfires Some horse owners say with the increasing severity and frequency of wildfires, not enough is being done to protect the animals. That’s why some have taken matters into their own hands, creating new ways to protect their horses. 3:05 The winds will be the strongest and most widespread the region has seen in two years, and given the scope of the danger, there was no other choice but to stage the largest preventive blackout in state history, PG&E said. “This is a last resort,” said Sumeet Singh, head of the utility’s Community Wildfire Safety Program. However, people should be outraged by the move, Gov. Gavin Newsom said. “No one is satisfied with this, no one is happy with this,” he said. The utility needs to upgrade and fix its equipment so massive outages aren’t the norm going forward, he said. It could take as many as five days to restore power after the danger has passed because every inch of power line must be checked to make sure it isn’t damaged or in danger of sparking a blaze, PG&E said. Outages not just in fire-prone areas The news came as residents in the region’s wine country north of San Francisco marked the two-year anniversary of deadly wildfires that killed 44 and destroyed thousands of homes. San Francisco is the only county in the nine-county Bay Area where power will not be affected. To the south, Southern California Edison said more than 106,000 of its customers in parts of eight counties could face power cuts as early as Thursday as Santa Ana winds loomed. The cutbacks followed a plan instituted after deadly wildfires — some blamed on downed PG&E transmission lines — destroyed dozens of lives and thousands of homes in recent years and forced the utility into bankruptcy over an estimated $30 billion in potential damages from lawsuits. The outages Wednesday weren’t limited to fire-prone areas because the utilities must turn off entire distribution and transmission lines to much wider areas to minimize the risk of wildfires. Armando Espinoza delivers paper products to a café in Sonoma, Calif., where power is turned off, early Wednesday morning. (Noah Berger/Associated Press) Classes were cancelled for thousands of schoolchildren and at the University of California, Berkeley, Sonoma State University and Mills College. The California Department of Transportation said it was installing generators to avoid closing the Caldecott Tunnel linking the East Bay to San Francisco and the Tom Lantos Tunnel on State Route 1 in Pacifica. “The tunnels can’t operate without power,” Caltrans tweeted. Mayor in Sonoma County laments ‘inexcusable’ situation PG&E had warned of the possibility of a widespread shut-off Monday, prompting residents to flock to stores for supplies as they prepared for dying cellphone batteries, automatic garage doors that won’t work and lukewarm refrigerators. Residents of the Sonoma County city of Cloverdale, population 9,300, were preparing for the possibility of zero power and downed internet and cellphone lines, as happened during the wine country fires. Cloverdale homes were not burned then, but residents were worried sick over family in burn zones and in the dark without communications, Mayor Melanie Bagby said. She accused PG&E of failing to upgrade its equipment. “It’s inexcusable that we’re in the situation that we’re in,” she said. “We pay our bills, and we gave PG&E a monopoly to guarantee we would have” reliable power. But Santa Rosa Mayor Tom Schwedhelm said he was grateful PG&E was taking proactive action. His city lost 5% of its housing a 2017 fire that killed 22 and torched nearly 6,000 structures in Sonoma and Napa counties. State investigators determined the fire was sparked by a private electrical system, and was not the fault of PG&E. Hospitals would operate on backup power, but other systems could see their generators fail after a few days. Outages even posed a threat that fire hydrants wouldn’t work at a time of extreme fire danger. Joe Wilson pulled his generator out in the garage of his home in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday in anticipation of the outages. (Randy Vazquez/San Jose Mercury News via AP) PG&E set up about 30 community centres offering air conditioning, restrooms, bottled water and electronic charging stations during daylight hours. Counties activated their emergency centres and authorities urged people to have supplies of water for several days, to keep sensitive medicines such as insulin in cool places, to drive carefully because traffic lights could be out, to have a full gas tank for emergencies and to check the food in freezers and refrigerators for spoilage after power is restored. PG&E said it was informing customers by text and email about where and when the power would be cut. But its website, where it directed people to check whether their addresses would be affected, was not working most of the day Tuesday after being overloaded with visitors.
Thousands of Californians without power, as PG&E prepares for wildfires | CBC News
