California utility begins restoring power after mass planned outage due to wildfire threats
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. – PG&E crews at 6 a.m. Tuesday began patrolling power lines de-energized Monday in California's Butte, Nevada and Yuba counties, and began restoring power to some of the 24,000 affected customers. The National Weather Service issued red flag warnings for 28 counties across northern California on Sunday, prompting the power utility to implement the pre-emptive shutoffs to prevent sparks that could cause wildfires.
PG&E expects to have fully restored power to those customers by 6 p.m. As the utility continues to monitor weather conditions, it has announced a second potential public safety power shut-off event affecting customers in portions of nine counties: Butte, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sutter, Yuba, Lake, Napa and Sonoma. An announcement about the decision to shut off power will be made today at noon.
Since Monday, Southern California Edison has at least doubled its number of customers under consideration for a public safety power shutoff to 89,500. Other potentially affected customers are located in Kern, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara counties.
Outage could last from a couple hours to two days
PG&E began a three-hour process of cutting power to an estimated 21,257 customers in Butte, Nevada and Yuba counties Monday. Almost twice as many Southern California Edison customers were under consideration for a potential public safety power shutoff event at the time.
According to PG&E, the outage may last anywhere from just a couple hours to 48 hours. Affected residents can check how soon their power will return on the PG&E website or twitter feed. Restoration will begin once weather is cleared and it's safe for crews to patrol lines make sure no safety hazards remain. The peak fire risk is forecast until today at 9 a.m.
A total of 1,451 PG&E customers who depend on the use of energy-intensive life saving medical equipment such as iron lungs, respirators, or dialysis machines are affected; the utility charges a discounted rate in these cases. Megan Mcfarland, a spokesperson for PG&E, said company representatives had been sent to knock on doors of customers dependent on medical equipment who were unable to be reached by phone, text or email.
Community resource centers, where PG&E will provide bathrooms, bottled water, electronic device charging, will open at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 24, and will close at nightfall.
PG&E initially announced up to 124,000 customers in nine counties could be affected by the public safety power shutoff, among them roughly 6,000 customers who depend on medical equipment.
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Red flag warnings at least until Wednesday morning
The red flag warning is scheduled to be lifted Wednesday at 11 a.m., but will be extended should conditions remain extreme. The red flag warning indicates fires can start more easily, and will have a more rapid rate of spread.
One new wildfire incident ignited near the red flag warning area Monday.
The 50-acre brush fire southwest of Lake Tulloch Reservoir in northern California was reported to have a moderate rate of spread and burning primarily grass. It is not yet clear what the fire's potential acreage could be, or if it could burn into more high risk areas.
Eric Kurth, a meteorologist at the weather service in Sacramento, said he issued a critical fire weather watch on Friday, which was upgraded to a red flag warning on Sunday.
"We see this type of weather pattern frequently in the late summer and fall," Kurth said, explaining that the weather system which creates dry winds in the interior of northern California is referred to as an "inside slider."
"Heavy winds could reach speeds of 40 or 45 miles per hour in canyons," Kurth said. "Winds of that speed are capable of blowing over trees that have recently burned or are not healthy."
The weather service also has issued heat advisories for Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, among others in southern California.
PG&E chief executive Bill Johnson said Monday that the company would amend a joint Chapter 11 plan of reorganization to emerge from bankruptcy filed earlier this month.
The previous plan proposed to cap compensation to individual victims and public entities at $8.4 billion, and cap payments to insurance companies at $8.5 billion. The amended plan makes $11 billion available to insurance companies, compensating 85% of the claims insurance companies paid out after wildfires in 2017 and 2018 caused by PG&E equipment.
Follow Gabrielle Paluch on Twitter: @GabbyPaluch
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: PG&E California power shut off: Electricity restored in some areas
