What Happened?
The Pacific Gas and Electricity Company began cutting off the electricity to its customers in northern California Saturday, Oct. 26 due to fears of fires igniting from the historic windstorm that occurred this weekend, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The PG&E blackout began at around 5 p.m. Saturday and was mostly completed by Sunday morning, when more than 1.3 million people across the Bay Area were without power.
In Context
According to CBS San Francisco, PG&E shut off electricity to prevent their power lines from being knocked down by the wind and starting wildfires, similar to what occurred in the deadly wildfires of October 2017.
This is the third time this month PG&E has cut out the power of its customers, citing a wildfire risk, the SF Chronicle reports.
Saturday’s cut-out was larger than the ones earlier this month, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, extending from the North Coast to the northern Sacramento Valley to the Sierra Nevada foothills.
USA Today reported that the outage of the week of Oct. 7 left 513,000 customers without power.
PG&E remains a controversial company, with poorly managed utilities responsible for some of the biggest wildfires in California history, according to the New York Times.
In 2017, a live PG&E wire broke free from an outdated tower and caused a fire in Paradise, California, killing 85 people and destroying nearly 14,000 homes.
According to the Los Angeles Times, PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January, anticipating billions of dollars in damages from the wildfires caused in the past by their power lines and equipment.
The Latest
PG&E said that they would restore power to as many customers’ houses as possible before Tuesday, when more wind storms are expected to hit northern California, according to The San Francisco Chronicle
Some schools and businesses closed Monday because of outages.
CBS San Francisco reports that 40 to 50 mph winds have hit some communities in the Bay Area, with the Kincade Fire Zone seeing winds of up to 93 mph.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that meteorologists expect wind gusts to reach 70 or 80 mph in some northern parts of the state.
Governor Gavin Newsom of California declared a state of emergency and has ordered people to evacuate because of the windy fires, according to The New York Times
According to the Washington Post, parts of the North Bay area are in the “extremely critical” category of fire danger, the Storm Prediction Center’s highest fire risk category.
