Thousands of Californians had electricity shut off Friday with even more possibly losing power over the weekend due to heightened wildfire risks from a weather system that is bringing dry, gusty winds across much of the state.
Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s largest utility, turned off power to almost 7,000 customers in Central and Northern California on Friday “due to severe weather and wildfire risk,” continuing shutoffs that began Thursday and were expected to continue through the weekend, PG&E wrote in an update.
Southern California Edison, the largest power provider in the Southland, shut off power to more than a thousand customers Friday morning, mostly in Santa Barbara and Kern counties, but said more than 30,000 other customers could lose power through Sunday as winds remain a concern.
“With the windy conditions, still pretty low humidities, and the finer fuels being pretty dry, we’re looking at elevated to brief critical fire conditions,” said Kristen Lund, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Oxnard, about the southern Santa Barbara County and surrounding areas. Though the conditions in Southern California don’t meet the threshold to trigger a red flag warning, there will still be the potential for a fast-growing fire, she said.
Jeff Monford, a spokesperson for Edison, said the planned outages are “an essential tool for public safety.” The so-called Public Safety Power Shutoffs are initiated by utilities to minimize potential fire sparks during high-risk conditions.
The state’s three biggest utilities — PG&E, SCE and San Diego Gas & Electric — began adopting power shutoffs as a strategy to reduce the risk of starting a fire about a decade ago after their equipment in the years prior started some of the deadliest and most destructive fires in modern history.
SCE’s equipment is part of the investigation into the start of the Eaton fire in January, that killed 18 people and destroyed thousands of homes and buildings in Altadena and surrounding communities.
In Southern California, further outages were being considered for other areas of Santa Barbara County, as well as Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Kern, Inyo, Tulare and Mono counties, SCE said. PG&E said it was considering outages for almost 12,000 customers across 15 counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Colusa, Fresno, Glenn, Merced, Monterey, San Benito, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, Shasta, Stanislaus, Tehama and Trinity.
A red flag warning, indicating critical fire weather conditions, had been issued in a few pockets of the state, and across wide swaths of the American West.
In the Indian Wells valley area of the Mojave Desert, in parts of northern San Bernardino, Inyo and Kern counties, westward winds with gusts up to 60 mph were expected through early Saturday, the National Weather Service wrote in the red flag warning. The weather service warned that “any fires that develop will likely spread rapidly.”
In Lassen, Alpine and Mono counties, near the Nevada border, a red flag warning was also issued through midnight Friday.
The critical warnings also included almost all of Nevada and Utah, northern Arizona and much of Colorado.
“A combination of strong winds, low relative humidity, and warm temperatures can contribute to extreme fire behavior,” the weather service warned of these areas. “Avoid outdoor activities that can cause a spark near dry vegetation, such as yard work, target shooting, or campfires.”
Although other areas hadn’t yet been elevated to a red flag warning, the weather service had issued several other advisories about high wind and fire concerns, most lasting through Sunday.
Across much of southern Santa Barbara County and into northern L.A. County, the weather service had issued a high wind alert, warning that “gusty northerly winds are expected … for the next several nights.” In southern Santa Barbara County, winds on Thursday evening hit 60 mph, but the weather service said “even stronger winds are expected Friday night.”
Lund said those conditions would create high fire risk.
All of the Mojave Desert was under a wind advisory for most of the weekend. Much of the Sacramento Valley and the northern San Joaquin Valley had been put under a fire weather watch for Saturday and Sunday: “The combination of gusty winds and low humidity can cause fire to rapidly grow in size and intensity,” that warning said.
Parts of the Santa Barbara County coast and Santa Ynez mountains were also under a high wind watch Friday, with gusts up to 60 mph possible.
