Over 1 Million Californians May Be Affected By Imminent Fire-Prevention Blackout

Californians will once again get to ‘enjoy’ a pre-industrial lifestyle this week as state utilities gear up for another round of intentional blackouts aimed at reducing the risk of fires, according to Bloomberg, while PG&E claims that over to 1 million residents may be impacted by the shutoffs. 

On Wednesday, PG&E will begin cutting power to approximately 179,000 California households in 17 fire-prone areas, beginning at 2pm. The outage includes Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, El Dorado, Kern, Lake, Mendocino, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, San Mateo Sierra, Sonoma, Tehama and Yuba counties. 

PG&E: 1.2 MILLION POWER CUSTOMERS IN FIRE WEATHER WATCH AREA

Every time the wind blows California will become Venezuela

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 22, 2019

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Further south, Edison International’s Southern California utility announced that 162,276 customers may be affected by a similar blackout, while Sempra Energy may cut power to 24,000. 

The potential for an outage comes at a time of year when the landscape is dry and fires spark and spread easily. Northerly winds are expected to pick up Wednesday evening into Thursday morning in the hills of the East Bay and North Bay, delivering critical fire risk. Winds between 35 and 45 mph with some 55 mph gusts in localized areas are forecast for Sonoma and Napa counties.

The National Weather Service has a Red Flag Warning in effect for the North Bay mountains, valleys and coast, noon Wednesday through 4 p.m. Thursday; the East Bay mountains and valleys, 3 p.m. Wednesday through 4 p.m. Thursday; and the Santa Cruz Mountains, 7 p.m. Wednesday through 4 p.m. Thursday. –SFgate

PG&E had originally planned on cutting power to more than 209,000 households before dialing back the figure. They have provided the following website for those who may be impacted. Hopefully it doesn’t go down this time.