PG & E cut electricity to 48,200 customers in Northern California due to fire hazards

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This failure is a precaution to reduce the risk that the company's equipment will trigger a forest fire in particularly dry and windy conditions.

This is the second consecutive public safety power outage that PG & E has launched this week. The closure affects seven countries: Butte, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sonoma and Yuba, the company said in a press release.

The stop should start early in the morning and the wind conditions should last until noon Wednesday, according to PG & E.

On Monday, about 24,000 customers were in the dark across Butte, Nevada and Yuba counties, the company said. The power was restored at 18 hours. Tuesday.

"Once the dry and windy weather has passed and it will be safe to do so, probably on Tuesday morning, PG & E teams will visually inspect every kilometer of our power lines to make sure that we are safe. they are not damaged and that they can be fed safely, "said the company said.

In southern California, Edison has 152,500 customers waiting for a power outage for potentially hazardous weather conditions in fire-risk areas, according to the company's website. On Tuesday, 141,500 were in the study, but only 85 clients were turned off.

PG & E Signs with California Forest Fire Insurers for $ 11 Billion

In May, California regulators passed new rules to power companies regarding the intentional reduction of power to prevent forest fires. The California Public Utilities Commission had previously said that investor-owned electric utilities could proactively interrupt power to reduce the risk that their equipment could cause or contribute to a wildfire.

A utility can do it in strong winds, for example.
Earlier this month, the utility giant signed $ 11 billion with the insurance companies for claims arising from the devastating wildfires of 2017 in the north of the state, as well as fire of camp of 2018.

And in June, the company paid $ 1 billion in damages to local authorities for fires related to its power lines, poles and other equipment.

The company previously stated that it was "probable" that its equipment would have started Camp Fire 2018, the deadliest and most destructive California, when a power line touched nearby trees. In April, he announced at least $ 7 billion in claims for the forest fire.

An investigation by the California Department of Forests and Fire Protection had previously revealed that PG & E was responsible for the camp fire of 2018 – which killed 85 people and destroyed thousands of structures.

The agency said that it is the power lines owned and managed by PG & E that triggered the fire.

"The dry vegetation and red flag conditions of strong winds, low humidity and warm temperatures favored this fire and caused extreme rates of spread, burning rapidly" in parts of California, CAL Fire said.

Madeline Holcombe, Joe Sutton and Jason Hanna from CNN contributed to this report.

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