California utility slashes power despite forest fire concerns

Concerned with power lines that were failing causing forest fires, a major California utility has cut electricity for tens of thousands of customers for the first time in the face of high winds – and other vendors were considering similar measures.

Pacific Gas & Electric began cutting electricity on Sunday night in northern California after the National Weather Service warned it of an extreme fire hazard throughout the country. state due to high winds, low humidity and dry vegetation.

PG & E had already announced its intention to cut off electricity preemptively after authorities accused its power lines of causing some of California 's most destructive forest fires.

The utility is waiting to pay billions of dollars in forest fire damages and has sought ways to limit its liability to the courts and the state legislature.

PG & E said that about 87,000 customers had stopped their food and that more could remain in the dark depending on weather conditions. Some 60,000 customers were left without electricity Monday afternoon. Schools in affected areas canceled classes.

PG & E said it plans to restore power Monday night for most customers – although some residents can not recover electricity until Tuesday.

"We know how much our customers depend on electrical service, and we decided to cut off the power supply as a last resort, given the extreme fire danger conditions faced by these communities," said the door. -Pole of PG & E, Pat Hogan.

PG & E said it began Saturday to inform customers about possible failures. However, many said on Monday that they had received little or no notice.

Stewart Munnerlyn was striving to find generators to save $ 8,000 worth of ice cream in her Pine Grove dairy, about 89 km east of Sacramento. Munnerlyn said he was in Virginia to visit a sick relative and that he had received three textings on Sunday night from PG & E.

"They knew what they were going to do, of course," Munnerlyn said. "We have not received enough notice to properly prepare ourselves."

The PG & E spokeswoman, Melissa Subottin, said that electricity had also been cut off in hospitals and other medical providers who are required to have emergency power sources. PG & E officials visited 4,400 medical customers in the affected areas to personally warn them of failures, she said.

The meteorological service had forecast winds reaching 89 km / h in the foothills of the Sierra, east of Sacramento. Violent winds were also expected in the state wine region north of San Francisco.

Southern California utilities also indicated that they planned to cut electricity from an indeterminate number of customers. Strong gusts of wind swept through the region with the arrival of the first autumn winds of Santa Ana – hot, sustained bursts that blow from the desert to the ocean.

A motorist from the city of Tustin in Orange County was killed when an eucalyptus tree fell on his car in an apartment complex. The victim was 34 years old. No other details have been published.

Edison spokesman in southern California, David Song, said nearly 32,000 of its 5 million customers were experiencing power outages, but no disruption was ordered by the public service. Song said Edison was investigating the cause of the blackouts.

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Associated Press editors Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco and John Antczak in Los Angeles contributed to this report.