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Strong, dry winds across large areas of Northern and Central California may prompt PG&E to turn off power across 30 counties Wednesday and Thursday.
Customers in seven of the Bay Area’s nine counties could be affected, including those in Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Sonoma counties, according to PG&E. Exact locations have not been identified.
Starting Wednesday morning and persisting through Thursday afternoon, the dry and windy weather is expected to hit the northern end of PG&E’s service area then spread into Central California and the Bay Area.
The National Weather Service has called a Fire Weather Watch to go from Tuesday night through Thursday, including parts of the North and East Bay as well as the Santa Cruz Mountains. Forecasters say it’s likely to be the strongest offshore wind event of the 2019 fire season.
PG&E is asking customers to get ready by updating their contact information so they can be notified when electrical service powers down and gets restored, and to plan ahead for any medical needs that require refrigeration or devices that need electricity to run.
Anyone using a backup generator to get through the shutoff is advised to be aware that generators pose unusual hazards not typically associated with grid power. People should make sure to vent the generator’s exhaust outside to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning, and avoid running portable generators in the garage.
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I can’t believe PG&E has such crappy equipment that they have to shut off power because it is windy. I lived in Texas for many years, we had hurricanes and tornadoes. Never once was the power shut off in anticipation of it being windy. PG&E management ought to be thrown out (without all of the bonuses) and replaced with people that know how to run a power company.
This is the consequence of PG&E getting sued for the previous fires.
PG&E met the wind standards that the government set for their towers. However, the standard turned out to be too low.
The Government refused to clear underbrush fuel from its forests so when PG&E equipment sparked from the high winds, all of this stuff caught on fire and caused what should have been a relatively small fire to become the horrible disaster.
If I were PG&E I would do the same thing that they are. Anytime there are gusts over 50MPH, shut things down. Maybe the voters will realize the true cause of this major inconvenience and elect better people who will in turn get hold of the bureaucrats responsible for all of this. Then again, this is California, so maybe not!
To argue that PG&E is blameless is fantasy.
PG&E is a mess, and is ripe for being taken over in bankruptcy or even dismantled completely.
Could the government do more in preventing fires by setting better standards? Totally. I’m just floored to hear antigovernment people arguing for more regulation.
Onto the more important point. This announcement of PG&E was nuts. 40k people being affected but the alerts went out to a few million people. That’s nonsense. Why scare or worry so many people needlessly?
“Totally. I’m just floored to hear antigovernment people arguing for more regulation. ”
Conservatives have been talking about harvesting forests due to overgrowth since I can remember. It’s been the left that has wanted to keep things “as nature intended” and this is just one of the unintended consequences of giving them what they asked.
Sure, dismantle our power supply…good suggestion. <— sarcasm.
Dan
Dan, why on earth would you think dismantling PG&E the inept company means dismantling the state’s power supply grid? That’s like saying that closing Chevron means sending all of the planet’s fossil fuel supplies to outer space.
(And we did break up Standard Oil, which is Chevron, as you may recall. Yet we still have gas. It’s a bit pricey this week but a ton cheaper than had the monopoly still existed.)
But agreed on brush clearing. It’s not logging–the problem is mostly low lying brush and scrub–but for decades forest managers had made the mistake of not clearing brush in a misguided attempt to not interfere with nature. They learned the error a couple of decades ago and now they do actively burn or clear. However, since PG&E wasn’t clearing their private land as often as they should have, I have no problems with the state doing that work. Just send them the bill.
Grumpy,
Oh I don’t know, perhaps your using the word “dismantle” was not succinct enough for me?
Dan
I’m referring to bankruptcy, and the difference between debtor-in-possession and having the court take over and divide up the assets or break the corporation up.
Bankruptcy is established by the federal Constitution. It has nothing to do with condemnation. It’s not a taking. It’s a winding up. The state is a creditor and might have other rights to step in.
James, I see you have a unique theory as to why PG&E is failing, but even so, they are in trouble and liquidation may make more sense.
Dismantle pg&e, fine, they have fault in some of these disasters. But dismantle the ca gov that continues to collect funds through rate payers to rebuild for the governments contributing incompetence as well.
Would love to see SF run a power and distribution company, maybe they can collect methane from all the poop on the streets
SF runs their own water company, and quite successfully. They own a lot of land in the Tri-valley area because of that.
I get it that you guys hate the Democrats and the state government. I just don’t know why you need to drag that into every single discussion. You hate the Democrats the way they hate Trump, and yet it would be the height of nonsense for them to accuse Trump of having had a major role to play in this–even though he has tried to get involved in brush clearing conversations. That’s why no one has.
The fact is that PG&E failed repeatedly, and by filing for bankruptcy they voluntarily admitted it and put the power in the hands of the federal bankruptcy court as a way to avoid having the whole thing come crashing down because of their errors. It’s totally straightforward. No need to find other reasons for it.
PG&E is a “mess” and they should be “dismantled”? And who should take over…the State of California? Because we all know that this state is not a mess right…PG&E is only doing what they have to because of the way the state applies the Inverse Condemnation law. So, get used to it and if you want to lay blame then it should b aimed at Sacramento and one party rule.