Month: December 2017

Credit: Mercury News With strong winds blowing and bone-dry conditions, utility officials in San Diego on Thursday began shutting off the power to thousands of people — a pre-emptive move to reduce the danger of power lines sparking wildfires.It’s a controversial approach that may soon become a growing trend across California. As huge fires continued to envelope parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, San Diego Gas & Electric cut electricity to 12,000 customers in San Diego County by Thursday afternoon, after Santa Ana winds reached 88 mph in some rural areas. Even though no fires were burning in San Diego County on Thursday morning, the utility notified up to 170,000 customers that they could have their power shut off by Saturday as a safety precaution, and that electricity in some affected communities wouldn’t…

Southern California Edison Addresses Massive Power Outage From Thomas Fire By: Alys Martinez Posted: Dec 05, 2017 10:49 PM PST Thousands of people are still without power, one day after the Thomas Fire broke out in Ventura County. On Monday night, at the height of the outage, more than 200,000 people were in the dark. Power to most has been restored, but thousands are still without. "This isn't your local neighborhood power outage, that's not the problem. The highway, so to speak, for electric power is affected," said Southern California Edison public information officer David Song. There is essentially only one way in and one way out, according to Song. "The power delivery being affected right now is really kind of the freeways and highways of our system delivering volt power on a regional scale," he said.