Northern California Wildfires: PG&E Will Shut Off Power For Nearly A Million As Fires Blaze

The Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) has announced that it will shut down power for 940,000 Northern California customers on Saturday in an effort to prevent further wildfires in the region. This will include approximately 90,000 customers from 36 counties that were not affected by the company’s previous shutdown protocols.

“This wind event is forecast to be the most serious weather situation that Northern and Central California has experienced in recent memory,” said Michael Lewis, PG&E’s senior vice president of Electric Operations.

The area where PG&E is shutting down power is expected to be hit with severely dry, hot, and windy weather between Saturday night and Monday, the National Weather Service reports. All of these conditions are conducive to sparking wildfires. PG&E has warned customers of rolling blackouts over the next 10 years as the company fortifies its infrastructure extreme increasingly extreme weather patterns, according to CNBC.

PG&E previously shut down power for nearly 2 million earlier this month for the same reason, to avoid sparking wildfires. The areas of Los Angeles County and Sonoma County have been under a state of emergency since Friday following wildfires that sparked earlier in the week.

In Sonoma, the Kincaide Fire began on Saturday and has so far destroyed 25,455 acres and forced the evacuation of 2,200 people.

In Los Angeles, the Tick Fire, which started on Thursday, has destroyed 4,300 acres of forest and nine homes, and forced the evacuation of 50,000.