The Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) cut power to nearly 2,000 households in northern California on Tuesday due to high heat and winds that raise the risk of downed power lines, which in turn lead to sparks that can ignite wildfires.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) declared a state of emergency Wednesday in Butte County in response to the Thompson fire, a wildfire that has burned over 3,000 acres and threatens to become deadlier if spread by continued high winds.
In a statement early Wednesday morning on the PG&E website, the utility company said:
On Tuesday evening, PG&E turned off power for safety for approximately 1,900 customers, as winds picked back up in the Sacramento Valley and foothills. Impacted customers previously had power turned off on Tuesday morning and then were briefly restored due a break in the weather.
Currently, there are approximately 2,200 PG&E customers without power systemwide due to the current PSPS.
Electricity cutoffs have become more common in California in recent years — sometimes because of a lack of power-generating capacity during heat waves, but more often as a precaution against wildfires.
Aging electricity transmission infrastructure can topple in high winds, causing power lines to break, and leaving live wires dangling into vegetation.
California has had two years of rainy winters, leaving the landscape less dry than it would otherwise have been, but also spurring the growth of grass and brush that can easily provide fuel for fires once they have been ignited.
PG&E admitted fault for the deadly Camp First in 2018 that destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people. A similar fire in Hawaii last year was also apparently caused by poor maintenance by the local electricity utility.
In both California and Hawaii, critics of “green” energy policies have argued that the state is forcing utilities to invest in renewable energy rather than in modernizing existing infrastructure, including by burying cables underground.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
