CALIFORNIA, USA — Fire weather conditions could leave thousands of PG&E customers without power during a scorching heat wave.
By cutting power to certain areas, PG&E hopes to avoid a catastrophic wildfire.
"We're also seeing low humidity, high winds, dry fuel on the ground, Red Flag Warnings in certain parts, all those conditions come together in the Sacramento Valley area to lead PG&E to call for what we call Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS)," said Megan McFarland, spokesperson with PG&E.
The bulk of potential power shutoffs are in Shasta and Tehama counties, but parts of Yolo, Solano, Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Lake, Napa and Sonoma counties could have impacts as well. In total, that's about 12,400 customers.
"We know how frustrating it is for customers to be without power. A PSPS is something that we do as a last resort, and it's to prevent a wildfire from starting when those conditions are very, very ripe for a wildfire," McFarland said.
If power shutoffs happen, there'll be six community resource centers in some of the impacted counties. These are places people can get their phone charged, get air conditioning, get water, ice or even just get away from the heat. A map of those resource centers can be found HERE.
In the event PG&E calls for power shutoffs, McFarland said the outages would start in waves around 2 a.m. and carry on into the early hours of the morning.
Power would be restored after the event when PG&E wraps up their inspections, patrols and repairs.
July 2 would be the first power shutoff of 2024.
"This is the only one that we have scheduled. PSPs events are things that happen in the very short term. So we never know what next week or next month holds. It all depends on the conditions in the near term," said McFarland.
While some areas could have power turned off due to the PSPS, there could also be separate heat-related outages as well.
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