Orange Skies Blanket California as Blackouts and Wildfires Continue | Your World Daily

(Sept. 9) Californians, many without power, awoke to a dark orange sky and ash-coated cars as dozens of major fires stoked by a record heatwave and the final gusts of a powerful windstorm blanketed the disaster-weary state in dense smoke.

The winds had faded enough that PG&E Corp., which switched off electricity to half a million people to prevent more fires during the storm, began inspecting lines for damage. By late morning it had restored power to more than 30,000 homes and businesses.

But the smoke, thick enough to blot out the sun, is complicating an already daunting task, with 10,750 miles (17,300 kilometers) of electrical lines the utility must check.

At the southern end of the state, utilities owned by Edison International and Sempra Energy have cut power to about 250 customers and are still weighing whether to switch off power to another 100,000 people, as high winds continue to howl through the mountains near Los Angeles and San Diego.

The shutoffs are the latest blow for California, where climate change is making weather ever more extreme. Temperatures have soared to records from Napa to Los Angeles, forcing the state’s power grid to the brink. Wildfires have torched more than 2.5 million acres this year, the most on record.

California’s utilities have resorted to shutting down power lines in advance of high winds to prevent sparks from igniting fires. And the practice is now spreading to other states, with Portland General Electric Co. blacking out 5,000 homes and businesses Monday as the same wind storm raking California battered neighboring Oregon as well.

But even that drastic step couldn’t prevent fires altogether. In California, gusts topping 60 miles per hour fanned fresh life into some blazes that began during a freak lightning storm last month -- while sparking new ones. Wind-drive blazes erupted across Oregon as well, with officials saying at least one may have been started by downed power lines.

Against that grim backdrop, PG&E’s announcement early Wednesday that it would begin line inspections brought some measure of relief. California’s largest utility starting late Monday cut power to 172,000 customer accounts -- or about 516,000 people, given the size of a typical household -- in portions of the Sierra Nevada foothills and the San Francisco Bay Area as the winds approached. The vast majority of them will have power restored by the end of the day Wednesday, PG&E said.

In August, California carried out its first rotating blackouts since the 2001 energy crisis to cope surging demand for electricity as extreme temperatures kicked air conditioners into overdrive. The Trump administration on Sept. 6 declared a power emergency, allowing generating plants to run at full bore, regardless of environmental limits.

California Awakens To Smoky Skies From Raging Fires

Smoke fills the air in Oakland on Sept. 9.Photographer: Sam Hall/Bloomberg

The shutoffs are a fairly new and controversial practice to prevent wildfires, and their use by PG&E last year triggered investigations, even as utilities defended them as necessary in the face of increasingly wild weather.

The company emerged from Chapter 11 in July after agreeing to pay $25.5 billion to settle wildfire lawsuits over fires sparked by its equipment, and PG&E has taken steps to limit the size and duration of outages, including putting wires underground in some locations.

The state’s two other major utilities are still making plans to cut power if necessary Wednesday. Southern California Edison Co. said it may shut off electricity to more than 17,000 customers, but just 250 were cut off as of 11:30 a.m. local time. San Diego Gas & Electric Co. is considering doing so for more than 16,700 customers, with none currently disconnected.

September and October typically mark the peak of California’s fire season, when plants have been sapped of moisture by the state’s dry summer. Rains most often return in October or November.

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