What to know about how California power outages reduce wildfire risk.
Hundreds of thousands of Californians are left in the dark after their electricity was turned off in an effort to reduce the risk of wildfires.The power was preemptively cut to a wide swath of Northern California Wednesday and Thursday as high winds, which contribute to blazes, moved into the Golden State.
Overnight, wind gusts climbed to over 70 mph in parts of Northern California, and the Merill Fire broke out, forcing evacuations. And because of very dry conditions, the Briceburg fire in Mariposa County quickly doubled in size, prompting evacuations. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a rare extreme fire danger for Los Angeles County and Ventura County for Thursday where wind gusts could reach 70 mph. Coupled with low humidity, that's a prime environment for a rapid fire spread.
"Once the weather subsides and it is safe to do so, PG&E crews will begin patrolling power lines, repairing damaged equipment and restoring customers," the company said."Outages could last longer than 48 hours." The shutdown also"shows that PG&E, the public utilities commission and regulators have not really worked to figure out strategies to mitigate the potential of wildfire driven by our electricity infrastructure," Pincetl said.
She also suggests gradually investigating in local sources of energy like wind, geo-thermal and solar.
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