More than a million Golden State residents may have to deal with their power being cut on Wednesday in order to help mitigate the chance of wildfire, according to public utility officials in Northern and Southern California.
The majority of the outages are planned in Northern and Central California, but Southern California Edison says on its website that almost 174,000 customers in counties including Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange, San Bernardino and Ventura could all be under the umbrella of a planned outage on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Pacific Gas and Electric has shut off power to more than half a million customers in Northern California in the biggest planned shut off in the state's history. The utility said Wednesday it will gradually turn off electricity to nearly 800,000 customers to prevent its equipment from starting wildfires during hot, windy weather. It says a second group of about 234,000 customers will lose power starting at noon. The utility says it's considering turning off power to another 42,000 customers in areas it serves near Southern California. It says it will determine a time and the specific locations later Wednesday.
Today on AirTalk, we’ll get the lay of the land from guests in Northern and Southern California to talk about the areas where customers might expect planned outages and how to prepare for a planned outage that could go on for a while.
With files from the Associated Press
If you’re a Southern California Edison customer, click here to see a list of areas that could be impacted by planned outages and to sign up for alerts that will inform you if your power might be shut off.
Guests:
Robert Laffoon-Villegas, spokesperson for Southern California Edison
Jeremy Siegel, weekend afternoon anchor and editor for KQED News who has been reporting on the planned outages by Pacific Gas & Electric in Northern California; he tweets