PG&E to Cut Power in Sierra Foothills to Prevent Fires

(Bloomberg) -- PG&E Corp. will plunge thousands into darkness in Northern California after blacking out hundreds in wine country as high winds threatened to knock down its power lines and spark wildfires.

PG&E will turn off power to approximately 26,900 customers in the Sierra Foothills, the San Francisco-based company said in a statement on Saturday. It has also started safety inspections for 1,600 customers in the North Bay whose power was cut off early Saturday morning. The utility warned thousands of residents and businesses on Friday that they might be blacked out over the weekend as the National Weather Service warned of a heightened fire risk.

The blackout is the first to hit Northern California during this year’s wildfire season. PG&E has been preparing to take its most extreme measures yet to avoid a repeat of the catastrophic wildfires that have ravaged the state for two consecutive years. In November, its equipment ignited the Camp Fire that killed 85 people and destroyed the entire town of Paradise. Liabilities from that blaze and previous ones forced PG&E to file for bankruptcy in January.

An earlier series of wildfires devastated parts of wine country in October 2017, burning down thousands of homes and killing 44 people.

Last week, California regulators signed off on a plan by the utility to cut off power to potentially millions of homes and businesses when winds are strong and could knock down power lines. In approving the measure, regulators said blackouts should only be used as a last resort.

Dry winds were forecast to sweep through the Sacramento Valley on Saturday, leaving cities including Napa and Fairfield facing critical fire conditions, according to the U.S. Storm Prediction Center. A broader area, stretching nearly to the coast north of San Francisco, had a lesser warning in effect through Sunday.

Just hours before PG&E’s decision to shut off power, a California commission decided Friday that the state should change the legal doctrine that pushed PG&E into bankruptcy. The policy known as inverse condemnation holds utilities strictly liable for the costs of wildfires that their equipment ignites, regardless of whether they were negligent.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders, however, have signaled that they already have a plan to help utilities deal this year with increasingly catastrophic fires -- and it doesn’t involve changing the doctrine. They said they’ll instead introduce legislation to establish a so-called bridge fund that power companies could tap to cover fire damages while making it easier for them to recover costs from customers if they acted responsibly.

--With assistance from Brian K. Sullivan and Chiara Vasarri.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Chediak in San Francisco at mchediak@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Doan at ldoan6@bloomberg.net, David Baker

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