Power could be out for days for hundreds of thousands, even far from L.A. wildfires
This week’s devastating Southern California wildfires and the winds fueling them have caused widespread and prolonged power outages and planned shutoffs that are upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of people across the region.
As the outages drag on, they are sparking anger and frustration from customers, including those who are many miles from the active fires or evacuation zones in Los Angeles County and have struggled to understand why their power was cut, and why it has not been restored.
More than 327,000 Southern California Edison customers were without power Thursday morning across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
This is the third time in as many months that strong Santa Ana winds have prompted Southern California Edison to cut power to its customers over fire risk.
While some of those outages resulted from wind-caused damage, such as falling trees and branches that will take time for crews to repair, about half the affected customers are under planned power shutoffs intended to reduce the risk of additional fires igniting during one of the most severe wind events in years.
Another 95,000 customers were without power in Los Angeles Department of Water and Power territory, where about 31% of outages have been from planned shutoffs because of winds or to support firefighting.
Ten people have died, more than 9,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed, and at least 130,000 residents are under evacuation orders. Experts say L.A. is not out of danger yet and that these fires have the potential to be the costliest wildfire disaster in American history.
With weather forecasters predicting increased fire danger through at least Friday, and more strong winds expected next week, communities affected by outages and shutoffs may have to go without electricity for days longer.
“There’s a good chance that many customers will be without power into and through the weekend,” Steve Powell, president and chief executive of Southern California Edison, said in an interview Thursday afternoon from the company’s emergency operations center in Irwindale.
“We are focused on getting as much power back on as quickly as we can, once it’s safe to do so,” Powell added.
Officials said Thursday that at least 10 people have died in the blazes. More than 9,000 homes, businesses and other buildings appeared to have been damaged or destroyed in the Palisades and Eaton fires.
The sweeping nature of the power shutoffs, in particular, has some customers seething and questioning Edison’s decisions as arbitrary and heavy-handed. Some have already gone a day or two without power. As they struggle to keep food from spoiling, use essential appliances or power their medical and communication devices, they are upset that the outages could drag on much longer.
Adding to the aggravation, some communities close to the fires also have been under boil-water notices, including areas near the Eaton fire in the Altadena area, the 90272 ZIP Code in Pacific Palisades and the area north of San Vicente Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Edison officials said this has been the largest wind event in the utility’s service area, in terms of both the weather and customer outages, in more than a decade and one of its biggest uses of preemptive power shutoffs, called public safety power shutoffs, since it began using them in 2018.
At the peak of the outages on Wednesday, more than 430,000 of its 5 million customers were without power across the region.
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Among them was Amanda Frye, 61, who lost power at her Redlands home early Wednesday. She and her family have tried to cope with living without heat, using matches to light their stove, cooking dinner by candlelight and stocking up on ice to try to keep perishables in their refrigerator from spoiling.
She has struggled to get answers from Southern California Edison about why her and her neighbors’ power was shut off after the gusty winds that swept through earlier in the week had already passed. She said that Southern California Edison redid the poles and wires in her area several years ago as part of wildfire prevention.
“I feel terrible for everyone that has been impacted and lost their homes,” Frye said, “but it is questionable how turning off our power miles and a county away is useful when there is no wind or threat,” she said.
“Something is wrong with Edison modeling and logic,” Frye added. “Why is Edison allowed to cut large areas of electricity when there is calm wind and not a threatening weather condition?”
Southern California Edison has described the planned outages as a “tool of last resort” based on a variety of factors, including weather forecasting, wind data and proximity to vegetation.
Powell, the Edison CEO, said he understands residents’ frustration but that the company’s actions are a necessary safeguard against additional fires and are as targeted as possible.
“It’s really hard to put our customers through these situations. At the same time, the risks that we’re trying to avoid are exactly the things that we’re seeing out there,” Powell said. “We want to avoid major fires that are going to tear through and create devastation in our communities.”
Those looking to assist residents affected by the Los Angeles County firestorm have a number of options to donate money, materials or their time.
Powell said the utility company can only be so precise in how it executes power shutoffs because it can only de-energize at the level of circuits. Its system includes more than 4,500 circuits, which can be miles long and often include hundreds of homes or businesses, only some of which are experiencing the dangerous winds or other conditions that need to be mitigated.
“We are in no way able to do it at the individual residence or block level at this point,” Powell said.
Powell said the company has installed more than 6,000 miles of insulated wire in high-fire areas since 2018, among other grid-hardening and vegetation-management projects designed to reduce wildfire risk and the need for planned shutoffs.
“If this same wind event happened five years ago,” he said, “it would have had a lot more ... shutoffs than we have today.”
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