PG&E shutting off power to parts of Napa County, Northern California
NAPA, Calif. - Pacific Gas & Electric on Monday plans to shut off power in northwest Napa County as a preventative measure during the searing hot temperatures.
The Napa County Sheriff said the power shutoff will affect 143 customers north of Tubbs Road from 6 p.m. Monday to 7 a.m. Tuesday.
Napa County is under a heat advisory, with temperatures ranging in the mid-90s on Monday and in the low 100s on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service.
A community resource center will be open at 1307 Washington Street in Calistoga.
Tubbs Road was the site of the devastating Tubbs Fire in 2017; at the time, it was the most destructive wildfire in California history.
Alameda, Contra Costa, and Sonoma counties are under a power shutoff warning advisory over the next two days, PG&E said.
Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Humboldt, Shasta, Tehama and Trinity counties are also under a power shut-off warning.
As of Monday, power had also been shut off in parts of Northern California, including areas near Chico, Redding, the Mendocino National Forest and the Shasta National Forest, the PG&E map showed.
There are no power shutoff warnings for Wednesday through Sunday at this time.
A public safety power shutoff, or PSPS, is when PG&E preemptively de-energizes power lines as a precaution against weather conditions that might damage equipment and spark a fire.
Power lines have been blamed for roughly half of the most destructive wildfires in California history, according to California’s Public Utility Commission. The agency ruled in 2012 that utilities had the right to shut off electricity to protect public safety, and the most recent guidelines were adopted in June 2020.
That includes high winds that can blow down power lines, hurl branches or other debris into them or cause two lines to hit each other, causing sparks that could ignite tinder-dry grass.
A power shutoff can affect a relative handful of customers up to millions.
What’s believed to be the largest was in October 2019, when PG&E cut power to more than 2 million people from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Sierra Nevada.
The resulting chaos — phones and gas pumps, elevators, traffic lights and even water pumps stopped working — created furious criticism
The utility, however, said it has been working to make the blackouts smaller, shorter and more targeted, as well as providing technical changes allowing more people to keep their power on. It calls such outages a last resort.
PG&E usually gives two days' notice of a power shutoff.
To see if your home will have power, enter your address in PG&E's map.
A sign calling for PG&;E to turn the power back on is seen on the side of the road during a statewide blackout in Calistoga, California, on October, 10, 2019(Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)
The Associated Press contributed to this report.