CALIFORNIA: Wildfire Blackouts To Affect Two Million

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Massive blackouts affecting more than 2 million people are expected this weekend throughout the Bay Area, Northern California and Central California, the third time this month that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will have turned off power to avert catastrophic wildfires.

PG&E said about 850,000 homes and businesses in its service territory might start losing power Saturday evening as it scrambles to prevent powerful winds — the strongest in years — from damaging its lines and thereby sparking more fires.

PG&E issued a “watch” notice — meaning that shut-offs are highly likely — on territory across 36 counties, including most of the Bay Area, for Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The shut-offs will affect more Bay Area residents than either the outage this week that’s just ending or the mid-October outage.