Face of Nation : California Governor Gavin Newsom called a widespread electricity shutdown triggered by a power company to prevent wildfires “unacceptable,” saying on Thursday it resulted from years of mismanagement by the utility.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co (PG&E) has imposed unprecedented shutoffs that left more than 600,000 homes and workplaces without power on the second day of planned outages, as gale-force winds and dry weather posed a critical fire threat in northern California.
Some of the state’s most devastating wildfires were sparked in recent years by damage to electrical transmission lines from high winds, with flames then spreading through tinder-dry vegetation to populated areas.
Newsom, a Democrat, told a news conference he did not fault the utility for shutting off electricity as a safety measure, but he described the outage as too broad. “We’re seeing a scale and scope of something that no state in the 21st century should experience,” Newsom said. “What’s happened is unacceptable and it’s happened because of neglect.”
The remarks were the most pointed comments Newsom has directed at PG&E since the outages began early on Wednesday. Among the questions he raised was whether the utility is too large, with a service area covering more than 40 counties.
He also faulted PG&E for putting what he called “greed” ahead of investments in its infrastructure to protect the electrical grid from dangerous winds. PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January 2019, citing potential civil liabilities in excess of $30 billion from major wildfires linked to its transmission wires and other equipment.
PG&E Chief Executive Bill Johnson acknowledged that his company had left “millions of people” without a “fundamental service” they expect and deserve. Oakland supermarkets brought in refrigeration trucks to save food and Montclair businesses like Laurie Shepherd’s dental clinic were unable to tell patients when they would reopen.
“We don’t know what tomorrow will bring,” said Shepherd by phone, after she tore a tendon rushing to prepare for the outages. “We were just left up in the air.” Michael Wara of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment estimated the economic cost of the shutdown could reach $2.5 billion, with small businesses hit hardest as they typically lacked back-up generators.
In Santa Rosa, a California wine country town where entire subdivisions were destroyed by a deadly 2017 wildfire, restaurateurs Mark and Terri Stark said they had to close one of their six restaurants after it lost power.
“This is preventative medicine and medicine sometimes is not good to take,” said Mark Stark, 60, who lost one restaurant in the 2017 blaze. The fires in that region killed 46 people. “Those fires and what they caused are still very real for people in our ‘hood,” he said.
