California power blackouts start again to avoid sparking fires

The blackouts are back.

PG&E, California's largest utility, announced Wednesday it would intentionally cut power to 179,000 "customers" (likely over 400,000 people) across 17 counties to avoid the possibility of sparking wildfires as notoriously potent winds threaten electrical infrastructure. Just two weeks earlier, the utility cut power to some 2 million Californians to limit the potential of rapidly moving flames.

These safety shut-offs are a novel disaster strategy intended to limit catastrophic, climate-amplified fires during the state's windy fall season. That's a significant problem because these strong, dry winds show up each year, often multiple times each fall.

"We’re getting these shutoffs during run-of-the-mill events which are not rare," emphasized Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Hot and dry winds "are a pretty typical condition in the autumn in California," Swain, a native Californian, added. "We're realizing how disruptive these shutoffs are."

How disruptive? PG&E encourages impacted denizens to treat the shutoffs like a bonafide disaster. The utility suggests leaving one's powerless home and staying with a friend or relative, conferring with your doctor about medical needs, building an emergency supply kit, and practicing manually opening your garage door.

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"Power outages can, at best, be massively inconvenient for many people," said Swain

"I think this public policy is going to need a lot more tweaking," Leah Stokes, who researches public policy and climate change at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Mashable as she experienced PG&E's infamous blackout earlier in October. "This is not a viable strategy."

The power shutoffs certainly could be a viable alternative if they were rare events — perhaps on the order of every decade or 15 years — said Swain. But if they continue during extreme, but typical, wind events, they'll be quite common.

"The sole purpose of PSPS [Public Safety Power Shutoff] is to significantly reduce catastrophic wildfire risk to our customers and communities," PG&E said in a statement. The utility claimed during its earlier October blackouts it found "more than 100 instances of serious damage and hazard" on its transmission lines.

On Monday, PG&E announced that these most recent power shutoffs could potentially occur. Now, they could last for up to 48 hours. But the threat won't be over. As Michael Wara, a lawyer focused on climate and energy policy at Stanford Law School, noted on Twitter, "a much larger [fire weather] event" is forecast for the weekend.

For some people, that could mean nearly a week without power. "The politics of this could well become untenable very very fast. But then what happens?" Wara noted. "This is climate change people."

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While climate change alone isn't stoking California's flames, it's a significant contributor. It's relatively simple physics. Warming climes parch the land and increase the odds that a fire will spread. Since 1972, the amount of land burned in California has increased fivefold. Sparks from the use of a typical hammer recently started the largest wildfire in state history.

As temperatures relentless rise, the frequency of meeting thresholds for intentional power shutoffs would logically increase too, as there would be an increase in extreme fire conditions. "You could hit these thresholds for days or weeks on end," said Swain. "This is not a sustainable long-term solution."

Today's blackouts are the meeting of aging, neglected electrical infrastructure, climate change, and people moving into fire-prone areas. The almost fictional result? Californians can add "intentional autumn blackouts" to their burden of violent earthquakes and extreme wildfires.

"It’s kind of a mess right now," said Swain.