California Is Burning

This story does not come from a satirical website-- see previous post. It’s from the New York Times. It reports on California’s current dilemma. Fires raging out of control. No electricity:

HEALDSBURG, Calif. — Popular downtown boutiques and farm-to-table restaurants were deserted in Healdsburg, Calif., by Saturday afternoon. Traffic ground to a halt in downtown Windsor, where lines for gas stations spilled into gridlocked roadways. The county fairgrounds in Santa Rosa once again morphed into a disaster base camp.

Even an evacuation center in Sonoma County had to be evacuated.

Two years after the devastating Tubbs fire killed 22 people in the region, officials were taking no chances with the menacing Kincade fire and the threat of high winds that could spread the flames overnight. County officials ordered the mandatory evacuations of nearly 90,000 people on Saturday, and Pacific Gas and Electric announced it would shut off power for almost a million customers in Northern California.

“The next 72 hours are going to be challenging,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a news conference on Saturday afternoon. “I could sugarcoat it but I’m not. We’re in an anticipatory stage that is rather anxiety inducing.”

State fire officials hoped that by preparing for the worst-case scenario, they could avoid major destruction from the Kincade fire, which has already consumed nearly 26,000 acres and was 10 percent contained as of 6:30 p.m. local time, according to Cal Fire, the state’s fire agency. The fire has so far destroyed 77 structures, including 31 homes, and damaged another 14 structures, the authorities said….

PG&E said it would begin cutting power to 940,000 homes and businesses — which could affect as many as 2.7 million people — on Saturday afternoon and that residents should plan to spend at least two days without electricity. Emergency responders warned residents of Marin County — which includes Sausalito, San Rafael, Tiburon and Novato — that power restoration could take up to five days.

The problem seems to have to do with the electric utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, a company that values diversity:

“PG&E is a failure at every level,” said State Senator Jerry Hill, a Bay Area Democrat who said the courts should take control of the company. “PG&E should no longer be allowed to do business in California.”

Mr. Hill, who is the chair of the State Senate’s energy subcommittee, said that roughly 2.5 million to 2.7 million people will lose power when accounting for families and others who share addresses.

At a news conference, Mr. Newsom said PG&E made improvements to some of its operations since a botched power shut-off two weeks ago, when the utility’s website crashed twice and information technology experts from the state were required to help fix the problems. But he said that the utility continued to fail in its communication, and that some customers did not receive notification of the weekend’s blackouts until four hours before they were about to lose power.

The governor also reiterated his frustration with PG&E’s decision to shut off power for hundreds of thousands of customers, rather than the more surgical approach taken by the state’s other two investor-owned utilities, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.