Power cut to some Southern California customers, due to high wind and fire dangers
Southern California Edison began widespread power cuts to customers Wednesday following a National Weather Service "Particularly Dangerous Situation Red Flag Warning," due to strong Santa Ana winds. Cutoffs continued Thursday, with more than 69,000 customers without power in the Southern California region.
The utility company had already shut power by 7 a.m. Wednesday to 13,800 customers in the four counties of Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura. Numbers grew as wind gusts accelerated and continued through the day and into the night. By Thursday morning, in the area where the Mountain Fire rages in Ventura County, about 23,000 customers were without power.
Public Safety Power Shutoffs in Los Angeles County increased from 15,101 customers on Wednesday to about 16,000 Thursday. These areas included Malibu, Agora Hills, through the Castaic junction, Acton, along Angeles Crest Highway and through the Southern Palmdale area.
About 25,000 customers between the Riverside and San Bernardino counties and about 4,000 customers in Orange County's Majestic and Silverado canyons area and parts of Lake Elsinore are without power Thursday morning.
Potentially, 256,000 customers are in the power shut off consideration zones, all dependent on wind gusts.
On Wednesday, two public schools in San Bernardino were without power, Paakuma' K-8 School, and Kimbark Elementary School. Both schools sent out social media messages, that they will remain open through the power cuts.
"Our teams will be working this morning to get our office phones and internet restored via a generator. Classrooms and restrooms all have skylights for natural light, and temperatures during the day are mild enough to avoid heat issues."
The San Bernardino Unified School District said Kimbark Elementary will also remain open "Kimbark ES. Operations & Support departments will be working to support the school throughout the outage."
SCE said earlier that more than 55,000 customers could have their power shut off while planned outages were already scheduled for 1,113 customers by 10 p.m. Tuesday, By that time, 2,230 customers had already had their power shut off.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power also announced the possibility of outages, saying that planned shutoffs could be carried out and there could also be accidental cuts to electricity with strong winds taking down power lines.
The worst of the wind was Wednesday morning, but the fire danger and elevated winds stick around until Thursday afternoon. In Ventura County's Mountain Fire area, wind gusts in Moorpark reached 37 mph, and 35 mph in Simi Valley around 7 a.m. Thursday. They are expected to remain steady until about 10 a.m. until dying down through the afternoon.
According to the National Weather Service, gusty northeasterly winds and critical fire weather conditions will
persist through at least Thursday afternoon.
A high wind warning remains in place, as gusts to 60 mph will be possible, especially in through and below passes and canyons of the mountains and foothills in the common Santa Ana wind corridors such as eastern Ventura and western Los Angeles Counties.