By Zusha Elinson, Ian Lovett, Alejandro Lazo and Jim Carlton | Photographs by Rachel Bujalski for The Wall Street Journal
EUREKA, Calif. -- Melanie Bettenhausen was learning to live with
the devastating wildfires that periodically sweep through Northern
California, but she isn't sure she can endure the alternative
offered by PG&E Corp.: mass blackouts.
Last year, a fire caused by a PG&E transmission line swept
through Paradise, Calif., destroying her childhood home. Though she
had already moved away and was running the North Coast Co-Op here
in this coastal town, her aunt was forced to flee the old family
house.
On Wednesday, Ms. Bettenhausen's life was disrupted again when
PG&E cut the power to a vast swath of the state stretching from
south of San Francisco almost to the Oregon border, explaining that
high winds and dry brush made it too dangerous to run electricity
through the company's lines. Ms. Bettenhausen, 44 years old, worked
34 hours straight to keep the store open, using generators to run
the registers and dry ice to cool the food.
When she arrived Thursday morning, the walk-in refrigerator was
full of spoiled dairy products. All of it -- tens of thousands of
dollars worth of food -- would have to be thrown away. "I don't
even know yet if we're going to make it through this one," she
said. "Anyone looking at providing for their family and maintaining
a living in this area has to be making plans."
California residents have come face-to-face with an
uncomfortable new reality: Large swaths of the state -- by itself
the fifth-largest economy in the world, and home to the globe's
most technologically advanced companies -- may be subject to the
sort of abrupt blackouts normally associated with underdeveloped
countries.
The state's three big investor-owned utilities now have
regulatory permission to cut off power to parts of their service
territories during strong winds to reduce the risk of their
electric lines causing wildfires, after at least 21 blazes linked
to utility equipment killed more than 100 people and burned tens of
thousands of homes in recent years.
PG&E, the troubled utility that provides gas and electricity
to more than 16 million people across 70,000 square miles of
northern and central California, is a lightning rod for public
anger. The company trails its peers in technology to track winds
and isolate the areas where equipment is at highest risk of
sparking fires. It is also running far behind on several of its
most important safety efforts, records show, including this year's
tree-trimming campaign, which is less than 50% complete.
"We are seeing the scale and scope of something that no state in
the 21st century should experience," Gov. Gavin Newsom said
speaking Thursday in Mather, Calif. "What's happened is
unacceptable, and it has happened because of neglect."
At a press conference Thursday, PG&E Chief Executive Bill
Johnson said, "I do apologize for the hardship this has caused, but
I think we made the right call on safety." Mr. Johnson, who was
named CEO in April, also apologized for the frustration customers
faced as they tried to find out whether they would lose power on a
website that kept crashing and maps that were inconsistent. "We
were not adequately prepared," he said.
The company sought chapter 11 protection in January, citing more
than $30 billion in potential liability costs tied to wildfires. If
it is found liable for another major fire during bankruptcy, it
would further threaten its efforts to put together a viable
restructuring plan, already complicated as it seeks to pay fire
victims, insurance companies and others. Its shares plunged 27%
when a bankruptcy judge last week opened the door for bondholders
to present a competing plan to restructure the company.
Amid the financial turmoil, PG&E became the only U.S.
utility ever to have initiated a weather-related shut-off of such
size and duration, affecting nearly 750,000 homes and businesses
across 34 counties. By Sunday, PG&E said it had restored power
to all customers hit by the blackouts.
There were 1,370 public schools serving 483,000 students in
areas that lost power. More than 400 of them with 135,000 students
closed their doors, sending children home to their parents with
little warning, according to the Governor's Office of Emergency
Services
Emergency rooms, agencies that provide drinking water and police
departments were forced to use backup power supplies like
generators to stay open. The power outage affected 248 hospitals
and 304 police and fire agencies, the office said. The sick and
infirm living at home, who rely on medical equipment powered by
electricity, weren't spared. Thirty thousand customers with
potentially serious medical issues lost power, according to
PG&E.
The economic costs are likely to be muted, at least for now. The
first two days of the shut-off for PG&E's residential and
commercial customers could cost the state economy between $65
million and $2.5 billion, said Michael Wara, head of the climate-
and energy-policy program at Stanford University's Woods
Institute.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, said a hit of
even several hundred million dollars "doesn't register in a $3
trillion-a-year economy like California's." He added that if the
blackouts continue on for much longer the economic toll will mount,
particularly if businesses feel this will be an endemic
problem.
PG&E officials won't say how often or how long Californians
could face the prospect of blackouts like this one. "I have been
asked this question: Is this the new normal for us and our
customers, for all California utilities and their customers, and
actually for the entire
West?" said Mr. Johnson. "Our goal over time is to reduce wildfire risk further across the system to shut off power less frequently and to further minimize the impact of shut-offs."
Even before the blackouts, PG&E was one of the most reviled
institutions in Northern California. The utility's aging gas
pipelines were blamed for the 2010 explosion that destroyed a San
Bruno neighborhood, killing eight and injuring 58. It was a
PG&E power line that sparked the deadliest wildfire in
California history: the 2018 Camp Fire that killed 85 people and
destroyed the town of Paradise. On the ground, the anger was
palpable during the outage, with PG&E officials reporting that
front-line employees were shot at, punched and cursed out.
For some, trust in PG&E is so low that they don't believe
the utility's explanations for the blackouts. "We had 200,000
residents that were affected, schools closed, businesses closed,
traffic accidents in Santa Rosa all over the place," said Sonoma
County Supervisor Shirlee Zane "It's really been overkill -- it
feels like to a lot of us there are ulterior motives, like avoiding
further liabilities."
Some Californians whose power was cut complained that the winds
that drive wildfires weren't actually that high near their homes.
But PG&E's blackouts were in part driven by forecasts that
didn't always prove true. In addition, the utility doesn't
currently have the ability to pinpoint where it cuts off power
precisely to fire-prone neighborhoods.
Other areas that lost power were hit by high winds and
wildfires, such as the Bay Area town of Moraga. Homes were
evacuated as firefighters battled a 40-acre blaze, which was
contained, and there were no reported deaths or serious
injuries.
In Los Angeles, the Saddleridge Fire that started Thursday
scorched 8,000 acres and officials issued evacuation orders for
about 23,000 homes in an area with roughly 100,000 residents.
Southern California Edison shut off power to 24,113 customers. By
Sunday the utility had restored power to all but 54 customers, a
spokeswoman said.
During the blackouts, Californians waited in long lines for
essentials like gasoline, batteries and ice, and huddled at
emergency centers to charge their electronics. The predicament was
met with a mixture of outrage and disbelief.
"I'm embarrassed to be a Californian," Brad Anderson, 69,
complained to no one in particular as he waited in line to buy ice
at Coastside Market in Moss Beach, Calif., one of the few grocery
stores that was open on Thursday afternoon along the coast south of
San Francisco.
In Morgan Hill, a small city south of San Jose, police said they
were enforcing a nighttime curfew to prevent criminals from taking
advantage of the power outage. Barry Rodenberg, a Morgan Hill
resident, said he was shocked that PG&E's had plunged the heart
of California innovation into darkness.
"We are in Silicon Valley, we are inventing things all the
time," said Mr. Rodenberg, who is retiring this coming week from
the retail automotive business. "There are probably a thousand
patents a day being made. And they can't figure out a better grid
system? I'm just saying it's ridiculous, people are really irate
over this."
In Santa Rosa Thursday morning, Charles Phillips sat bleary-eyed
in a 49ers baseball cap charging both his cellphone and a backup
battery pack along a row of charging portals underneath a tent at a
PG&E relief center. Boxes of bottled water were piled up in a
corner. Outside, portable bathrooms had been placed in the parking
lot.
"Walking around the dark kind of sucks, cooking outside all the
time kind of sucks," said Mr. Phillips, whose home barely survived
the Wine Country fires two years ago.
To the west of Santa Rosa, out on the coast, power was still off
in the seaside hamlet of Stinson Beach late Friday morning, marking
a third straight day of electrical outage. Steve Kruszynski, 61,
said he faced the unpleasant task of using a bucket to haul sewage
from his home tank to a nearby larger septic tank because his pump
wasn't working. But he took the blackout in stride.
"I sort of like the quiet," said Mr. Kruszynski, a marriage and
family therapist who shares the home with his 11-year-old daughter,
who had missed school for most of the week.
Others tried to make the blackout an adventure. Pete Vahle and
his wife, Kilty Belt-Vahle from San Francisco had arranged with
three other couples to stay at a rented vacation home in Stinson
Beach. When they discovered it would be without power, they called
it "glamping" and stocked up on camping supplies.
"The last purchase was bourbon, candles and water," Ms.
Belt-Vahle, a teacher's aide, said with a laugh.
But not everyone had such a lighthearted attitude. For Jessica
Ramirez, a 33-year-old cosmetologist in Lakeport, Calif., the power
outage was the last straw.
"We're going to Washington," said Ms. Ramirez. "You know, we had
nothing but fires. And now we have no power. So I was like, I'm
out."
Ms. Ramirez and her wife, a nurse, both lost out on work. It
cost them "a lot," she said. "At least a few hundred dollars in the
couple of days. With two kids at home, that's a big deal."
Unable to work, they stayed home with their two-year-old and
nine-month-old. "All the neighbors kind of got together and
barbecued together, so we made a good time out of it," said Ms.
Ramirez.
Small-business owners were particularly irked. Bay Area
restaurateurs Lori and Harry Boukis lost power at their Greek
restaurant Kouzina in Oakland, their hofbrau Europa in Orinda, and
their home in Pinole. On Friday, they were tallying up the losses
from the spoiled meat and produce at the restaurants. Ms. Boukis
estimated that the outage set them back more than $10,000 from lost
revenue and inventory.
"I would consider leaving the state if this keeps going on,"
said Ms. Boukis, a resident of 30 years. "I love California, I love
it here, but there are so many things happening here in the last
couple of years that it makes it hard to live the American
dream."
--Erin Ailworth, Jon Hilsenrath and
Katherine Blunt
contributed to this article.
Write to Zusha Elinson at zusha.elinson@wsj.com, Ian Lovett at
Ian.Lovett@wsj.com, Alejandro Lazo at alejandro.lazo@wsj.com and
Jim Carlton at jim.carlton@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 13, 2019 20:27 ET (00:27 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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