- About 180,000 California homes and businesses were notified on Tuesday they may lose power in the latest precautionary outage contemplated by utility giant PG&E to reduce wildfire risks posed by extremely dry, windy weather in the forecast.
A precautionary outage initiated on Oct. 23 hit an estimated 179,000 customers, while another conducted in phases from Oct. 26 through Nov. 1 struck a record 941,000 residences and workplaces, according to PG&E. PG&E, the state’s largest investor-owned utility, filed for bankruptcy in January citing $30 billion in civil liability from several major fires sparked by its equipment in 2017 and 2018, including last year’s Camp fire, which killed 85 people in and around the northern California town of Paradise. That fire ranks as the state’s deadliest on record.