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California power firm threatens to cut off 130,000 households amid wildfire threat

Eight counties have been issued warnings

Matt Mathers
Thursday 24 December 2020 18:17 GMT
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(Getty Images/iStockphoto)

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A California power firm has threatened to cut off 150,000 households on Christmas Eve as strong winds whip up, threatening to spark more wildfires in the state.

Southern California Edison (SCE) said it is considering pulling the plug on power supplies to homes and businesses in eight counties.

Kern, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Tulare and Ventura counties are those areas affected.

SCE said on its website 155,368 customers are at risk of a black-out on Thursday, representing 3 per cent of its 5 million customers in those counties.

Some 17,702 customers are already without power due to fire safety concerns, SCE added.

Red flag warnings of high fire danger went into effect across vast swathes of southern California on Wednesday as gusty, dry Santa Ana winds developed.

San Diego Gas & Electric notified 31,000 customers they could be shut off, although only a few hundred actually had lost power.

The Santa Anas were expected to be moderate to locally strong and persist into Thursday morning, the National Weather Service said.

The offshore flow brings extremely low relative humidity, making vegetation already dried out by the summer months even more ready to burn. The gusts can rapidly spread any fires that do start.

The San Francisco Bay Area also had offshore flow early Wednesday, with a gust up to 65 mph (104.6 kph) at Mount Diablo, but relative humidity levels remained high enough that there were no critical fire weather concerns.

Southern California will have a mild Christmas Day before a chance of rain reaches a limited area late Friday and Saturday. Widespread rain is expected late Sunday and Monday.

Two Pacific storms are expected to bring rain and mountain snow to northern California during the holiday weekend.

Elsewhere, a wildfire on the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base in northern San Diego County triggered evacuation orders early on Thursday.

Evacuation orders were issued for about 7,000 residents on the west side of the community of Fallbrook and for some Camp Pendleton locations, the base and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.

The fire was estimated at 4.7 square miles (12.2 square kilometres) around dawn, the Marine Corps said.

Additional reporting by Associated Press.

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