California begins cutting power to more than 1 million people in face of wildfire risk

"It’s hard to overstate the impact of this massive rolling blackout," state Sen. Scott Wiener said in a statement. "This is a completely unacceptable state of affairs."

Thousands of Northern Californians lost power on Wednesday morning, as the embattled giant utility Pacific Gas & Electric began pulling the plug as a preventative measure against potential wildfires.

In the biggest planned power outage in state history, PG&E started turning off the power for lights, TV sets, computers, stoves and air conditioners in rolling blackouts planned for 30 counties with nearly 800,000 paying accounts, impacting more than a million people.

At least one state elected official slammed the rolling blackout as "unacceptable."

The outages are aimed at keeping power off live wires on this warm, windy day, ideal for the spread of wildfires.

Schools around the region were closed in anticipation of the lack of power, and some morning commuters were slowed by non-functioning traffic signals, forcing local police to direct drivers.

Severe backups around Napa county as traffic lights at major intersections are down. Here’s the hwy 29 & 12 intersection near the Napa airport pic.twitter.com/5reEBa965h

— Evan Sernoffsky (@EvanSernoffsky) October 9, 2019

PG&E set up resource centers around Northern California so customers could charge up devices, use a bathroom or grab a bottle of water.

And once power is curtailed, it could take several days for electricity to be restored as inspectors make sure lines are safe to be reactivated.

California state Sen. Scott Wiener called the blackouts "unacceptable" and estimated that 2.5 million people could ultimately impacted.

"It’s hard to overstate the impact of this massive rolling blackout, affecting 2.5 million people," Wiener said in a statement. "People rely on electricity for their medicine, their food and their livelihoods. This is a completely unacceptable state of affairs. We can’t let PG&E normalize these mass blackouts."

Kindergarten-through-12th-grade schools in the area were shut down Wednesday. The University of California, Berkeley, the state's flagship university with more than 42,000 undergraduate and graduate students, also called off classes.

The power shutdown comes after last year's Camp Fire that killed 85 people and destroyed thousands of structures. The utility has acknowledged that its equipment "probably" started what was the most deadly wildfire in California history.

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