< The Latest 2025-01-19T19:35:10+0000
The Pasadena Star-News | Sat 01/18 11:59am PST | Jonathan Horwitz
Tens of thousands of customers across Southern California should prepare to lose power Monday or Tuesday as Southern California Edison plans to make preemptive cutoffs as “extreme” fire weather returns.
More than 10,000 Southern California Edison customers remained without power Saturday morning, Jan. 18 as the utility scrambled to fix equipment damaged by the recent high winds.
Although the utility has no ongoing public safety outages on Saturday, SCE is considering shutoffs early next week to communities across Southern California that — if enacted — could affect about 53,000 customers in San Bernardino County, 54,000 customers in Riverside County, 36,000 customers in Los Angeles County and 5,000 customers in Orange County.
“We have notified customers that may be under consideration for a public safety power shutoff for a period of time Monday or Tuesday depending on how the wind develops,” said SCE spokesperson Gabriela Ornelas.
Santa Ana winds and “extreme” fire conditions are forecast for those days and beyond in fire-torn Los Angeles County and across Southern California, meteorologists say.
“A strong and dry Santa Ana event with extreme fire weather conditions is increasingly likely,” the National Weather Service said in a statement on Saturday, Jan. 18. “This event may be considerably stronger for many areas than the event that we experienced this past Monday through Wednesday.”
SCE customers can search by address to check if a scheduled public safety outage could affect them: https://www.sce.com/outage-center/outage-information/psps
Also, San Diego Gas & Electric, which serves parts of southern Orange County and San Diego County, said more than 83,000 customers could be affected by public safety power outages. One of the communities at risk for a preemptive power outage was east of San Juan Capistrano along Highway 74 (Ortega Highway), according to the SDG&E website.