Large sections of Northern and Central California were left without power Wednesday as a precaution against sparking wildfires. Pacific Gas and Electric announced early Wednesday morning that power will be cut for approximately 500,000 of its 800,000 customers.

In recent years, power lines owned by PG&E were blamed for several large wildfires, and the combination of high winds and dry conditions forecasted for Wednesday and Thursday are the perfect ingredients for potentially catastrophic wildfires, thus making the move necessary.

During the outages, which are expected to last as long as five days, the company will inspect all of the power lines it turned off and fix any damage it finds. According to PG&E, that process can not begin until the weather calms.


Some residents within the affected area were not happy with the decision to cut power. Dana Dickey, a resident of Shasta County who had her power shut off for three days, braced herself for a new outage Wednesday but was not convinced it was completely necessary. 

“I’m not happy with PG&E for their high costs, lack of transparency and seemingly putting their shareholders over their customers,” Dickey said to the San Francisco Chronicle. “I don’t think they are handling things well and need to have a better public plan for the future.”

The outages are expected to begin in the northernmost counties and work south through Central California in waves. One county, Santa Clara, previously announced it would declare a State of Emergency related to the anticipated power shutoffs.

Alameda, Contra Costa and Santa Clara Counties are expected to be struck with outages Wednesday afternoon starting roughly at 1 p.m. and into the evening, with traffic lights in some areas expected to go dark right at rush hour.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the blackouts could last up to five days for some customers while the company does its maintenance checks before restoring power.

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