Preemptive power shutoffs that have gone on for days draw complaints from Inland Empire residents, politicians

Amid complaints that recent preemptive power shutoffs have left Inland Empire residents in the dark for days, San Bernardino County supervisors have published an open letter criticizing Southern California Edison’s handling of the outages.

“Some of these outages drag on for more than a week and people are understandably frustrated, particularly our mountain communities, who rely on electricity to stay warm during these cold winter months,” wrote Supervisors Dawn Rowe and Curt Hagman in the letter, published Wednesday in Mountain News.

The rationale behind public safety power shutoffs is to mitigate the threat of wildfire in areas where utility equipment could be at high risk of sparking a blaze, particularly when winds are fierce and conditions are dry. Edison has hundreds of weather stations and cameras, as well as a team of meteorologists and fire scientists who work with grid operators to determine whether local conditions warrant shutoffs, said spokesman Jeff Monford.

Those can be high-stakes decisions. For instance, multiple lawsuits allege Edison’s equipment ignited the deadly Eaton fire after the utility failed to de-energize overhead wires during a Jan. 7 wind event. Edison’s CEO has said that winds weren’t strong enough to merit de-energizing lines in the area. Still, the utility has said that its analysis showed its equipment didn’t start the fire, which killed 17 people and destroyed more than 9,400 homes and other structures.

Fire agencies are also investigating whether Edison’s equipment played a role in sparking the Jan. 7 Hurst fire, which burned nearly 800 acres near Sylmar, prompting evacuations.

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The supervisors wrote that while they understand the threats extreme weather can bring, many residents who live outside fire-prone areas have recently experienced lengthy outages and received little communication from the utility about when power would be restored.

“The lack of useful information by SCE has been alarming,” the letter reads. “SCE needs to have greater flexibility built into their circuits to minimize the number of customers who are impacted.”

Even when it’s not windy in a particular location, power may be shut off there because conditions warrant it somewhere else along the circuit, Monford said. The utility has been working on installing more insulated wire in state-designated high-risk areas to reduce the need for shutoffs, as well as adding more switches so it can more precisely target shutoffs to smaller areas, he said.

Edison gives residents 48 hours’ notice of shutoffs, but it’s not typically able to tell them when power will be restored because that’s based on weather conditions that can change quickly, Monford said. De-energized lines must also be thoroughly inspected before they’re turned back on, he added.

Though the shutoffs are disruptive, they save lives, Monford said. “The thing that has been different, overall, this year is that we have had communities that are not used to undergoing a public safety power shutoff having them, for some people for first time ever; for others, for the first time in recent memory,” he said. “And it’s because the winds have been stronger and it hasn’t rained in months.”

There were few public safety power shutoffs underway Saturday afternoon, according to Edison’s website, but the utility was considering shutoffs that would affect 14,741 customers, including 4,385 customers in San Bernardino County. The number had been dropping steadily throughout the day.

That came as forecasters warned that a winter storm could bring 6 to 12 inches of snow to the mountains of San Bernardino and Riverside counties between Saturday and Monday.

“It’s a difficult fine line because I understand the fire danger,” Lake Arrowhead resident Michelle Calkins told KTLA-TV. “But at the same time, for us up here in rural areas, to turn the power off at night is putting a lot of us in a really bad position with these freezing temperatures.”

Residents of San Bernardino County’s mountain towns also told the outlet that power shutoffs have hurt crucial winter tourism revenue, forcing local shops to temporarily close and leaving short-term rental guests demanding refunds.

“We acknowledge that they have had to endure a real hardship this season,” Monford said of those communities. The first severe windstorm that started Jan. 7 prompted a public safety shutoff and also damaged a line servicing the area, requiring repairs, he said. Once those were completed, the line needed to be inspected via helicopter before it was reenergized, but the pilot wasn’t immediately able to get a permit to fly due to the winds, he added.

Power was restored Jan. 10, but another wind system came through days later, requiring another power shutoff, he said. “That led to a longer period of outages than anybody would ever have wanted.”