California struggles with wildfires and power shutoffs, from north to south
The Golden State endured yet another extraordinary day of wildfire drama Monday.
In the north, firefighters took advantage of lighter winds to shore up defense lines around the Kincade Fire, the biggest wildfire of the year in California, which forced more than 180,000 people to evacuate from Sonoma County’s wine-making region as well as coastal enclaves.
In Southern California, former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was forced to flee his hillside west Los Angeles home, as was basketball star LeBron James and thousands of others, when fire erupted near their upscale Los Angeles neighborhood in the predawn hours.
Hours later in Sacramento, Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged that his job could be on the line as state leaders struggle to deal with not only wildfires but also the inconveniences and dangers of power blackouts instituted by the state’s main electric utility company, PG&E, as it seeks to avoid power line failures in high winds.
Meanwhile, millions of north and central Californians braced for the possibility of yet another likely round of power outages orchestrated by PG&E on Tuesday, Wednesday and perhaps longer this week with forecasts of more high winds. The utility company shut power to nearly one million customers over the weekend, and had only slowly begun to bring those customers back online Monday evening.
Monday’s trauma started early when a wind-blown wildfire ignited in the hills above the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, forcing thousands to flee, including Schwarzenegger and James.
“Man these LA fires aren’t no joke,” James, who moved to California last year, tweeted after he and his family were rousted. “Crazy night man!”
That fire destroyed a handful of homes and briefly burned nearly to the doorstep of one of the most notable museums in the country, the imposing travertine-clad Getty Center overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Classes were canceled at the University of California Los Angeles, which sits in a ravine on the other side of the 405 freeway from the fire.
In Sonoma County, some were allowed back to their homes Monday afternoon, as firefighters girded for Tuesday’s winds.
“We are holding our own,” Newsom said, speaking Monday at the state emergency center.
Nevertheless, Newsom said just as he intends to hold PG&E to account for the crisis, he acknowledged he’s under scrutiny for his leadership. He didn’t mention it, but Newsom is governing in the shadow of the recall of former Gov. Gray Davis who was ousted in 2003 after a power crisis that crippled the state.
“I can be held to account for the last nine months, and I can assure you if I am privileged to be here for a four-year term, you are going to see a hell of a lot more being done. You are going to see much more accountability,” he said. “And if I don’t see things take shape, we are going to get new folks in that can actually do that job, but I think we have the right team, we have the right path and plan and now we have to execute and that’s on us.”
But for many in the north state, Tuesday will continue days and weeks of confusion and inconvenience. The National Weather Service has forecast another 24-hour period of seasonally high winds to hit California early Tuesday, bringing with it fears of more wildfires.
PG&E announced that it likely would proactively shut off power to more than a million residents in 32 north and central state counties — many of them the same people whose power was cut off this past week, last week and two weeks ago.
That decision comes days after the utility company acknowledged one of its power lines malfunctioned in the vicinity of the origin of Sonoma County’s Kincade Fire last week. Officials have not yet determined the cause of the fire, but PG&E stock plummeted again Monday, continuing a year of increasing financial troubles for the bankrupt company.
As of Monday, the Kincade Fire had consumed more than 100 square miles of mainly hilly territory in the Healdsburg and Geyserville areas, at the northern end of California sprawling wine country, where tourism is a multi-billion-dollar industry.
Luckily, the grape harvest was probably 95 percent complete before fire hit, officials there said, and damage so far doesn’t appear to be as bad as in 2017, when several wineries in Sonoma and Napa counties burned down.
One winery, though, was completely destroyed: the historic Soda Rock Winery in Healdsburg, located in a stone-wall building from 1869 that once housed a post office and general store. Owner Ken Wilson said Monday he’s unsure whether he’ll rebuild. “I can’t even get to the site,” he said. “I’m still in the fog of - I don’t know what to do and how we’re going to get through it.
“It had a lot of heart and soul in that building,” he said of a recent restoration of the property. “Five years of my life just went up in smoke.”
For many in the wine country, the Kincade Fire bought back painful memories of the October 2017 fires, which destroyed several wineries.
“It’s definitely deja vu for a lot of people,” said Rene Byck, co-owner of Paradise Ridge Winery in Santa Rosa. “it is definitely surreal.” Much of the winery burned down in 2017 but is scheduled to reopen Dec. 9.
“We’ll see if these fires affect that,” he said of the reopening date.
State fire officials on Monday warned that California’s fire season is not yet done, even as October comes to an end. Two years ago, the massive Thomas Fire in Santa Barbara burned through December into January. The Camp Fire, which is the worst wildfire in state history, struck in November of last year when PG&E equipment failed in winds, destroying the Northern California hill town of Paradise, leveling 18,000 buildings and killing 85 residents.
“We are nowhere near done with this,” Cal Fire Chief Thom Porter said on Monday. “We are going to need to have widespread statewide rain before this is over. We are poised to continue this.”
He called for the public’s confidence. “We are fully capable and ready to respond to all of the state’s fire emergencies plus going through this part of the season. I want you to feel very confident that the fire service system and emergency response system is ready for California’s emergencies going into the rest of this fire season.”
Gov. Newsom, who has been sharply critical of PG&E’s blackouts on nearly a daily basis for weeks, spoke to the press at the state emergency center Monday, saying he and the state cannot allow these blackouts to become a common ritual imposed by PG&E. The utility last week rejected Newsom’s earlier request that the company give reimbursements of $100 to residential customers and $250 to small businesses for hardships the blackouts have caused.
PG&E defended the outages, called Public Safety Power Shutoffs, as necessary during the state hot, dry, high-wind season until PG&E can “harden” its power grid system enough to withstand huge winds and extended heat spells the state has been experiencing.
Newsom said on Monday the state is looking into legal options to mandate reimbursements to affected customers. “We would like them to consider reimbursements and we are going to be very forceful in advancing that,” he said.
Newsom said the state has been “leaning into this issue” for nine months and will continue seeking solutions to its utility and wildfire crisis, and to hold PG&E and others to account.
He pointed out that 11 million Californians live in areas near wildlands. “We have to protect these folks,” he said.
The budget Newsom signed this summer includes hundreds of millions of dollars for firefighting and prevention efforts, including new fire engines, helicopters and airplanes, remote cameras, improve emergency-warning systems and additional Cal Fire personnel.
At the same time, Newsom in recent weeks has stepped up his criticism of PG&E, saying it was “years of mismanagement” that led to California’s wildfire and blackout crisis. He has openly called for private investors to try and take over the company, which filed for bankruptcy in January following the wildfires of 2017 and 2018.
This story was originally published October 28, 2019 at 11:23 PM with the headline "California struggles with wildfires and power shutoffs, from north to south."