California Fires Updates: Another 940,000 Customers to Lose Power

The blackout zone has been expanded to nearly a million customers.

Pacific Gas and Electric expanded its power blackout zone to include 940,000 customers on Saturday, as the extreme weather conditions heightened the threats of wildfires throughout the utility’s service area.

The blackout would be the largest power shut-off to prevent wildfires in California history.

The utility added 90,000 customers to the intentional power shut-off as forecasts indicated that widespread dry, hot and windy weather is expected to begin moving through the region between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. Saturday and continue through midday Monday.

PG&E planned to phase in the blackouts in six stages, with the first five beginning at 2 p.m. through 5 p.m. in the Sierra Nevada foothills, North Bay and Bay Areas. A sixth phase is scheduled for Kern County at 10 a.m. Sunday.

Earlier, Andy Vesey, PG&E’s chief executive for utility operations, said drought, dead trees, high winds and low humidity had combined for a potential disaster even more severe than some other recent fires.

“These places we all love have effectively become tinder boxes,” Mr. Vesey said. “This is an extraordinary change that we’re living through. At this moment it is part of our lives in California and part of keeping us safe.”

State officials and consumer advocates are attacking PG&E.

Furious lawmakers and consumer advocates responded to the expanded power shut-offs with calls for the ouster of PG&E’s management.

Senator Jerry Hill, a Bay Area Democrat, said PG&E’s handling of the power shut-offs has gone too far, and time has come for the courts to take control of the company before more damage is done.

“The frustrating part about this is that this is not a company that is out of control anymore,” Mr. Hill said. “They have no control.”

“PG&E is a failure at every level,” he added. “PG&E should no longer be allowed to do business in California.”

Senate Leader Toni Atkins appointed Mr. Hill to a panel that was announced Thursday to review PG&E’s handling of the power shut-offs.

Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, said the widespread blackouts showed that PG&E’s executives did not understand how to manage a utility in 21st-century California.

“When you turn the lights out on 3 million people because you have to keep the power lines safe then there’s no reason you should be allowed to continue,” Mr. Court said.

Michael Lewis, PG&E’s senior vice president of electric operations, said the issue was safety.

“This wind event is forecast to be the most serious weather situation that Northern and Central California has experienced in recent memory,” Mr. Lewis said in a statement. “We understand the widespread impacts this Public Safety Power shut-off will have across Northern and Central California.

“We would only take this decision for one reason — to help reduce catastrophic wildfire risk to our customers and communities.”

PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January after amassing tens of billions of dollars in liability related to two dozen wildfires in recent years. As speculation grew that its equipment might be the cause of the Kincade Fire, its stock price plummeted about 30 percent on Friday to $5.08, a small fraction of its 52-week high of $49.42.

50,000 residents of Sonoma County have been ordered to evacuate.

Sonoma County officials ordered 50,000 residents to flee from the spreading Kincade Fire, which has already consumed 25,455 acres. It was the county’s largest wildfire evacuation in more than 25 years, Sheriff Mark Essick said, and it covered some residents who had already been preparing to lose power.

In addition to the 50,000 people who had been ordered out, about 43,000 residents were under an evacuation warning, which extended from the Santa Rosa suburbs to the Pacific Coast, said Meda Freeman, a county spokeswoman.

Michael and Deborah Bailey were hunkering down in their house among the county’s vineyards on Saturday, defying the evacuation order and preparing for their second blackout this week by powering up a generator and figuring out where to send their horses. Like many Californians, they were frustrated.

“They just turned it on yesterday afternoon around 4, and now they’re going to turn it off again,” Mr. Bailey, 72, said of PG&E. “We’ve been madly running around filling up bathtubs with water.”

Sheriff Essick and state fire officials hoped that by preparing for the worst-case scenario, they could avoid the devastation that the Tubbs Fire wrought in the region in 2017, killing 22 people and destroying 5,600 buildings. The authorities urged people to not put emergency workers in danger by refusing to flee, noting that one firefighter had already been taken to a hospital after protecting two residents with a fire shield.

The weather forecast suggests firefighters face an uphill battle.

The National Weather Service signaled an uphill battle for firefighters over the weekend, issuing a wind advisory and a red-flag warning that is expected to remain in effect in Sonoma County from Saturday evening through Monday morning.

The agency forecast “strong and gusty” winds Saturday night into Sunday morning, with the possibility of sustained winds from 30 to 50 miles per hour, and 55 to 75 m.p.h. gusts overnight in certain mountain and hill regions.

“Gusty winds could blow around unsecured objects,” the Saturday morning advisory said. The Weather Service also warned of downed tree limbs, and urged people to use extra caution when driving.

The Weather Service also issued a red-flag warning, which signals critical fire weather conditions are occurring now or soon. The agency said to expect strong winds, low relative humidity and warm temperatures, a combination that can contribute to extreme fire behavior.

“Once we get that red-flag warning starting to come in at 8 o’clock and we get those high winds that are going to follow with that, we’re going to see some erratic fire behavior,” Capt. Stephen Volmer, a fire behavior analyst, said at a news conference on Saturday morning.

After running models for 12 hours overnight, Captain Volmer said, he saw the potential for fire-weakened timber to fall down across power lines and roads, possibly igniting new fires.

“All the models we’ve run are showing with very high confidence that any ignition that does happen will travel extremely fast with erratic fire behavior,” he added.

This winds look to be the strongest since the 2017 Wine Country fires and potentially historic in strength and duration, according to the Weather Service.

Steve Anderson, a forecaster based in Monterey, Calif., said the wind could be much worse this time. In 2017, the high winds lasted four to six hours, causing the fire to push itself out, hopscotching across the mountains and valleys. Now, he said, the winds could last anywhere from 24 to 30 hours.

“The conditions have to be just right for the winds to be that strong,” Mr. Anderson said. “They haven’t been that strong in a couple of years.”