Why the Bay Area Is Having a Massive Power Outage

In an effort to avoid sparking deadly wildfires—and to protect itself from future liability—California utility company Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) shut off power to much of the Bay Area on Wednesday afternoon. The cause: high winds that were forecast to rake the region in gusts of up to 70 mph on Thursday. To preemptively reduce the chance of a downed line sparking a blaze, an estimated 800,000 utility customers in 34 Northern California cities like Berkeley, San Jose, Chico, and parts of the Sierra Nevada foothills will have their electricity service cut off over the next few days.

The most urbanized parts of the region, like downtown San Francisco and parts of Oakland, should be mostly untouched, but the scope of the disruption is massive: 800,000 utility customers translates to about 2.4 million individuals who stand to be left in the dark. The first 500,000 customers—many concentrated in West Marin County near Muir Woods and Mount Tamalpais, the dry hills of Lake County, and wine-country counties like Napa and Sonoma—lost power on Wednesday.