(10 Oct 2019) California's biggest utility cut power to more than a million people Wednesday for what could be days on end in the most sweeping effort in state history to prevent wildfires caused by windblown power lines. The unpopular move sparked a run on supplies at stores and came after two years of catastrophic fires sent Pacific Gas & Electric into bankruptcy and forced it to take more aggressive steps to prevent blazes.
The drastic measure caused a wave of impacts, from long lines at supermarkets and hardware stores to backups at traffic lights that had gone dark.
Schools and universities canceled classes, offices were closed and many businesses were shuttered.
Friedman's Home Improvement store in Sonoma lost power Wednesday, but remained open with a limited amount electricity from generators.
Employees with flashlights and head lamps took customers into the darkened store to buy batteries, power cords and flashlights. Electrical generators were sold out.
Sonoma resident Rick Lachmiller came to Friedman's Wednesday morning to buy extension cords for his generator after his home lost power around 1 am.
"People have refrigerators full of food. Restaurants have restaurants full of food. And a lot of them don't have backup generators.
It leaves this whole community scrambling around trying to save their food or their job or whatever it is," Lachmiller said.
Store president and co-owner Barry Friedman, said it was a challenge to serve its customers and helps its employees, many of whom have childcare issues because schools are closed.
Ruby Fontana, who works at a catering company, was one of many residents working on laptops at an auditorium at the Sonoma Veterans Memorial Hall because her home and office didn't have electricity.
"Wind is going to happen, and now we're going to have days and days with inconvenience and this is not sustainable," Fontana said. "We're all losing money. A lot of people are impacted. A lot of businesses are closed today because there's no power. So it's affecting a lot more than anyone thought it would."
Kathy Squizzato and her husband Raymond Segat were visiting Sonoma Valley from Vancouver and did not know about the shutoffs until after they arrived. They were drinking wine at a tasting room off the Sonoma Plaza.
"We didn't know anything about the power outage, so this morning we changed all our plans because we don't have enough gas in the car," Squizzato said. "We decided to cancel everything, walk down into town here and see what's happening. And luckily for us there's a wine tasting area, Zina Hyde, open."
More than 500,000 customers in Northern California were without power, the utility said, and about 300,000 more outages were planned later to prevent its equipment from sparking wildfires during winds forecast to build.
About 2 million people were expected to be affected for up to several days.
The utility planned to shut off power in parts of 34 northern and central California counties to reduce the chance of fierce winds knocking down or toppling trees into power lines during a siege of dry, gusty weather.
Gusts of 35 mph to 45 mph (56-72 kph) were forecast to sweep a vast swath of the state, from the San Francisco Bay Area to the agricultural Central Valley and especially in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where a November wildfire blamed on PG&E transmission
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