Southern California Edison cuts power while the public pays
By Imani Sutton · Reporting from Atlanta ·
As Santa Ana winds trigger preventative blackouts across Southern California, Southern California Edison shifts the burden of its fragile grid and deferred maintenance onto the public.
The wires are dry and the investor-owned utility is turning them off
Every promise of a clean, frictionless future runs on a wire. Right now those wires are shaking in the wind. The first Santa Ana wind event of the season is tearing across Southern California, according to FOX Weather. The National Weather Service issued Red Flag Warnings and High Wind Warnings through Saturday for the Santa Monica Mountains, San Gabriel Mountains, and the Antelope Valley foothills. Temperatures are climbing across the region.
Remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel dropped rain on parts of the region. The Los Angeles Times reports that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' West L.A. campus and a Brentwood brush fire saw dry conditions take over immediately. The Guardian notes that the Peak fire in Azusa ignited Thursday. The Henderson fire erupted near the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps training base in San Diego County and briefly closed part of Interstate 5. In Malibu, the Bryson fire broke out Thursday near a probation camp on Encinal Canyon Road. It grew to over 200 acres by early evening, forcing the Los Angeles County Probation Department to evacuate 38 female and gender-expansive youth to Sylmar. ABC7 Los Angeles reports that evacuation orders were issued for Zuma and Trancas canyons. A Red Cross shelter opened at Agoura High School.
Governor Gavin Newsom activated the state’s operations center and pre-positioned resources. The real machinery of crisis management belongs to the investor-owned utility. Southern California Edison warned that it may shut off electricity to as many as 220,000 customers across Los Angeles, Ventura, Kern, Tulare, and Santa Barbara counties to prevent its equipment from sparking a catastrophe.
We have lived this exact script before
The apologists for the investor-owned utility class will tell you that public safety power shutoffs are a modern miracle of risk mitigation, a prudent response to erratic weather that prevents disasters before they start. They will argue that cutting power to a quarter-million people is the responsible price to pay for living in an increasingly flammable landscape. Utilities are doing their best to balance grid reliability against the fury of a changing climate.
That defense collapses the moment you look at the ledger. Southern California Edison’s distribution lines are widely believed to have sparked the Altadena blaze, a disaster that followed the terrifying pattern of the Woolsey Fire. It tore through 96,949 acres and destroyed 1,643 structures in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The Dixie Fire laid bare the lethal consequences of deferred grid maintenance in Northern California, where Pacific Gas and Electric Company proactively cut power to roughly 62,000 customers this week. Southern California Edison is treating preventative blackouts as a permanent business model.
They are managing a fragile, aging grid with duct tape and switches while holding federal contracts with the Department of Defense and General Services Administration. They expect residents to sit in the dark during a heat advisory. The company pivots toward automated load control management pilots under EPA Phase 3 vehicle standards to connect new electric vehicle fleets. They want us to celebrate their technological foresight while our food spoils in the fridge and our neighborhood transformers click offline.
The South takes the heat first and gets the bill last
This is not climate whiplash as a random act of God. It is a calculated distribution of precarity. Southern California Edison files Advice Letter 5138-E to automate load management and pocket regulatory rewards for grid expansions. Ordinary people are left listening to 99.1 FM KBUU on battery-powered radios. City officials like Malibu spokesman Matt Myerhoff have to warn them that the grid has abandoned them again.
The pattern never changes because the entity holding the master switch never pays for the shadow it casts. We are told to prepare for all hazards, to clear our streets, and to stay inside while temperatures climb and red flag warnings stretch across the map. Nobody is issuing an evacuation warning for the corporate balance sheet that deferred the line clearing in the first place.
Southern California Edison will expand its preventative blackouts, shifting the cost of decades of infrastructural neglect onto the public while keeping its federal contracts intact. Until regulators stop treating blackouts as a substitute for copper and steel, the power bill will continue to pay for a catastrophe waiting to happen.
Sources
- ABC7 Los Angeles: Santa Ana winds combined with warm temps raise fire threat through Saturday across SoCal
- FOX Weather: Evacuations issued as multiple wildfires break out in California amid first Santa Ana wind event of season
- Los Angeles Times: From tropical storms to Santa Ana winds, SoCal is a prime example of climate whiplash
- The Guardian: Evacuations issued as multiple wildfires ignite in hot, windy California