Californian utility SoCal Edison shuts power to over 114,000 customers due to wildfire risk

Southern California Edison, a subsidiary of U.S. utility Edison International that operates in California, has cut power to more than 110,000 customers to prevent damage to distribution lines from the wildfire, the company said on Wednesday.

The wildfire has so far burned nearly 3,000 acres (1,200 hectares) in the Pacific Palisades area between the beach towns of Santa Monica and Malibu and led to the evacuation of 30,000 people from their homes.

Two other wildfires have sprung up in the neighboring areas - one near Pasadena and the other in Sylmar in the San Fernando Valley northwest of Los Angeles. Parts of Malibu and Santa Monica are also under evacuation orders.

In SoCal Edison's service area, there were nearly 69,000 customers affected by the wildfire, but the power had been turned off for 114,892 customers, or 2.3% of their five million customers, due to heightened wildfire risk, according to the company's power outage page as of 9:20 a.m. ET.

The company is also considering shutting off power to over 427,583 additional customers, primarily in the Los Angeles and Riverside counties.

While generation facilities were up and running, the biggest risk to the power lines was debris turning into a hazard because of the high wind speeds, said Jeff Monford, senior adviser of corporate communications at Edison.

It was also tough to place when power would be restored as the company would have to wait for the period of concern to pass to get crews to fix power lines and other distribution facilities in the affected areas, he said.

More than 179,000 homes and businesses in Los Angeles County were without power early on Wednesday, data from PowerOutage.us showed.