A handful of power outages were reported in the Santa Clarita Valley on Thursday, once again leaving some residents without power on Thanksgiving Day.
While the outages, formally called Public Safety Power Shutoffs by Southern California Edison, were announced as possibilities in the days leading up to Thursday, only a handful of outages were triggered in an effort to minimize fire risk.
The outages, according to the SoCal Edison PSPS outage map and as of the publication of this article, were largely reported on the east side of the Santa Clarita Valley, in the community of Acton.
“Power has been shut off in this area due to increased fire risk conditions, which are expected from Nov. 24, 2021, at 12 p.m. to Nov. 26, 2021, at 9 a.m.,” read the website.
Other communities surrounding the city of Santa Clarita were also told that they should be prepared for possible PSPS outages due to the “increased fire risk conditions” until Friday.
SoCal Edison officials could not be reached for comment on how many residents were being directly affected by the outages, but the SoCal Edison website stated that, as of 1:45 p.m., 15,556 L.A. County customers were without power, and 37,488 customers in L.A. County were under consideration.
“We understand that Public Safety Power Shutoff events significantly impact our customers’ daily lives and create hardships for them and our communities, especially during the Thanksgiving holiday,” SCE officials said in a prepared statement on Thursday. “We may have to do this to keep communities safe from potential wildfires.”
“Strong and gusty winds are expected to begin midday on Wednesday and continue until midday Friday,” SoCal Edison officials added. “It has been a month since the last time we had a significant rainstorm in Southern California, ground conditions are once again dry and receptive to potential wildfires – especially in areas that received little to no rain last month.”
An incident management team, according to SCE, is determining whether the weather and ground conditions determine if the power should be shut off.
A red flag warning was put into effect by the National Weather Service earlier this week, and is expected to be in place until Friday at 6 p.m.
