Canyon Country residents might have gotten an early taste of what’s to come early Wednesday morning with Public Safety Power Shutoffs in the forecast to go along with wind gusts approaching 50 mph
Southern California Edison officials said Wednesday they could not release any information more specific than what was on its outage map, adding they only had countywide figures for how many of its customers would be impacted.
There were more than 725 without power due to the PSPS shutoffs as of 11 a.m. Wednesday, according to Gabriela Ornelas, spokeswoman for Southern California Edison. She said there are approximately 12,800 customers who could be impacted by the shutoffs in the next 24 hours, due to the forecast.
The news of potential shutoffs, as well as the uncertainty, was reminiscent of what happened last year for Christina Davidson, a Canyon Country resident who was without power all morning after a transformer failed around 1:15 a.m., according to the SCE power-outage map.
The outage map reported that power would be restored by noon, but Davidson’s fears were renewed when she heard about the potential outage. The SCE outage map shows a potential outage from 6 p.m. Wednesday to midnight Thursday for residents stretching from Placerita Canyon Road to Sandy Drive along the Highway 14 and Sierra Highway corridor.
The map isn’t always helpful for residents, said Davidson, who lives off Lost Springs Road. She said Wednesday her neighbor two doors down had power restored by 5 a.m. because their lines were on a different circuit, which was already underground.
Ornelas said she did not have any specific information available on what circuits would be without power, saying the only resource available to SCE for information was the online map.
Bryan Lewis, meteorologist for the National Weather Service, said the Wednesday into Thursday forecast called for “northwest and north winds overnight (Wednesday night), along the (Interstate 5) corridor, and then spreading a little bit east, to the Antelope Valley foothills.”
The winds and relative humidity represent the challenge with highs expected in the 90s along I-5 and in the triple digits along Highway 14 into the AV, he added, and “gusts, generally, in that 35 to 45 mph range, possibly even touching 50 mph (overnight),” Lewis said.
While SCE can’t confirm with certainty, based on historical data, that could mean shutoffs. An SCE de-energization report indicated that, in the first week of November last year, when the winds hit sustained gusts of 40 mph, thousands lost power for days.
“I don’t believe there was any wind last night,” Davidson said, referring to the power outage caused by an equipment failure. “So it’s alarming to imagine what might happen to these lines when the winds pick up.”
