Local schools closed, a hospital was forced to temporarilydepend on back-up power and a rural stretch of highway jammed as Ventura County experienced its first round of preventive power outages last week.
But after three days of outages, authorities reported no major incidents caused bySouthern California Edison shutting down part of its power grid. The so-called Public Safety Power Shutoff program was designed to prevent the utility's equipment from sparking a fire during gusty Santa Ana winds.
Earlier this week, Ventura County supervisors asked for a sort-of after-action review of last week's outages, including to look at ways to further narrow who is impacted.
Emergency managers cited some changes that would help, though officials said the shutoffs are not a viable long-term solution.
"The answer should be undergrounding and hardening lines, not shutting off the power to the community," said Ventura County Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen.
While it's hard to tell whether an outage prevented a fire from starting, the consequences of an outage can be dire, he said.
Across Edison's 50,000-square-mile service area, roughly 233,000 customers were in areas monitored for the Public Safety Power Shutoffs. Fewer than 25,000 lost power in the preventive outages.
Other outages were reported but caused by wind damage.
"We want to be as surgical as possible recognizing that by shutting the power off, it's trulymore than inconveniencing customers. In some instances, it could be putting them in peril," saidDon Daigler, Edison's director of business resiliency.
In Ventura County, more than 10,000 customers lost power because of the shutoffs in areas from Simi Valley to Thousand Oaks and Piru to Camarillo. The number of residents impacted would be much higher because Edison's count mostly includes account holders.
Outages ranged from six to more than 36 hours, said Patrick Maynard, emergency manager with the Ventura County Sheriff's Office of Emergency Services. Most homes and businesses had power restored by Saturday morning.
Problems reported locally included:
- When power was restored, authorities weren't provided updated maps showing details about who was left in the dark.
- In some cases, the last round ofnotifications came only after the power already had been turned off.
- A swath of Thousand Oaks lost power despite not being included on the list of monitored spots.
Without updated mapping information when power is partially restored,authorities don't know where to potentially increase patrols or who may have issues receiving alerts in case of an emergency, Maynard said.
Edison officials started their own after-action review earlier this week, Daigler said.
Generally speaking, he said, the company's meteorologists seemed to be close tospot on across the area with their forecast of conditions.
One spot where conditions changed quickly, however, was inThousand Oaks where power went out for roughly six hours Thursday night. Edison did not include that area on a list of monitored circuits but said the winds shifted quickly and conditions became hazardous.
"We're being as surgical as we possibly can recognizing that there will be instances when weather conditions change abruptly that we were not anticipating, and we need to take action more quickly than we would like," Daiglersaid.
In terms of the last round of notifications, Edison said those would ideally happen one to four hours before an outage but sometimes that's not possible. "We would hate to delay the shutoff to make the notification and have a fire start as result," Daigler said.
One of the county's biggest concerns is if a shutoff happens and an emergency breaks out. A lack of traffic signals could slow an evacuation and also reverse 911 and other alert systems may not work.
A wind-driven fire that started in Sylmar and jumped major Los Angeles freeways burned toward the Ventura County line early Friday.
More:New brush fire breaks out near Olivas Park Drive and Victoria Avenue
Winds shifted and the fire blew in a different direction, Lorenzen said. But they had already gotten crews ready for a fire fight and mapped areas they expected would be first to evacuate.
If a fire were headed toward a spot where the power was shut off, Lorenzen said they would have immediately requested Edison re-energize lines.
Those requests are expectedandinput the company would take into consideration, Daigler said.
"We don't want to create a bigger public safety problem by shutting the power off while there's an active firefight going on, as an example, or if there's an evacuation."
To sign up for VC Alerts, go tohttps://www.readyventuracounty.org/vc-alert/.
Edison customers can update their contact information with the company and find out more information at sce.com/pspsor by calling 800-655-4555.
