California officials are not happy about Pacific Gas & Electric’s handling of its massive fire-prevention power outage last week.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and state regulators on Monday demanded that PG&E address the communications and technology breakdowns that marred its response to the outage and find ways to limit the disruption from future such events.
Newsom sent a letter to PG&E CEO Bill Johnson, decrying the “extreme failures” in the state’s largest-ever “public safety power shutoff,” or PSPS, event. PG&E’s phased outages across more than 30 Northern California counties affected more than 700,000 customer accounts, or more than 2 million people, starting early Wednesday morning and lasting through the weekend.