We're having an early kickoff to fire season this year and/or there is no distinct fire "season" anymore, with an offshore wind event expected to raise wildfire risks across Northern California this week.

The National Weather Service has issued a Red Flag Warning for the Sacramento Valley starting Wednesday morning, and they are warning of elevated fire risks in much of the North Bay as well due to an incoming wind event.

Winds are expected to be blowing out of the north and northeast Wednesday evening into Thursday, with low humidity expected particularly in the Napa Valley and Sacramento region. Gusts of 30 to 45 miles per hour are expected in parts of Northern California, leading to the elevated wildfire risk.

Wind gusts in Sonoma and Napa counties are expected to peak around 25 miles per hour, but could be stronger at higher elevations.

PG&E has not yet announced any public safety power shutoffs (PSPS), but the utility is warning that some shutoffs may occur on Wednesday, as the Chronicle reports.

Exact addresses that can expect power shutoffs will receive notifications perhaps later today or on Tuesday.

In its seven-day PSPS forecast, PG&E says that shutoffs are possible Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday across eight NorCal counties: Colusa, Glenn, Lake, Napa, Sonoma, Sutter, Tehama, and Yolo.

PG&E has routinely performed these targeted shutoffs since 2019, when the PSPS protocal began in the wake of the deadly Camp Fire in November 2018. In 2021, after PG&E faced criminal charges stemming from the fire, a federal judge imposed strict guidance over when power shutoffs must occur, in order to decrease wildfire risk from sparking power lines.

This year has already seen one PSPS event in mid-May, when power was cut for pockets of PG&E customers in 15 counties, with 4,700 customers affected in all.

Typically these shutoffs, which often coincide with offshore wind events like the Diablo winds, tend to occur later in the summer and in the fall, when wildfire risk tends to be greatest from dry ground conditions as well.

An Alameda County family is now suing over a dramatic gas-leak explosion last December that was caught on camera, injuring three people inside and destroying their rental home.

The explosion happened on the morning of December 11, 2025, on a quiet residential street in Ashland, an area in unincorporated Alameda County just north of Hayward, and west of Castro Valley. A neighbor's doorbell camera captured the scene, as construction workers were digging up the street outside the home.

Three family members who were home at the time of the blast sustained injuries and remained hospitalized a week later, and the home on East Lewelling Boulevard was completely leveled.

Now, as the Chronicle reports, the family that was living in the home has filed a lawsuit against PG&E, whose workers were on the scene due to a gas leak that had begun two hours before the explosion, as well as the contractors who were doing the road work — Redgwick Construction and Mayo Asphalt Milling — and Alameda County, which ordered the work to be done.

The lawsuit also names the landlord who owns the property, Angela Plowman, accusing her for not having the home's gas lines checked.

"No one knocked on the door, no one told them to leave the area," says attorney Niall McCarthy, speaking to the Chronicle. "Allowing gas to escape for two hours is a tremendously long amount of time that creates an incredibly high risk of an explosion."

Inside the home at the time were Jesus Duenas Ponce, who was reportedly knocked into the home's basement by the blast and suffered burns and broken bones, along with his sister, Maria Del Socorro Duenas Ponce and her adult daughter, Soledad Flores, who were both asleep at the time of the explosion. They both required surgery for their injuries, and suffered broken bones, according the lawsuit, and McCarthy says that Maria has lasting injuries including to her jaw, and to her left arm.

"This is something that will be with them forever," McCarthy tells the Chronicle.

The lawsuit is also seeking damages for two family members who were not home at the time of the explosion, Jorge Duenas Ponce, and another daughter, noting that they lost their home and belongings.

As we learned following the incident, the blast also damaged a next-door home belonging to an elderly couple, the Foxes, who lost a dog and a cat in the explosion.

Three PG&E workers were also injured.

The National Transportation Safety Board released a report on the incident in January that found that PG&E "detected gas at the ground level" following an earlier gas leak that been supposedly capped, but workers continued digging in the area nonetheless.

Per the Chronicle, the Ponces' lawsuit notes that that this was "not an isolated incident of negligence" on the part of PG&E, citing the 2010 San Bruno gas line explosion that killed eight people, injured dozens of others, and damaged 55 homes.

Previously: Families In Homes Destroyed By Gas Explosion Identified, Three Remain Hospitalized

State Senator Scott Wiener is trying to bolster his run for Congress with a new bill targeting PG&E, a bill that would allow cities to "breakup with PG&E." But does deficit-strapped SF even have the money to do this?

PG&E is easily pretty much the most despised utility company (or maybe even any company?) in San Francisco and much of Northern California. That was the case well before PG&E ruined the weekend before Christmas with that December 20 blackout that left hundreds of thousands without power, plus the myriad of smaller SF power outages since then. The City and County of San Francisco has several times tried to buy the power grid from PG&E and run it themselves, dating back to the London Breed administration.

Each of these attempts has been unsuccessful, but state Senator Scott Wiener (who happens to be running for Congress now) wants another stab at it. NBC Bay Area reports that Wiener is introducing a state-level bill in Sacramento that would allow California a cities to split from PG&E and start their own public utilities, and he introduced the bill Monday morning on the steps of SF City Hall.

KPIX has much of that press conference in the video above. "We are fed up with PG&E, we are done," Wiener said at the press conference. "We are fed up with paying double of what our neighbors in Sacramento and Palo Alto pay for their electricity with their publicly owned utilities. We're fed up with the blackouts and the poor maintenance that have left hundreds of thousands of people without power for for days on end. We're fed up with a system that gives monopoly utilities a huge incentive to focus more on paying its shareholders than providing the best possible service for the public."

According to Wiener, PG&E has raised rates 40% on SF residents since 2022, and San Francisco PG&E customers pay the "second highest rates in the country."

Wiener's bill is called SB 875, and would allow cities to create their own public utility, or to join existing public utilities established by other cities or municipalities. The bill was just introduced today, and has had no hearings yet.

Remember, SF tried to buy PG&E's local power grid for $2.5 billion back in 2019, and PG&E refused the offer. At that time, PG&E was bankrupt and the deal may have made a lot more sense.

But now the tables are somewhat turned. City Hall is now carrying a deficit of nearly $1 billion, and it sure doesn't seem like SF has $2.5 billion laying around.

And of course, we already tried this back in 2019 and 2020, and it didn't work. NBC Bay Area reports that Wiener says (in NBC Bay Area's words) that "PG&E is so powerful in California that his proposal didn't get a hearing." and it's unclear how or why things would go differently this time around.

Related: Sunset District Businesses File Lawsuit Over December Power Outage [SFist]

Image: @bilalmahmood via Twitter

A group of Sunset District businesses are filing a lawsuit against PG&E seeking compensation for lost business during the December 20 power outage, which for some lasted multiple days.

Not satisfied with being given a claim form to fill out and letting PG&E decide if they'll be compensated for lost business and lost product during last month's power outage, several Sunset District business owners are now taking the utility to court.

As KRON4 reports, led by attorney and former SF supervisor Quentin Kopp, some Sunset business owners are filing a lawsuit seeking unspecified damages from the outage, and they held a press conference on Tuesday.

"The longer that PG&E delays appropriate reimbursement for those business losses it caused, the higher the cost to the utility company," Kopp said, per KRON4.

And speaking for the merchants, Sunset District homeowner David Lee explained that adequately compensating some of these mom-and-pop businesses is more complicated than PG&E is making it out to be. And Lee points to subsequent outages that have only impacted the west side.

"Their margins are very, very tight, so the losses they suffered a month ago and subsequent blackouts since — remember, we’ve had now seven blackouts in the Sunset District — have really caused a financial hardship going into the new year," Lee said.

He added, "Many of the merchants are immigrants. They have to download this form, print it out, fill it out by hand, and send in receipts... and there are not enough spaces on the form to list all their items. So there’s some confusion. Oftentimes, the merchants just give up."

PG&E initially announced that all residential customers impacted by the outage would be given a $200 bill credit, and businesses would get a $2,500 bill credit. The company quickly amended that, saying it was willing to pay out more than $2,500The  to businesses, but required filling out the claim form.

PG&E now claims that they have already processed 2,439 such claims, and "approximately 70 percent have been resolved within 13 days." PG&E adds, in a statement, "We’re actively meeting with and supporting our customers, and we continue to process claims related to this outage as quickly as possible."

The blackout, which PG&E has blamed on a fire at a substation in SoMa, occurred on the last Saturday before Christmas, a major shopping day for many. It also coincided with winter solstice celebrations in the Chinese community — for which restaurants and fishmongers had stocked up on highly perishable seafood, much of which went to waste due to the outage.

Tina Zheng, the owner of Irving Seafood Market, was one of those business owners who had to toss thousands of dollars worth of product. As she tells NBC Bay Area, her claim still hasn't been processed by PG&E, and she says, "A couple days ago, maybe three or four days ago, they just replied to my email saying, 'Oh, can you give me more detailed information?'"

PG&E has not commented on the planned lawsuit.

Previously: SF Businesses Still Fuming Over PG&E Outages, PG&E Vaguely Indicates They Might Reimburse Businesses More

As PG&E works to make repairs to the Mission substation that was damaged in December, causing a huge swath of the city to lose power, power was cut to the Civic Center area Sunday night into Monday.

The planned outage affected around 3,600 PG&E customers, and was said to potentially last 12 hours. But after the power was cut at 12 am Monday, impacting all Muni underground service between Van Ness and Embarcadero stations, it was restored around 8 am.

Muni service was fully restored around 10:30 am, after the SFMTA conducted "signal infrastructure checks." Residual delays are expected, the agency said.

Hybrid train and bus service was available to commuters during Monday morning's commute.

A second, shorter outage is set to begin at midnight tonight, and will affect a larger swath of the city, with around 14,000 PG&E customers impacted in the Richmond District, with some in a small section of the Sunset as well. This outage is expected to last around two hours.

Substation K, as its known, at Mission and Eighth streets, suffered a fire on December 20 that was partly responsible for a power outage that impacted around one-third of San Francisco.

"We recognize this outage was frustrating and had a large impact on the community," PG&E says in a statement. "To better serve you, our teams will be performing critical work to fix this substation issue and improve your electric service."

For updates, if you live in the outage area, you can visit PG&E's Outage Center.

For the third time in a little over a week, 11,000 customers on the west side of the city experienced a power outage Sunday evening, which took about two-and-a-half hours to restore. A planned outage was also scheduled to occur at 11 pm Sunday.

As Mission Local reports, customers in the Richmond, Golden Gate Park, and the Presidio lost their power between 7:45 pm and 10:15 pm Sunday. As SFist reported earlier, 6,000 customers in SF’s Golden Gate, Panhandle, and parts of the Sunset lost power for four hours Saturday.

Per NBC Bay Area, PG&E said a planned outage had already been scheduled for some customers at 11 pm in order to transition the Richmond neighborhood from the loud generators back to the grid. Per Mission Local, District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan, whose district includes the Richmond, confirmed the planned outage was still planned from 11 p.m. to midnight Sunday.

Chan said issues with PG&E’s transformers were to blame for the unplanned outage, per Mission Local. PG&E said it was an overhead equipment failure, per KPIX.

“The citywide power outage illustrates how a privatized utility company like PG&E can use its monopoly power to increase out bills, make profit on the backs of working people and still fail in its obligation to deliver power safely and reliably for San Francisco,” Chan wrote on Instagram on December 23.

Prior to Saturday’s and Sunday’s outages, a third of the city was affected by a massive power outage the Saturday before Christmas, which took 48 hours to restore in some areas. As SFist reported earlier this week, PG&E was offering $200 credit for residential customers and a $2,500 credit for businesses affected in this week’s outages. Per Mission Local, the utility company was covering hotel accommodations and $200 in food costs for affected customers.

Image: PG&E/Facebook

Previously:  PG&E, Now In Full Crisis Mode, Offering $200 Credits to SF Residents, $2500 to Businesses for Weekend Outage

The Great San Francisco Blackout of December 2025 continues into its third day for some residents, and Muni subway service remains disrupted due to ongoing impacts from the PG&E outage.

As of Monday morning, December 22, the power outage that began on December 20 has persisted for around 11,600 PG&E customers in San Francisco, primarily concentrated in the Outer Richmond and around the Civic Center area. PG&E has pledged full restoration of power to these areas by 2 pm Monday.

Several blocks on either side of Market Street between 8th Street and Van Ness remain in the dark, likely due to ongoing repairs at the PG&E substation at 8th and Mission where a fire reportedly occurred on Saturday afternoon. And as a result, San Francisco City Hall remains closed this morning, as KTVU reports, as does the Main Branch of the SF Public Library.

Muni subway service remains out, with no underground trains operating between Embarcadero and Castro stations. There is normal service on the K, L, and M lines to the west of Castro, with trains switching back and bus shuttles taking anyone downtown who's still going to to the office or to work downtown this week.

As happened on Sunday, the J-Church and N-Judah lines are being interlined (combined) for surface-only service between Balboa Park and Judah/La Playa, with riders needing to switch to bus shuttles at Church and Market to go downtown.

There remains only an incomplete explanation from PG&E as to how and why this outage began or became so widespread. We know about the substation fire, but that does not explain outages on the west side that began hours before that on Saturday.

And as we discussed Sunday, a very similar widespread outage that impacted around one-third of the city occurred on December 20, 2003, which was also a Saturday, and which was also blamed on a fire at the same substation at 8th and Mission.

"They call it a catastrophic fire and an incident I've been told they've only seen 2-3 times in decades," Mayor Daniel Lurie said, speaking to ABC 7. "There's a lot of questions that I have."

Perennial PG&E critic Tim Redmond, editor of 48 Hills, is once again calling for the utility to be kicked out of the city, saying this is "long, long overdue."

"Now an old transformer caught fire, and the company didn’t have the resiliency to avoid a blackout that impacted a third of the city," Redmond writes. "Now the case for public power is more clear than ever, and it’s time the supes hold a hearing on where the process is, what the next steps are, and how to move forward."

Previously: Massive Power Outage In San Francisco Leaves 200,000+ In the Dark, Disrupts Muni and BART

After a widespread blackout put a damper on holiday celebrations and shopping in San Francisco Saturday, PG&E had the lights back on for many by 9 pm, but still offered little explanation for what happened.

The outage, which was impacting around 60,000 customers Saturday afternoon had grown to 131,000 customers by Saturday evening.

As of Sunday morning at 7:30 am, PG&E said they had restored power to 110,000 customers, with 21,000 still without power. The remaining outages were concentrated in the Richmond and Presidio, and in downtown San Francisco.

PG&E blamed at least one of Saturday's outages on a substation fire in SoMa, however that can't explain the entire picture of what happened.

San Francisco Fire Department Lt. Mariano Elias tells the Chronicle that the fire broke out around 2:15 pm at the substation at Eighth and Mission streets, but the first outage began around 9:40 am in the Inner Sunset and Forest Hill, and the blackout spread to the Richmond and Presidio, and to Market Street by around 10 am.

The substation fire appears to have caused subsequent outages in Hayes Valley, Alamo Square, the Lower Haight, and the Mission that began around 3 pm.

It remains to be seen if PG&E will offer a more complete explanation for what happened.

Previously: Massive Power Outage In San Francisco Leaves 200,000+ In the Dark, Disrupts Muni and BART

A widespread power outage was impacting legions of San Francisco residents and businesses Saturday, and it seemed to be a cascading situation that began just before 10 am and extended into evening hours.

A reported 130,000 PG&E customers — which equates to somewhere north of 200,000 residents and business owners, if not 300,000 — were out of power as of Saturday evening, with scant updates available from the utility about when the power may be restored.

As PG&E tells the Chronicle, the trouble began with an outage reported at 9:40 am that was initially just impacting around 14,600 customers in the Inner Sunset, Forest Hill, and neighborhoods around there. Sections of the Richmond and Presidio followed, along with a section of Market Street, around 10:10 am, with around 25,000 customers impacted.

As 0f 3 pm, the Outer Sunset was also impacted, along with parts of Hayes Valley, the Lower Haight, Alamo Square, and the Mission District, and BART and Muni trains were bypassing Van Ness, Civic Center, and Powell stations due to the outage.

The outage was impacting traffic signals across the city, and drivers were being advised to stay off the streets — though this is an unrealistic ask on the last Saturday before Christmas!

An enormous swath of the city remained without power as of 8 pm Saturday, and PG&E suggested that the initial outages were triggered by a fire inside a PG&E power substation

The outage made for some pretty sour grapes for small business owners, especially, on one of the last major shopping and dining days before Christmas, during a season when some businesses make a significant portion of their annual revenue.

Mayor Daniel Lurie jumped on social media to suggest that the city has a handle on the situation, though it is pretty clear this is PG&E's deal, and was not very well handled. And maybe this event will have some impact on a longstanding push from the Board of Supervisors to divorce the city from PG&E's grid. But we'll see!!

This is a developing story.

The East Bay family living in a home where a gas explosion occurred Thursday has been identified by family members who say they "lost everything they owned" in the blast.

The gas explosion last week in Ashland, in unincorporated Alameda County north of Hayward, took the lives of two pets, and injured six people, three of whom remain hospitalized with serious injuries. The blast also destroyed two homes that were next door to each other on the 800 block of East Lewelling Boulevard.

In one of those homes was the family of Jorge Duenas Ponce, which included Ponce, his brother, sister, and two young children. Two of the adults and one of the children remain hospitalized, according to a GoFundMe posted by a neighbor, but they are reportedly in stable condition. Injuries were said to include burns and bone fractures.

"The physical and emotional toll of this tragedy is unimaginable," writes neighbor Allie Fralick. "hile one of the young children is safe, both children have been uprooted from the only home they knew, losing their clothes, toys, and sense of security in the blast."

The fundraiser, seeking to raise $22,000 to help cover immediate expensese including temporary housing and medical bills, has so far raised over $17,000.

PG&E confirmed that the other three individuals who were injured after the blast were workers working for them, and their injuries were apparently minor.

A separate GoFundMe was posted by Jessica Fox, the daughter of the couple in the neighboring house that was also destroyed, who said that her mom, who was home at the time of the explosion, miraculously made it out safely with one of her dogs — however another dog named Bright Eyes, and a cat, were killed in the blast and subsequent fire.

Fox said her father's business was destroyed in addition to the home, and she adds, "They are left with each other, their surviving doggie, and only the clothes they were wearing at the time. My mom’s glasses were blown off her face... her phone, wallet, and ID, clothing, documents. A lifetime’s worth of tools and family heirlooms are gone in an instant."

The explosion happened around 9:38 am on Thursday, and PG&E crews were reportedly already on the scene because a construction crew had ruptured a gas line at the site about two hours earlier.  

Construction reportedly stopped following the gas leak, and PG&E said they had stopped the flow of natural gas as of 8:15 am. A second leak apparently began sometime after, which was "secured" as of 9:25 am, and it was just about 13 minutes later that the explosion occurred.

The construction crew was actually at work on the physical street, and has been identified as being part of Oakland-based Redgwick Construction, as KTVU reports. The company was contracted by Alameda County's public works department as part of an active project to improve East Lewelling Boulevard.

Gas service was subsequently cut to part of the block, and PG&E was reportedly providing hotel accommodations for affected neighbors.

Previously: Explosion In East Bay Neighborhood Injures Six, Destroys Two Homes

• SF’s first traffic report since the Upper Great Highway became Sunset Dunes Park shows congestion has shifted rather than spiked. Chain of Lakes Drive now sees 21% more cars, while traffic dropped along other routes. [Chronicle]
• After weeks of backlash and lawsuits, the Trump administration will release over $6 billion in previously frozen education grants — vital funds that support English learners, adult literacy, and after-school programs following pressure from GOP lawmakers and school leaders across the country. [Associated Press]
• San Jose and PG&E have reached a landmark deal to fast-track power for 10 data center and industrial projects, ending the city’s push for its own utility and aiming to spur growth while addressing environmental and transparency concerns. [KQED]
• A man suffered life-threatening injuries in a Saturday afternoon stabbing near Ocean Avenue and Lee Street in SF's Ingleside District; police arrested a suspect nearby and are investigating what led to the attack. [KGO]
• Sears’ Concord store will soon be the last one open in California, following the closure of the Burbank location — and one of just six remaining in the entire U.S. [KGO]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

• It was reported earlier this week that Newsom mailed out prepaid cellphones programmed with his phone number to about 100 California tech executives. The phones came with handwritten notes that read, “If you ever need anything, I’m a phone call away.” [Politico]
• State Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit along with 20 other states to halt the dismantling of the Department of Education last week. The lawsuit is one of several that Bonta has filed in the first nine weeks of his administration. [NBC Bay Area]
• Russian River Brewing is launching its Pliny the Younger 2025 release at its Santa Rosa and Windsor pubs today through April 3. The highly coveted beer already made the rounds in San Francisco last month. [ABC7]
• In spite of record profits, PG&E is requesting its seventh rate hike in a year to protect investors from future “climate risks,” which means customer rates would go up by about $5.50 a month starting next year. [NBC Bay Area]
• Video game workers from across the US and Canada have formed a union, United Video Workers, in partnership with the American Federation of Musicians, which was announced on Wednesday at the Game Developers Conference being held in San Francisco. [UVW-CWA]

National:

• Musk-funded America PAC announced on X that it’s offering $100 to Wisconsin voters to sign a petition opposing “activist judges” ahead of a pivotal state Supreme Court election on April 1. They’re also offering $100 for referring others to sign the petition. [AP]
• Disney shareholders overwhelmingly voted against a proposal by right-wing think tank National Center for Public Policy Research that the company end its participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s index that rates companies’ levels of support for LGBTQ-friendly workplace policies and practices. Only 1% voted in favor of the proposal, which was especially focused on erasing trans rights. [Variety]
• A new US task force is projected to start using terror laws to prosecute university students protesting the war in Gaza by connecting free speech to propaganda. [Guardian]
• In spite of his current policy to end the US refugee resettlement program, Trump is reportedly offering white South Africans refugee status to the US who are “victims of racial discrimination by their Black-led government.” [Marin Independent Journal]

Video of the Day:

• Flashback to the ‘80s with glimpses of the Embarcadero Freeway.

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Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

PG&E has an awkward new PR campaign with ads airing in NorCal markets in which company executives sit and have frank-seeming conversations with customers about the company's horrible reputation when it comes to wildfire safety.

As we all know, sparking PG&E lines were responsible for causing devastating and deadly wildfires in Northern California in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021. The company was pushed into bankruptcy in 2019 because of their liability, but they emerged from that a year later, and they continue to have a monopoly over the power grid here.

While we've continued paying our electric and gas bills out of necessity, PG&E is a pretty damaged commodity as brands go. They continue to pay for their wildfire mistakes, and for future wildfire risk mitigation, through rate hikes on consumers, leaving our utility bills among the highest in the nation. (And, as CalMatters reports this week, there's a baked-in line item on our bills that guarantees returns to the company's shareholders, despite everything.)

The company notably announced a plan in 2022 to "underground" 10,000 miles of power lines that probably should have been "undergrounded" years ago — a plan which may not be all it's cracked up to be. ABC10 did a piece last summer about how work to underground power lines in the tiny El Dorado County town of Cool ended in a conspicuously fire-prone spot, where the company erected brand new utility last year poles and strung up new, exposed, above-ground power lines, apparently because it was more cost-effective. "It's all a lie" was the basic message that locals had to say.

The undergrounding project is the subject of one of three new ads PG&E has been running the last two weeks, both on local broadcast affiliates and on basic cable channels. The title of the series is "Open Lines," and it sure reeks of hours of PR brainstorming and well paid consultants.

In this ad below, Chico customer Samantha talks with PG&E Regional Vice President Joe Wilson, saying of the Paradise fire, "There's a constant fear that who's to say something like that can't happen again?"

"That's fair," Wilson responds, noting the undergrounding plan. "You look back at where we were ten years ago, and we are in a completely different place today."

Yeah, because a whole lot of people died and/or lost their homes, and you had to go bankrupt and pay out huge settlements!

Another ad spot features PG&E Regional Vice President Teresa Alvarado speaking with a customer named Andy about the wildfires the company's lines caused. Alvarado assures Andy that the utility has "reduced wildfire risks by 90%" by installing sensors on utility poles that shuts off the power if a wind-caused disconnect occurs.

The third "Open Lines" ad features Fresno customer Nikki asking PG&E VP of Emergency Preparedness Angie Gibson why she never sees PG&E crews coming out to do any maintenance work on nearby power lines. Gibson replies, "We've implemented drone technology... [which] enhances the inspection, so it allows us to see things faster."

PG&E clearly has an uphill climb to get consumers at large to trust them ever again. But is this really the best foot forward? These aren't even particularly convincing bits of conversation, and it's not like these people, in real life, would be so thoroughly convinced of PG&E's trustworthiness and safety in 30 seconds.

The company will have some pie on its face if, you know, one of their power lines is found to be responsible for another hugely destructive or deadly wildfire, and people will then post clips of these ads in memes to drive the hypocrisy home.

But all eyes are Southern California Edison this week, as the company just revealed that it had a "momentary" power surge on its lines just before the Eaton Fire was sparked in Altadena on January 7, and video has come out of arcing, or sparks, coming from a power line directly above where the fire first started.

So, another California utility could have a similarly large mess, and maybe a subsequent bankruptcy, in its future. Not to mention blood on its hands.

Related: Decades Late to the Game, PG&E Begins Putting Power Lines Underground

A power outage was impacting a whole lot of people in San Mateo Thursday morning, and its cause is still a mystery.

Around 36,000 PG&E customers were without power Thursday morning in and around San Mateo with an outage that started around 8:26 am. As NBC Bay Area reports, two hours later, with power restored for some, 28,400 customers were still in the dark.

As of 2:15 pm Thursday, according to PG&E's outage map, it appeared that thousands were still without power along the 280 corridor and to the east of it, in Burlingame and San Mateo.

The orange areas shown below indicate between 500 and 5000 customers without power.

Crews were working to get power restored by Thursday afternoon, according to a statement from PG&E.

The utility said that, according to a preliminary assessment, the cause of the outage was an equipment problem.

With the announcement of a Red Flag Warning and forecast of a significant Diablo wind event, we now get the inevitable follow-up announcement from PG&E about pre-emptive power shutoffs.

Residents of Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties should be used to the drill by now, and PG&E plans to release exact addresses impacted by upcoming public safety power shutoffs (PSPS), which could begin as soon as Thursday night. The utility says it will give two days notice for these shutoffs, so by Wednesday morning, PG&E customers should be able to check this webpage and enter their address to check if they are included.

Given that PG&E's power lines have to been to blame for sparking multiple major wildfires around Northern California in the last decade, these power shutoffs are meant to mitigate the risks of live wires being the cause of future wildfires amid high-wind events.

The Red Flag Warning, which takes effect Thursday at 11 pm and extends through Saturday night, was issued Tuesday with forecasts of increasingly dry conditions — humidity levels as low as 10% — and Diablo winds blowing offshore, 25 to 45 miles per hour, with isolated gusts of 65 miles per hour at ridge lines.

Luckily, a weak cold front is moving in Wednesday which could bring some sprinkles and dampen some of the very dry vegetation in the North Bay ahead of these winds, but no significant rain is forecast.

In total, 30 California counties are facing potential power outages in the coming days, with Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties likely to see these Thursday and/or Friday.

There have not been any widespread PSPS events in the Bay Area since 2022, and in the 2023 fire season, only a couple of small, targeted shutoffs in August and September impacted a few areas of Napa, Sonoma, Contra Costa, and Alameda counties, with only a couple thousand households affected.

The last such PSPS event to impact the Bay Area was on July 20, when a couple hundred customers in eastern Contra Costa and Alameda counties were affected.

Photo: Fre Sonneveld