Northern California Braces for Power Shutoffs Amid Warm, Windy Weekend

Firefighters and PG&E officials braced for hot, dry and windy weather in northern and central areas of the state this weekend that could fan the flames of several major wildfires or ignite new ones.

The company posted a power cut “watch alert” for Saturday evening through Monday morning, when forecasters said a ridge of high pressure will raise temperatures and generate gusty winds flowing from the interior to the coast.

PG&E, the state’s largest utility, said it will continue closely tracking the weather to determine if it will be necessary to shut off power — known as a “public safety power shutoff” — to areas where gusts could damage the company’s equipment or hurl debris into lines that can ignite flammable vegetation.

On Thursday, PG&E said approximately 21,000 customers in northern Butte, Plumas and Yuba counties would lose power. It expanded the alert on Friday afternoon to include portions of Sonoma and Napa counties in the northern Bay Area, but didn’t say how many homes could be affected.

When heavy winds were predicted earlier this month, PG&E cut power to about 167,000 homes and businesses in Central and Northern California in a more targeted approach after being criticized last year for acting too broadly when it blacked out 2 million customers to prevent fires.

PG&E equipment has sparked past large wildfires, including the 2018 fire that destroyed much of the Sierra foothills town of Paradise and killed 85 people.

Numerous studies in recent years have linked bigger U.S. wildfires to global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas, especially because climate change has made California much hotter and drier.

The U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Region announced Friday that it is extending the closure of nine national forests in California due to wildfire concerns, and will review the decision on a daily basis. The list of closures includes Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres, Inyo, Klamath, San Bernardino, Sequoia, Sierra and Six Rivers national forests.

Firefighters battling the state’s largest complex of wildfires, in and around Mendocino National Forest, braced for the change in weather by constructing fuel breaks on Friday to keep the flames from reaching a marijuana-growing enclave where authorities said many of the locals have refused to evacuate and abandon their maturing crops.

The August Complex of fires is nearing the small communities of Post Mountain and Trinity Pines, about 200 miles northwest of Sacramento, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Law enforcement officers went door to door warning of the encroaching fire danger but could not force residents to evacuate, Trinity County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Nate Trujillo said.

“It’s mainly growers,” Trujillo said. “And a lot of them, they don’t want to leave because that is their livelihood.”

One estimate put the value of the area’s legal marijuana crop at about $20 million.

“There (are) millions of dollars, millions and millions of dollars of marijuana out there,” Trujillo said. “Some of those plants are 16 feet tall, and they are all in the budding stages of growth right now.”

As many as 1,000 people remained in Post Mountain and Trinity Pines, authorities and local residents estimated Thursday.

Mike McMillan, spokesman for the federal incident command team managing the northern section of the August Complex, said fire officials plan to deliver a clear message that ”we are not going to die to save people. That is not our job.”

“We are going to knock door to door and tell them once again,” McMillan said. “However, if they choose to stay and if the fire situation becomes, as we say, very dynamic and very dangerous … we are not going to risk our lives.”

A firefighter was killed and another was injured on Aug. 31 while working on the fire. Diana Jones, a volunteer firefighter from Texas, was among 26 people who have died since more than two dozen major wildfires broke out across the state last month.

A memorial service was also held Friday for a veteran firefighter, Charles Morton, 39, a squad boss with the Big Bear Interagency Hotshot Crew who died Sept. 17 while battling the El Dorado Fire in the San Bernardino National Forest east of Los Angeles.

“I know that Charlie was a very skilled, in fact extraordinary, firefighter and a fire leader,” U.S. Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen told the gathering at The Rock Church in San Bernardino.

“He committed himself, often for weeks and months on end, to protecting lives, communities and natural resources all around this country in service to fellow Americans.”

The Butte County Sheriff’s Office on Friday released the identity of another one of the 15 people killed in a rampaging forest fire earlier this month. The remains of Linda Longenbach, 71, of Berry Creek, were found on Sept. 10 in a roadway about 10 feet from an ATV, close to the body of a man previously identified as Paul Winer, 68.

A relative told investigators the victims were aware of the fire and chose not to evacuate.

Associated Press writer John Antczak in Los Angeles contributed to this report.