Southern California Edison has intermittently shut off power in areas the company has identified as having heightened wildfire risks, which include areas of north Fontana, Bloomington, and Jurupa Valley.

The public safety power shutoffs are a tool used by SCE, in “which we may temporarily shut off power to your neighborhood during dangerous weather conditions to prevent our electric system from becoming a source of ignition,” the company says on its website. The shutoffs are a measure of “last resort.”

San Bernardino resident Jason Corona said he’s been without power for at least six days, and had a small window on Saturday, Jan. 11, when the power came back on.

Corona was at the SCE resource center set up at the Jessie Turner Health and Community Center in Fontana on Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 14, seeking answers and a place to recharge. He said there weren’t many answers provided.

Corona lives with his daughter and girlfriend and said he has a small generator at home, enough to keep the fridge and water heater running.

“With a generator, we’re trying to survive, but the cost of gas and everything to go keep filling it up, and buying the generator is expensive,” Corona said. “I have been going to friends to charge devices at their house and this is the first time I have come here (the SCE resource center).”

He said he is frustrated by the limited communication and what he called the “mishandling of customers.”

“They don’t care. They’re just using the fires in LA as something to defend themselves for what is happening here,” Corona said.

Two fires sparked in Los Angeles County on Jan. 7, amid a major windstorm that saw wind gusts above 80 mph. The fast-moving Eaton fire near Pasadena and the Palisades fire in Pacific Palisades has caused dozens of deaths and billions of dollars in damage.

At least three lawsuits representing more than a dozen victims were filed Monday, Jan. 13, in Los Angeles County Superior Court against Edison, blaming the utility for igniting the Eaton fire, which reduced areas of Altadena to rubble and caused at least 16 deaths.

The two blazes continue to burn in Los Angeles County as fire crews work to gain containment during the current red flag warning in place across Southern California.

For Justin Frogge, a longtime Bloomington resident, the power outages seem out of ordinary.

“My family has lived in Bloomington for three generations, and winds have been crazy the entire time.
We’ve had an entire roof fly off before and a whole carport fly into the neighbor’s yard, and power stayed on through all of this,” Frogge said. He also has a generator to keep his refrigerator running, while he said some of his neighbors aren’t as fortunate.

“One neighbor said he’s living off Jack in the Box,” Frogge said. “He said, ‘Everything in my fridge went to waste the first time. I don’t have money to replace it right now for it to just go bad again.’ So he’s going out for every meal.”

He also said he’s concerned about his neighbors keeping warm at night as overnight temperatures have been dropping into the 40s and in some areas even lower.

Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren says she has heard frustrations from many residents about the long outages. It’s affecting people in various ways including those with medical devices.

“We have never had it off all so long, and we never had where so many people may have elderly family members that can’t be cold or they need their oxygen,” Warren said in an interview Tuesday.

She said city staff was doing their best to accommodate and support residents but the city has no influence over the SCE shutoffs.

“We’re going to do everything in our power to educate, and that’s what the city can do,” she said. “We are going to put up signage, which is going to include being prepared for windstorms.”

Warren said she and city staff were looking to improve and establish better protocols for residents’ safety in the event of an emergency

“There’s a lot of things that this time around that I really am going to focus on and making sure our public has the right information,” Warren said. “We need to do a better job in making sure people know where to evacuate when it’s late at night.”

SCE representative Gabriela Ornelas said the utility was monitoring weather conditions and safety in the areas affected.

On Wednesday afternoon, SCE’s website was reporting more than 95,000 customers in its Southern California footprint were without power, including 19,591 customers in LA County, 14,235 in Riverside County, and 32,180 in San Bernardino County.

“There is a possibility for temporary restoration as long as the weather permits,” Ornelas said. “Teams are looking at how the winds are evolving if they’re changing trajectory or if they’re changing an intensity, they’re monitoring all of those details so that we can update the PSPS shutoffs and the customers under consideration.”

More than 3,000 crews are working around the clock to restore power. She also said there has been damage to infrastructure because of the weather.

In neighborhoods some residents may be without power, while homes as close as across the street power can be on, which Ornelas said is because of the circuit system the company operates on.

“It is possible for customers on one circuit to be without power because their circuit is being impacted, possibly in another area, and their neighbor’s power is still on because their neighbor is served by a circuit that has not been shut off,” Ornelas said.

Ornelas recommends customers visit SCE.com to find information on reimbursements or to visit a resource center.

High wind warnings are still in effect for the area until at least Thursday evening, according to the National Weather Service.

Those looking for SCE resource centers and additional information on current and planned outages can visit https://www.sce.com/outage-center.

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It’s only mid-December and already California’s weather is putting the state on high alert for winter — and it’s likely far from over.

Just this past week, a major wildfire raced into Malibu, fueled by dangerous Santa Ana winds, and a powerful storm dumped feet of snow in the mountains, caused flooding in the Bay Area and in Santa Cruz County, formed a tornado.

And now, forecasters warn that similar conditions are likely to return this week, with high winds in Southern California prompting further fire concerns, and a series of atmospheric rivers bound for Northern California that could bring more flooding and headaches for travelers.

These diverging winter weather patterns are providing the latest reminder about how much California can differ climatologically, especially when it comes to early-winter precipitation.

“It’s fairly common to have other parts of the West get targeted and we kind of get left out,” Robbie Munroe, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Oxnard, said of Southern California’s relative dryness to up north. He said the sharp contrast often eases by January or February, when the jet stream — which tends to direct moisture-laden storms — shifts further south.

So even as Northern California this weekend dealt with significant rainfall and high winds — closing roads in Sonoma County, downing trees along the North Bay Coast, cutting off power to thousands — firefighters in Southern California continued to work on the bone-dry landscape around the Franklin fire in Malibu, which was just over 50% contained early Monday.

The Southland remains in high fire season, which could last into the New Year without a wetting rainfall, and forecasters say more Santa Ana winds are on the way.

Beginning Tuesday afternoon, much of Ventura County and western Los Angeles County will be under a red flag warning, with northeast winds reaching up to from 40 mph and some isolated gusts hitting 60 mph, especially in the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica Mountains.

Munroe said the winds are not expected to be as strong or dry as the winds that helped fan the Franklin fire last week, but conditions are still delicate with low humidity and dry brush. This “traditional Santa Ana corridor,” which includes the region that saw the Mountain fire explode in November, will again have the potential to see extreme behavior if a fire sparks, Munroe said.

“There is still plenty of shared concern by meteorologists and fire personnel across the area due to the receptive fuels that we have seen recently,” the fire weather warning said early Monday, which was later updated to a red flag warning.

There was some early hope that Southern California could get significant rain by the end of the week, when a string of wet storms are expected to make their way south from the Gulf of Alaska, but those have mostly evaporated.

“The greatest amount of rain impacts will stay to our north, more than likely,” Munroe said.

This next period of wet weather is forecast to kick off in Northern California Friday, bringing more rain, snow and potential flooding to the region as a “series of atmospheric rivers push inland,” according to the weather service’s Weather Prediction Center.

“We’re anticipating a wet week next week,” said Crystal Oudit, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Monterey. “We might stay in a wet pattern for… Christmas week.”

That precipitation will come days after much of Northern California was soaked this past weekend and into Monday. The most significant storm brought drenching rains and high winds Saturday, prompting the first-ever tornado warning in San Francisco, where wind gusts up to 80 mph caused widespread damage.

While a twister didn’t end up touching down in San Francisco, one did just south in Scotts Valley in Santa Cruz County.

The tornado recorded wind speeds up to 90 mph as it tore a path almost 30 yards wide for nearly a third of a mile, according to the National Weather Service. At least three people were injured as the tornado downed trees and power poles, ripped off branches, overturned vehicles and damaged street signs, the weather service reported. It was classified as a weak E-F1, which the National Weather Service considers a moderate tornado on its scale from EF-0 to EF-5.

While tornadoes aren’t regular occurrences in the Bay Area, there have been several recorded in the area, including seven others in Santa Cruz County, the National Weather Service reported.

The storm over the weekend also dumped significant snow across the northern Sierra Nevada, including more than two feet of fresh powder in Lake Tahoe. Quick bouts of rain temporarily flooded some roadways and underpasses in the Bay Area, submerging cars in one low-lying street in Livermore.

It doesn’t appear the next round of storms beginning Friday have any notable winds associated with them, Oudit said, but she noted that some forecasts are still too far out to know for sure.

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