PG&E Readies Shutoffs for 70,000 Customers Without a Red Flag Warning

On Tuesday, Oct. 13, two forecasts for the same hills pointed different ways. At 12:15 p.m., the National Weather Service office in Sacramento wrote that fire weather from Thursday into the weekend would stay "within our minor fire weather impacts thresholds at this time." Within hours, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. more than doubled its list of customers who might lose power.

PG&E says it may cut power for safety to about 70,000 customers in 29 Northern and Central California counties, from Wednesday evening, Oct. 14, through Saturday, Oct. 17. The list includes 3,920 Medical Baseline customers, and the trigger is PG&E's own fire-risk model, not a weather service alert: as of early Wednesday, no red flag warning or fire weather watch covered the Bay Area or Sacramento forecast areas.

So the 70,000 is not a weather warning. It is PG&E's estimate of who could lose power under its own rulebook, which explains why no red flag is needed, why Paradise is in scope despite burying most of its lines, and why far fewer than 70,000 may go dark.

To check an address, use PG&E's address lookup at pge.com/pspsupdates, available in 16 languages. Renters and others without an account can get ZIP code alerts at pge.com/pspszipcodealerts; account holders can update contact details at pge.com/mywildfirealerts or 1-800-743-5000.

In Berkeley, where 2,053 customers are in scope, PG&E's outage map showed power going off Thursday between 5:15 a.m. and 6 a.m., with estimated restoration at 2 p.m. Saturday, The Berkeley Scanner reported. The zone runs from parts of downtown into the Berkeley Hills, and CBS San Francisco reported it also took in the entire UC Berkeley campus.

In Paradise, the town said 1,588 customers in town and 3,098 across Butte County were being monitored, with an outage possible from Wednesday evening and power back by Saturday morning, KRCR reported. NSPR said parts of Magalia, Concow, Berry Creek and the town's south and east edges could be affected.

Five counties hold 57% of the scope: San Luis Obispo, Placer, Calaveras, El Dorado and Alameda, led by San Luis Obispo's 10,460 customers. The Bay Area accounts for about 11,000. That morning, PG&E had counted about 30,000 customers in 22 counties; by afternoon, PG&E's Tuesday announcement had reached 29 counties.

PG&E expects Diablo winds to peak Thursday in the Sierra and the North and East Bay, with humidity "in the single digits and teens across most areas."

The rulebook behind the map

As of early Wednesday, California's only red flag warnings covered zones in Ventura and Los Angeles counties, neither on PG&E's list. Fire weather watches sat closer: one for the Tehachapi area, citing "A 60 TO 80 PERCENT PROBABILITY OF GUSTS EXCEEDING 40 MPH ON FRIDAY," and one for the San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara mountains. Those line up with PG&E's southern scope.

Up north, NWS meteorologist Cynthia Palmer told The Press Democrat that Sonoma and Napa weren't expected to meet red flag criteria, which generally require dangerous conditions lasting eight hours or longer.

"But right now, those thresholds should remain below us issuing either wind products or red flags."

Cynthia Palmer, National Weather Service meteorologist

The two are answering different questions. A red flag warning is a public alert for critical fire weather across a whole forecast zone (here's how a fire weather watch differs from a red flag warning). PG&E asks something narrower: could conditions at one power line's location let that line start a fire that turns catastrophic?

Its answer runs in two steps, laid out in a report PG&E filed with state regulators after its fall 2024 shutoff. Step one screens high-risk areas for sustained winds above 19 mph, humidity below 30% and dead fuels below set moisture levels: 9% for "10-hour" fuels and 12% for "100-hour" fuels. Fuel moisture is the water in dead grass, twigs and branches. Red flag warnings "are also considered." One input, not the trigger.

In step two, any one of three tests is enough to cut a circuit: a high combined probability that weather causes an ignition and the fire grows catastrophic; simulated flames above 10 feet or spread above 0.375 mph, "Even if probability of failure is unlikely"; or a known tree or equipment problem. The contractor Technosylva runs "over 100 million fire spread simulations" a day.

That is how one hillside circuit can qualify while the zone around it doesn't. PG&E meteorologists also warned that moisture in dead ground cover is "approaching historic lows in some areas," The Press Democrat reported.

Buried lines, overhead feeders

No town tests that logic like Paradise. Since the 2018 Camp Fire, more than 90% of the town's lines have gone underground, Mayor Steve Crowder told NSPR; he put it at about 95% in comments reported by KRCR. Its last shutoff was in 2020, he told KRCR.

"What was explained to me originally was that once we were undergrounded, we should not have PSPSs at all."

Steve Crowder, mayor of Paradise, to NSPR

What he learned, KRCR reported, is that some buried lines "remain connected to circuits with overhead power lines," and that a shutoff on transmission lines could still darken Paradise, "though he said that is not typical."

The reason is the chain that carries power to a house. "Transmission lines are like the freeways of the electric system," PG&E's 2024 report says. A buried street line is the last stretch of road, and it can be fed by a circuit with overhead sections crossing windy terrain. Switch off the risky segment, and everything downstream goes dark.

Sectionalizing, splitting circuits into smaller pieces with switches, shrinks that blast radius; PG&E credits it with making scoping "more surgical." It also produces what Berkeley Hills resident Jordan Brisk described to ABC7:

"So we get cut off and literally the neighbor over my back fence has all their lights going and the music playing and we're sitting there in the dark."

Jordan Brisk, Berkeley Hills resident

The neighbor isn't lucky. That house just hangs off a different switch.

Most warnings end in darkness, but not all

A notice is not a shutoff. In five past PG&E events, the share of warned customers who actually lost power ranged from 2.3% to 86.6%.

The outlier fell on these same dates five years ago: on Oct. 14–16, 2021, PG&E notified 29,114 customers but cut power to only 666, all in Kern County, after the weather eased. Five events are not a forecast. Still, the notice list is an upper bound, and in four of the five, most warned customers did lose power.

This week's list is already shifting: PG&E said roughly 5,700 customers in the original scope have been dropped even as the total grew. Reviewing transmission lines with the state grid operator alone "can last several hours," PG&E has told regulators.

Even at full size, this event is modest by PG&E's history: about one-fourteenth of its roughly 967,700-customer event in October 2019, yet more than four times the 16,223 cut in June 2025. Figures below come from PG&E reports to the California Public Utilities Commission and, for 2019 and 2020, CPUC staff reports.

One caution: a PG&E "customer" is a meter, not a person.

Modest isn't routine, though. The new shutoffs could begin about two days after PG&E restored power from last weekend's shutoff at 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 12; the first notices went out that same Monday, and the expanded list less than a day later. PG&E also said roughly 4,000 customers hit earlier in the week may be affected again. For many others, PG&E said, this will be their first shutoff since the program began in 2018.

PG&E's storm bill credit, up to $100 for weather outages of 48 hours or more, does not apply to a Public Safety Power Shutoff. Berkeley's estimated window runs past 48 hours and earns nothing.

A closed refrigerator keeps food safe up to four hours, and a full freezer usually stays frozen about two days, KQED reported, citing the U.S. Department of Agriculture. PG&E spokesperson Paul Moreno told NSPR to consider dry ice for food and medicine and to keep phones charged.

Medical Baseline customers make up 5.65% of the scope. When possible, PG&E staff visit those who don't confirm their notice, prioritizing people on life-sustaining equipment. But PG&E's Portable Battery Program for medical devices "has reached capacity for 2026."

PG&E was still "sourcing" Community Resource Centers on Tuesday; they offer restrooms, device charging, Wi-Fi, blankets and water, but no EV charging. For help before, during or after an outage, call 211 or text "PSPS" to 211.

The long fix is digging. PG&E calls its 10,000-mile Undergrounding Program the largest U.S. effort of its kind, and on Oct. 1 it filed a plan to bury about 5,000 more miles from 2028 to 2037. But it expects more than 1,900 miles completed by the end of 2027. Moreno told CBS Sacramento: As we continue to build out the system, we can reduce the frequency of public safety power shutoffs for more and more people.

Until then, PG&E estimates its 2025 shutoffs "may have avoided 146,537 acres burned," a figure modeled from fire simulations, not measured.

For now, the 70,000 is a ceiling, not a forecast. How far below it the real number falls will be settled hour by hour, on ridgelines where the weather service saw nothing worth a warning.