The power company crazy-meter has risen to “1990s rolling blackouts” level of stupid. The map link below links to a Pacific Gas and Electric map. The areas with the black dotted lines are planned outages for tonight. Basically, as a result of years of neglect of the power grid - the only option left is to turn off the power when the wind blows.
This is an entirely solvable engineering problem whether through trimming / clearing of brush, adding failsafes to poles to prevent fires from pulsing, and/or burying lines.
Edit: PGE has also had troubling keeping their website online. “They directed customers to their Twitter handle as an alternative source of up-to-date information.” - I am so glad my mom doesn’t live out here. Telling her to check Twitter would be the last damn straw.
