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Southern California Edison Talks Agoura Hills Power Outages
Southern California Edison addressed the Thanksgiving power outages in the city and offered steps forward.
AGOURA HILLS, CA — Southern California Edison addressed local concern over power outages on Thanksgiving day at the Dec. 8 city council meeting.
During the week of Thanksgiving, the city saw power outages initiated by SCE to avoid an equipment-ignited wildfire. Six counties and around 81,000 customers were effected by the outages around Thanksgiving day, said Diane Forte, government relations manager for SCE.
Two of the ten service areas in Agoura Hills lost power on Thanksgiving.
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The outages, dubbed Public Safety Power Shutoffs, are implemented by SCE when there is a chance SCE equipment could ignite a fire given weather conditions. Last month's outages were prompted by a multi-day red flag warning issued by the National Weather Service due to risky fire weather.
On Nov. 25 Agoura Hills saw some of its strongest winds in a long time, Forte said, and the weather ended up being more extreme than initially projected. High wind speeds and low humidity made a perfect storm for wildfire spread, should SCE equipment ignite.
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Council member Linda Northrup, who lost power on Thanksgiving, said she lost food Thanksgiving morning as a result of the outages. She said she wishes there had been better, more accessible communication from SCE.
"We totally recognize that the event of the week of the 24th was really terrible timing. It was a difficult situation, we put a tremendous hardship on all of our customers who were impacted by holidays, spoiling of food [and] the inconvenience of losing power no matter when it is," Forte said.
Other council members underscored Northrup's call for better communication, asking for elected officials to have a direct contact at SCE during outages.
SCE is making efforts to avoid PSPS in the future, including insulating bare wire to protect it from wind and vegetation, segmenting energy circuits to better localize shutoffs and improving customer outreach, said Amir Noori, senior manager for SCE.
SCE offers backup batteries year round for people with medical devices and other essential needs. See how to get one using this link.
SCE representatives said that Thanksgiving food lost during the outages cannot be reimbursed. SCE only offers reimbursements for shutoffs that were caused by company negligence.
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