California probes blackouts as wildfires spread, liabilities loom

摘要

As Pacific Gas and Electric Co. prepared to roll out another round ofpotentially massive intentional blackouts across Northern and CentralCalifornia Tuesday, aimed at preventing its electric infrastructure fromigniting further wildfires, the embattled utility faces a "majorinvestigation" by the state into its protocols.The California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, will review therecent wave of preventative power outages by Pacific Gas and Electric,or PG&E, and the state's other investor-owned utilities "so we don'thave this scale of the blackouts that we're experiencing and we don'thave the damn excuses," Governor Gavin Newsom said at a pressconference. The state cannot allow widespread outages to become"the new normal," he added.