Amid dangerous fire weather and raging Santa Ana winds that have fueled the devastating 10,400-acre wildfire in Ventura County, tens of thousands of Southern California Edison Customers are without power.
As a precaution, SCE deployed public safety power shutoffs in portions of Los Angeles, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties Wednesday, leaving many residents and businesses scrambling.
The high winds also made the roadways especially dangerous, toppling a big rig on the 210 freeway earlier in the day that caused a massive traffic backup.
Officials at the National Weather Service, who have clocked wind gusts in Ventura County where the Mountain Fire continues to burn with 0% containment of up to 40 miles per hour, extended the red flag warnings through 9 a.m. Thursday.
Fierce gusts up to 80 miles (130 kilometers) an hour were pushing smoke sideways and fueling flames that were tearing through farmland. (Photo by ETIENNE LAURENT / AFP) (Photo by ETIENNE LAURENT/AFP via Getty Images)
In a post to X, formerly Twitter, NWS said that damaging wind gusts of up to 60 miles per hour and relative humidity at 10% in parts of Ventura and L.A. Counties combined with dry vegetation has created “particularly dangerous situation.”
“The power went out, I think, about 4 a.m. from all the wind,” Tony Roboz, who owns a liquor store in Santa Clarita, said. “Checking online, it said it’s not going to come back on until 9 p.m. tomorrow.”
The shop owner added that he now has a store full of products that could potentially go bad.
“We’ll have to go buy generators to turn on all the freezers and turn on the fridge. Hopefully, nothing goes bad,” he said.
Due to the high fire danger, fire officials said they are on standby for any additional fires that may break out and urged residents to stay home if possible and be extremely careful if you must go out.
SoCal Edison said it’s unclear exactly when power will be restored to those without it but said it could be sometime tomorrow.
