California braces for renewed fire threat from windy weather

With bone-dry humidity and wind gusts possibly hitting 55 mph, Pacific Gas & Electric warned that it may begin cutting power Wednesday evening to as many as 54,000 customers in 24 counties.The nation's largest utility was expected to make a decision earlier Wednesday on whether to implement the preemptive electricity cuts in an effort to prevent fires from being started by damaged power lines fouled or knocked down in high winds.“We really view it as a last resort option,” said Mark Quinlan, the company’s incident commander.The utility also has deployed generators and other measures to keep electricity flowing in some areas that might otherwise have lost power during the outages, Quinlan said.About 33,000 homes and businesses could begin losing power at 6 p.m., mainly in the Sierra Nevada foothills and northern San Francisco Bay Area, followed by 21,000 other customers two hours later in other portions of the Sierras and the Bay Area, along with portions of the Central Coast, PG&E said.The figures for affected customers range from more than 11,300 in Butte County, 6,000 in Santa Cruz County and around 5,400 customers in Alameda County to just 10 in Yolo County, according to the utility.About 200 people in Humboldt County in the far north could lose power Thursday afternoon as winds hit there, PG&E said.All power should be restored by late Friday night, the utility said.The outages would include regions already hit by massive wildfires.