Both SoCal Edison and PG&E plan to shut off the power when fire weather criteria warrant it. Already, the City of Lompoc is warning its citizens of possible power shutoffs, and in Kern County's Lake Isabella region, where temperatures reached into the 90s amid extreme fire conditions on Tuesday, a Public Safety Power Shutoff advisory would have cut electricity to more than 3,000 customers.
In Santa Barbara County's northern half, Lompoc is normally a cool and foggy locale, but the PG&E high-power transmission lines that serve the city run across mountain regions that are identified as "elevated" and "extreme risk" by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) at its fire-threat map. A similar situation affects cities throughout the state, and for Santa Barbara's South County, power comes from only one set of Southern California Edison transmission lines along the mountain ridges.
The Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) program has been in place in Santa Barbara for about a year — receiving some negative feedback from customers during sweltering summer days last year — and has been used a handful of times across the state, spokespersons for the companies said. Both utilities are being sued for major fires allegedly sparked by power-company equipment in 2017 and 2018, and citing lawsuit liabilities, PG&E filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2019. PG&E spokesperson Jeff Smith said the power shutoff program was more of a response to the dramatically increased wildfire dangers in California caused by a changing climate.