Power Outages Begin In California Amid Hot, Windy Weather

In this Dec. 3, 2018, file photo, a vehicle rests in front of a home leveled by the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif. Two years to the day after some of the deadliest wildfires tore through Northern California wine country, two of the state's largest utilities were poised Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019, to shut off power to more than 700,000 customers in 37 counties, in what would be the largest preventive shut-off to date as utilities try to head off wildfires caused by faulty power lines. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

BY OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ, JANIE HAR

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Millions of people in California woke up in the dark Wednesday after Pacific Gas & Electric started shutting off power to prevent what the utility called an unprecedented wildfire danger.

PG&E said it cut power to more than 500,000 customers in Northern California and that it plans to gradually turn off electricity to nearly 800,000 customers to prevent its equipment from starting wildfires during hot, windy weather.

A second group of about 234,000 customers will lose power starting at noon, the utility said.

The utility plans to shut off power in parts of 34 northern, central and coastal California counties to reduce the chance of fierce winds knocking down or toppling trees into power lines during a siege of hot, dry, gusty weather.

Gusts of 35 mph to 45 mph (56-72 kph) were forecast to sweep a vast swath of the state, from the San Francisco Bay area to the agricultural Central Valley and especially in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where a November wildfire blamed on PG&E transmission lines killed 85 people and virtually incinerated the town of Paradise.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention said it increased staffing in preparation for extreme fire weather.

The winds will be the strongest and most widespread the region has seen in two years, and given the scope of the danger, there was no other choice but to stage the largest preventive blackout in state history, PG&E said.

“This is a last resort,” said Sumeet Singh, head of the utility’s Community Wildfire Safety Program.

However, people should be outraged by the move, Gov. Gavin Newsom said. “No one is satisfied with this, no one is happy with this,” he said.

The utility needs to upgrade and fix its equipment so massive outages aren’t the norm going forward, he said.

It could take as many as five days to restore power after the danger has passed because every inch of power line must be checked to make sure it isn’t damaged or in danger of sparking a blaze, PG&E said.

The news came as residents in the region’s wine country north of San Francisco marked the two-year anniversary of deadly wildfires that killed 44 and destroyed thousands of homes. San Francisco is the only county in the nine-county Bay Area where power will not be affected.

To the south, Southern California Edison said more than 106,000 of its customers in parts of eight counties could face power cuts as early as Thursday as Santa Ana winds loomed.

The cutbacks followed a plan instituted after deadly wildfires — some blamed on downed PG&E transmission lines — destroyed dozens of lives and thousands of homes in recent years and forced the utility into bankruptcy over an estimated $30 billion in potential damages from lawsuits.

The outages Wednesday weren’t limited to fire-prone areas because the utilities must turn off entire distribution and transmission lines to much wider areas to minimize the risk of wildfires.

Classes were cancelled for thousands of schoolchildren and at the University of California, Berkeley, Sonoma State University and Mills College.

The California Department of Transportation said it was installing generators to avoid closing the Caldecott Tunnel linking the East Bay to San Francisco and the Tom Lantos Tunnel on State Route 1 in Pacifica.

“The tunnels can’t operate without power,” Caltrans tweeted.

PG&E had warned of the possibility of a widespread shut-off Monday, prompting residents to flock to stores for supplies as they prepared for dying cellphone batteries, automatic garage doors that won’t work and lukewarm refrigerators.

Residents of the Sonoma County city of Cloverdale, population 9,300, were preparing for the possibility of zero power and downed internet and cellphone lines, as happened during the wine country fires. Cloverdale homes were not burned then, but residents were worried sick over family in burn zones and in the dark without communications, Mayor Melanie Bagby said.

She accused PG&E of failing to upgrade its equipment.

“It’s inexcusable that we’re in the situation that we’re in,” she said. “We pay our bills, and we gave PG&E a monopoly to guarantee we would have” reliable power.

But Santa Rosa Mayor Tom Schwedhelm said he was grateful PG&E was taking proactive action. His city lost 5% of its housing a 2017 fire that killed 22 and torched nearly 6,000 structures in Sonoma and Napa counties. State investigators determined the fire was sparked by a private electrical system, and was not the fault of PG&E.

Hospitals would operate on backup power, but other systems could see their generators fail after a few days. Outages even posed a threat that fire hydrants wouldn’t work at a time of extreme fire danger.

The East Bay Municipal Utility District serving Alameda and Contra Costa counties, recently spent $409,000 to rent 29 backup generators for use beginning at noon Wednesday.

“The backup generators that we have are stationed at the pumping plants, which pump water to the fire hydrants,” spokeswoman Andrea Pook told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Counties activated their emergency centers and authorities urged people to have supplies of water for several days, to keep sensitive medicines such as insulin in cool places, to drive carefully because traffic lights could be out, to have a full gas tank for emergencies and to check the food in freezers and refrigerators for spoilage after power is restored.

PG&E set up about 30 community centers offering air conditioning, restrooms, bottled water and electronic charging stations during daylight hours.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf asked residents Tuesday not to clog 911 lines with non-emergencies and urged people to be prepared. The city canceled all police officers’ days off in preparation for the outages.

PG&E said it was informing customers by text and email about where and when the power would be cut. But its website, where it directed people to check whether their addresses would be affected, was not working most of the day Tuesday after being overloaded with visitors.

Raised In The Projects: San Francisco Elects Black Woman Mayor

Incoming mayor London Breed smiles while speaking at Rosa Parks Elementary School in San Francisco, Thursday, June 14, 2018. It is now the job of Breed, the first black woman elected mayor of the city, to unite a wealthy but frustrated San Francisco, where the high-tech economy has sent the median price of a home soaring to $1.3 million and where homeless tents and human waste fester on sidewalks.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco's incoming mayor knows the yawning gap between rich and poor firsthand, having been raised by her grandmother in the city's drug- and violence-riddled projects. It is now the job of London Breed — the first black woman elected mayor of the city — to unite a wealthy but conflicted San Francisco, where the high-tech economy has sent the median price of a home soaring to $1.3 million and where homeless tents and human waste fester on sidewalks.

People who know her say the 43-year-old Breed has the grit, drive and deep love for her hometown to tackle its problems. "I know where she comes from. I know where she is currently," said high school classmate Adonne Loggins. "It's not an easy way to come up. A lot of people fall by the wayside, and she didn't. That's a tribute to her character and her willingness to fight."

Breed, currently president of the 11-member Board of Supervisors, was declared the winner Wednesday of last week's eight-way mayoral election. The Democrat takes office next month. She is only the second woman to become mayor of San Francisco. The first was Dianne Feinstein, now senator.

San Francisco, with a population of 870,000, is about 6 percent black, one of the smallest percentages among major U.S. cities. In her first official speech as mayor-elect on Thursday, Breed fondly recalled people telling her to go to college when she didn't know what that was.

"If it wasn't for a community that believed in me and supported me and raised me and did what was necessary to make sure that I was a success, I would not be here," she said to several hundred people at Rosa Parks Elementary School. "But the problem is, I am the exception and not the norm, and as mayor I want to change what is wrong with this city."

Breed wants the technology sector to work with youngsters so that they have a real shot at sharing in the city's immense wealth. She wants to build more housing more quickly and supports the use of legal conservatorships to get mentally ill people and drug users off the street and into treatment.

She has also promised to end long-term homeless tent camps within a year of taking office. Breed has a broad smile, a blunt way of speaking and a down-to-earth demeanor. She is a big foodie who lives in a rent-controlled apartment in the city's fashionably dilapidated Lower Haight neighborhood, blocks from the traditionally black Western Addition and Fillmore neighborhoods where she grew up.

She unwinds at night by washing dishes by hand — no dishwasher in her unit — and re-hashing her day with friends by phone. Like many other residents of the city, she has been unable to afford a house. That may change; as mayor, she will be paid $335,996 a year.

Breed was raised by her grandmother Comelia Brown, a house cleaner who told a young London to make her bed, clean the kitchen and not even think about skipping school if she wanted to continue living in her house.

She drank powdered milk, and Christmas toys came from the firefighters' annual giveaway. Her grandmother died in 2016 after a long struggle with dementia. "I gave my grandma a really hard time. And can I tell you? She never gave up on me," she said Thursday.

A brother ended up in prison, and a younger sister died of a drug overdose in 2006, but Breed earned a bachelor's degree from the University of California at Davis and then a master's in public administration from the University of San Francisco.

Loggins, a classmate at Galileo High, recalls an outspoken, stubborn girl active in school politics and the black student union who was itching to improve the system. She was voted the girl in her senior class most likely to succeed.

Breed got her start in politics in the mid-1990s as an intern for then-Mayor Willie Brown, writing proclamations and answering mail. "I was living in public housing," she recalled in a recent interview at one of her favorite Mexican restaurants. "The ability to get stuff done by saying you're calling from the mayor's office was amazing."

For more than a decade, she headed the African American Art & Culture Complex, beefing up programs for at-risk youth and the elderly. She encouraged a police presence there, not just because of the potential for violence but also because she wanted the youngsters to develop good relationships with police, she said.

In 2012, she decided to challenge the supervisor for her district, appalled that then-Mayor Ed Lee had appointed someone Breed felt was out of touch with the community. Most of the city's power brokers, including Lee and Brown, told her to stay out, she recalled.

"A lot of people told her it would be an uphill battle, it would be a difficult race to win," said Debbie Mesloh, president of the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women. "She said she was going to go to every house and walk every neighborhood, and she did."

She won, but not before taking heat for an expletive-laden rant about how she wasn't controlled by anyone, including her mentor, Brown. The rant cost her Feinstein's endorsement. Friends and colleagues say Breed has since smoothed the rough edges, but the idea that she is beholden to others, including the business sector that supported her mayoral run, rankles.

"I'm not the old guard," she said. "I make my own decisions and I do what I feel is the right thing to do, and I stand by the decisions that I make." Amelia Ashley-Ward, publisher of the San Francisco Sun-Reporter, called Breed an example to "every young girl everywhere who wants to be something."

"They just need to stand up and fight for what they want to be, and, yes, be stubborn and hard-headed sometimes," Ashley-Ward said.

Nigerians Are Dying In Libyan Prisons, Say Returnees

A terrified Nigerian youth is arrested by Libyan troops. When war broke out last year in Libya, the rebels labeled Black people “mercenaries” of Qaddafi. Thousands were lynched or imprisoned and tortured, whether they were Libyan-born or had come from sub-Saharan Africa to work. The end of the war did not end the persecution of Blacks.

BY KAYODE OGUNWALE/SAN FRANCISCO BAY VIEW

Lagos – Nigerians who were recently repatriated from crisis-torn Libya described their ordeal after they were caught between two feuding camps.

Their appearance tells the story of the ordeals they went through in their host country. The 327 Nigerians who were recently evacuated from Libya wear the scar like a toga. Disheveled, disillusioned and angry, the returnees – men, women and children – arrived at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in mid-July in two batches on board a Tripoli Air Memphis Subme plane.

The stranded Nigerians, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), were evacuated to the country from Libya through the effort of the International Office for Migration (IOM), a United Nations body.

Statistics by the agency indicate of those brought back, 113 are females and 214 males. Among them also are 11 under-aged children and one elderly person.

Weekly Trust learnt that some of the returnees had been tortured or imprisoned by the new government in Tripoli before they were evacuated. Some of them who relived their experiences painted a gloomy picture of the post-Qaddafi era. They had been caught in the crossfire there.

Mr. Okwudolor John said, “The situation is very bad in Libya. Nigerians are suffering; some are very sick while others are dying.

“We lost everything during the crisis: money, clothes, everything indeed. Libyan hoodlums capitalized on the crisis to rob and dispossess us of our property.”

Esther Omoreghe, who returned with two of her children while her Ghanaian husband and her son died in the heat of the crisis, regretted her sojourn to a foreign land and vowed that she would never allow her children or relations to travel outside Nigeria.

A returnee simply identified as Jennifer, who could not hold back tears, said she left Nigeria in search of greener pastures, but came back dejected with a pregnancy.

“We lost everything during the crisis: money, clothes, everything indeed. Libyan hoodlums capitalized on the crisis to rob and dispossess us of our property.”

“The Nigerian government should wake up, because so many of us are dying in Libyan prisons. Libyans do not want to see us at all.

“If you have somebody in Libya and have not heard from the person for a long time, just know either the person is dead or in one of the prisons,” she said.

Jennifer said the person responsible for her pregnancy, a Nigerian, was in one of the unknown prisons.

Miss Idemudia Joy said her travelling to Libya was a “wasted effort,” blaming the different levels of governments in the country for her predicament.

“I think if everything had been well in Nigeria, none of us would want to go through hell on earth. I went to Libya through the desert. I trekked night after night through the desert, but see where I have ended up. But I still thank God I came back complete and was not detained endlessly in their prisons. Here I can start a small business to take care of my baby and myself,” she said. “If you have somebody in Libya and have not heard from the person for a long time, just know either the person is dead or in one of the prisons.”

Idemudia urged the federal government to expedite action to evacuate Nigerians from Libyan prisons and hospitals and those hiding in different villages.

One of the returnees, who came home with POP on his leg, said he was shot by a security officer while doing his business in the crisis-torn country. He said there was an increasing hatred for Nigerians and appealed to the federal government to act fast to save young Nigerians in Libya.

“The government should stop saying there are no Nigerians in Libya. There are many of us in prisons, hospitals and some doing odd jobs for companies, just to find a place to hide,” he said.

A NEMA official who spoke on condition of anonymity said it is not only Libya that is repatriating Nigerians. “On March 7, 2011, at the peak of crises in some parts of North Africa, NEMA in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and other partners repatriated about 991 Nigerians, mainly from Egypt and Tunisia, while on the Feb. 27, 2012, about 292 Nigerians returned from Libya to Lagos.

Also, 423 Nigerian returnees were received by NEMA at the border town of Gamboru-Ngala in Borno State in four batches in 2011.

Altogether, over 3,000 Nigerian victims of the Arab Spring crises, he said, have been repatriated to Nigeria by NEMA and other international and national humanitarian organizations. The first batch returned at the peak of the Tunisian and Egyptian crises when many nationals were trapped in those crisis torn countries.

He said many Nigerians could not be evacuated then, because most of them could not be reached at the time of the scheduled evacuation, as most of them were living in the rural and remotest areas in those countries.

Another hindrance in reaching Nigerians at the time, he said, was that many of them could not access mass communications like social media, radio and television that were deployed by the Nigerian embassies and NEMA to inform the distressed Nigerians on the assembly points for their evacuations.

“It’s pertinent to stress that most of those who turned up for evacuation earlier later turned down the opportunity to return to Nigeria, and with the humanitarian principle of non-compulsion to force people to reside against their place of choice, the Nigerian government was compelled to leave the Nigerians who decided to remain until they voluntarily opted to return to Nigeria.

“The current returnees may be part of those who refused to return at the initial time, while more of them may turn up for eventual return when they feel like returning to their fatherland, he said.”

In Libya, 327 Nigerians await flights to take them home. Some had not heard of earlier opportunities to leave, and others had chosen to stay, hoping for an end to the persecution of Blacks.