By Hudson Sangree

As roughly 600,000 Pacific Gas and Electric customers remained without power Thursday, the president of the California Public Utilities Commission called the situation “unacceptable.”

“The management and the response of the company, PG&E, to the [public safety power shutoffs] have been absolutely unacceptable,” CPUC President Marybel Batjer said during a commission meeting in San Francisco. “The impacts to individual communities, to individual people, to the commerce of our state, to the safety of our people has been less than exemplary.

“This cannot be the new normal,” Batjer said. “We can’t accept it as the new normal, and we won’t.”

She called for a review of the public policies that led to the largest blackout to prevent wildfires ever to hit the state.

Earlier this week, PG&E said it might de-energize lines serving roughly 800,000 customers — or approximately 2.4 million residents — in 34 counties of northern and central California. The utility shutoff power to 513,000 customers starting early Wednesday morning and 234,000 more on Thursday. (See Judge Admits PG&E Takeover Plan as Utility Blacks Out Millions.)

At the same time, it restored power to 126,000 customers, including many along California’s North Coast, as the gusting winds that prompted the outage subsided in some areas but picked up in others.

Following procedures established by the State Legislature and the CPUC in recent years, PG&E was trying to prevent fires sparked by electrical equipment in its service territory like those of October 2017 and November 2018, which killed at least 125 people and destroyed nearly 26,000 structures during similar dry, windy conditions.

“We faced a choice between hardship or safety, and we chose safety,” Michael Lewis, PG&E’s vice president of electric operations, said in a statement. “We deeply apologize for the inconvenience and the hardship, but we stand by the decision because the safety of our customers and communities must come first.”

Eighty-six people died in the Camp Fire of November 2018, which destroyed the town of Paradise and leveled more than 14,000 homes there, making it by far the deadliest and most destructive fire in state history. PG&E has acknowledged its equipment likely started the fire beneath a 100-year-old transmission line, which critics contend was poorly maintained. (See Cal Fire Pins Deadly Camp Fire on PG&E.)

Commissioner Genevieve Shiroma suggested this week’s massive shutoff wouldn’t have been necessary if PG&E had maintained and upgraded its infrastructure to prevent fires.

“The sheer magnitude [of PG&E’s public safety power shutoff] is indicative of the condition of the utility in terms of what we call the hardening — that means the condition of the poles, the lines, the wires, the transformers, the transmission lines — and the maintenance, or lack thereof, of the system and the vegetation management,” Shiroma said.

PG&E also came under fire at the CPUC meeting and elsewhere for the failure of its website to handle the crush of traffic from residents seeking information this week. State employees had tried to help PG&E address its website and server issues, the CPUC’s deputy executive director for safety, Elizaveta Malashenko, told commissioners.

Malashenko said the shutoffs affected about 2,400 miles of transmission lines and 24,000 miles of distribution lines. CAISO had been working to contain the shutoffs so that they didn’t spill over into neighboring areas, she said. (See CAISO Seeking to Contain PSPS Spillover.)

Winds are expected to die down by Friday, Malashenko said. PG&E has 45 helicopters and 6,000 personnel assigned to restore power, but crews must visually inspect all lines before re-energizing them, meaning the work could take days, she said.

Southern California Edison shut off power to about 13,000 customers on Thursday at noon as wildfires flared and Santa Ana winds blew hot and dry in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. It had plans in place to blackout up to 174,000 residents as of early Thursday morning.

San Diego Gas & Electric has also warned of possible shutoffs.