A customer pushes a shopping cart with bottled water, flashlights, and batteries in a Home Depot parking lot in Emeryville, Calif., U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019. (Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
(Bloomberg) — PG&E Corp., the California utility giant forced into bankruptcy by two years of devastating wildfires, is carrying out the biggest planned blackout yet to keep power lines from sparking more blazes. Cutoffs began overnight Wednesday, with the first phase impacting about 513,000 customers.
The company began cutting power in an orchestrated shutoff that will eventually plunge almost 800,000 customers into darkness across Northern California, including parts of Napa Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. Altogether, more than 2.7 million people may be affected, based on city estimates and the average size of a U.S. household.
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