Power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses went out early Wednesday, affecting millions of people in California.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said a forecast of extreme wind and dry weather has created
fire danger of an unprecedented scope, prompting it to initiate the largest preventive outage in state history to reduce the risk of wildfires sparked by faulty power lines.
PG&E said it will turn off power to 800,000 customers — that means about 2 million people — in 34 counties in northern, central and coastal California.