SAN FRANCISCO — California’s power grid operators are keeping an eye on the thermometer Tuesday after avoiding highly anticipated rolling blackouts a day earlier as an ongoing heat wave stresses the electrical system. The California Independent System Operator warned Monday that as many as 3.3 million homes and businesses would...
1 Million California Homes, Businesses Could Lose Power As Electricity Demand Rises
Up to 1 million homes and businesses across California are expected to lose power Monday evening as part of rolling blackouts to ease pressure on the state's electric grid as a dayslong heat wave engulfing the West Coast creates an energy shortage. The California Independent System Operator said utility companies...
California Removes 1 County from COVID Watch List, Adds 5 Others
SACRAMENTO — The number of counties on California's monitoring list for coronavirus cases grew to 42 even as Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday the state's overall virus trends were heading in the right direction. Newsom said the state found an additional 14,861 virus cases after reviewing a backlog of nearly...
Blackouts & Record Temps: 112 in Fresno, 130 in Death Valley
Heat records fell throughout the Valley on Sunday as a relentless heatwave baked California and sapped the state's power supply. But Fresno's record high of 112 degrees for Aug. 16 — which bettered the mark of 110 set in 1920 — was no match for the 130 degrees reported in...
Newsom Demands Probe of Weekend Power Blackouts
An irate Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an emergency proclamation allowing some energy users and utilities to tap backup energy sources amid the state's days-long heatwave that has prompted rolling blackouts affecting hundreds of thousands of households. Newsom also sent a letter demanding that the state energy commission, state public utilities...
Walters: California’s Crisis of Competence
Year by year and article by article, Ralph Vartabedian has revealed to Californians the woeful shortcomings of the state’s largest public works project, a north-south bullet train. Vartabedian, a writer for the Los Angeles Times, has made a virtual career of uncovering the project’s managerial, financial and political failings, lending...
Newsom: New Data Show California Is ‘Turning the Corner’
SAN FRANCISCO — California is showing improvement in its fight against the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday, citing a significantly lower number of confirmed new cases as the state begins to clear backlogged cases from a data failure. The Democratic governor said he also was encouraged by a...
Big Creek Has Essential Workers, a Closed School, and No Child Care Center for Kids
Big Creek, population 188, is in essence a Southern California-Edison company town — one where parents live with their children year-round. The parents run the region's massive hydroelectric project that generates one-sixth of all the hydropower produced in California, or about 4 million megawatt-hours per year. These are the folks...
Walters: State Tech Failures Hit Home Again
While marking time as lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom wrote a book about how technology could transform government. “I want to make government as smart as Google,” Newsom told an interviewer after the book, “Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square and Reinvent Government,” was published in 2013. While technology “is...
California Quake Alerts to Be Standard on Android Phones
SACRAMENTO — California's earthquake early warnings will be a standard feature on all Android phones, bypassing the need for users to download the state's MyShake app in order to receive alerts, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services said. The state worked with the U.S. Geological Survey and Google, the maker...