California’s PG&E cuts power to more than 1M residents to prevent wildfires

Pacific Gas & Electric, California’s biggest utility company, shut off electricity to more than 1 million people on Wednesday in an effort to prevent wildfires caused by downed power lines. The utility 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 power outages are expected to affect about 2.5 million people. The utility plans to shut…