San Diego Gas & Electric de-energized a circuit in the Sill Hill area of Descanso Tuesday morning, shutting off power to 87 customers as Santa Ana winds started to buffet parts of San Diego County.

SDG&E officials said power was shut off for safety reasons due to potentially dangerous wildfire conditions aggravated by Santa Ana winds.

The utility also placed outbound dialer calls to customers in Green Valley Falls, Cuyamaca, Viejas and Boulder Creek, alerting them that power outages are more likely in windy conditions and telling them to be prepared with flashlights, extra batteries and an emergency preparedness plan.

The National Weather Service issued a Red Flag Warning for San Diego and southern Orange County, warning of high winds until midnight Friday. Meteorologists are looking at late Wednesday, all day Thursday until early Friday as the peak period for fire danger.


The U.S. Forest Service uses a Santa Ana Wildfire Threat Index and the utility’s meteorologists think the index may reach its highest level — “extreme” — on Thursday. An “extreme” reading has not be recorded since the index was implemented in 2014.

Click here to look at the Santa Ana Wildfire Threat Index

According to officials at the Weather Service in San Diego, very dry vegetation conditions and duration of wind are combining to make for high wildfire danger.

The greater Los Angeles area is already experiencing a deadly spate of wildfires.


The Thomas Fire in Ventura County erupted Monday night and by early Tuesday afternoon had destroyed at least 150 structures and forced 27,000 people to evacuate. Gov. Jerry Brown declared the county in a state of emergency.

The Creek fire broke out at 4 a.m. Tuesday and led to evacuations in parts of Sylmar and Lake View Terrace. High winds were hampering fire efforts Tuesday afternoon.

San Diego County had escaped the fires but at mid-day Tuesday winds of 58 mph were recorded at Sill Hill and 41 mph in North Boulder Creek.

SDG&E officials said as a precaution the utility placed SDG&E and contract firefighting crews in areas where winds were forecast to be the strongest.


“Proactively locating crews in those areas will shorten response time if there is an outage,” SDG&E communications manager Allison Torres said.

In recent years, SDG&E has created a weather network that employs three full-time meteorologists and erected 170 weather stations on poles to measure temperatures, humidity and wind speeds. The stations are concentrated in backcountry regions.

Torres said the Descanso area should have its power restored by Friday at the latest but SDG&E crews were patrolling the line and power could be back as early as Tuesday afternoon.


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rob.nikolewski@sduniontribune.com


(619) 293-1251 Twitter: @robnikolewski