ALPINE, Calif. (KGTV) — Continued Santa Ana winds mean more widespread outages and fire risk for inland and mountain communities like Alpine.
While San Diego Gas & Electric cut off power for hundreds of customers in this community Thursday, thousands more are unsure if they can keep the lights on.
The winds can really whip in places like Alpine, where gusts can clock in at 80 miles per hour. During a Santa Ana event it only takes one spark to go flying and catch on miles of parched vegetation to create a fire that’s incredibly difficult to control.
It’s a reality people who live there, like Rebecca Cuero, know all too well.
“We have way too much dry brush around everywhere as you can tell in the East County,” said Cuero. “Living through the Cedar Fire, Witch Creek fire and seeing what's going on in LA and noticing that we're not taking care of the overgrowth problem.”
That’s why SDG&E cut off power for thousands of homes and businesses around the county, and warned thousands more. As of 10:45 a.m. Thursday, about 2,500 customers were without power; however, SDG&E's website indicated as many as 72,000 customers could be affected.
Here's a look at the outage map:
You can find live outage updates from SDG&E here.
Cuero works at the Southern Indian Health Council. If the clinic loses power, it will have to rely on generators to treat hundreds of patients — many of them elderly and high-risk.
“It's nerve-racking a little bit. You worry about medications going bad, food going bad,” said Cuero. “You just worry about the elderly and the sick people mostly.”
As long as the critical fire weather lasts, the threats of outages, fires and evacuations are here to stay.
“Almost all the time,” said Laura Caswell, CEO of the Southern Indian Health Council. “Because even if they don't shut the power in this area and yesterday they didn't, we're still concerned because if you look around there's a lot of trees. And so when those trees topple over, snap a wire, we have to be ready and prepared to go.”
SDG&E says outages can run as late as Saturday night.
