Letters to the Editor: Edison says its outages weren’t random. They sure felt that way

To the editor: Having been subjected to four public safety power shutoffs, or PSPS, in October, I was interested to read the explanation for them provided by Southern California Edison’s Phil Herrington.

From the very first shutoff, the information about our area provided on Edison’s website was wrong. The first time, literally only minutes after the PSPS page was updated to show that our area was not even under consideration for an outage, our power was shut off. In each case afterward, the information provided by Edison continued to show our area not being under PSPS consideration, right up until the lights went out.

Some of these instances had us wondering about the thresholds Edison was using to make these decisions. We lost power on a day of very typical winds for this time of year, and it stayed off for many hours after the winds died down. Edison provided no hint about when power would be restored. It was thoroughly mystifying and very frustrating.

On the bright side, we were forced to buy a generator because we found Edison’s information unreliable.

I hope Edison understands why these outages seemed random. The L.A. Times Editorial Board was right to say these decisions should not be made by the utilities alone.

Mitch Stone, Santa Paula