Emma Foehringer Merchant and @mariaparazorose.bsky.social report for @highcountrynews.org: /8

www.typeinvestigations.org/investigatio...

Meanwhile, rural residents are bearing additional costs, investing tens of thousands of dollars in backup generators, tossing hundreds of dollars’ worth of spoiled food, and employing scarce resources to direct traffic or set up community cooling centers. 7/

Between 2022 to 2024, the most common cause of fast-trip outages was listed as “unknown.” Others are caused by software glitches and maintenance issues.
6/

It's unclear whether every fast-trip outage is triggered by an active fire risk. According to its own data, PG&E doesn’t understand why many of these outages happen. 5/

That means that the worst impacts from fast-trip outages occur in remote areas — exactly where residents tend to be the most vulnerable due to age, disability or their distance from essential services like hospitals. 4/

Rural communities experience 600% more fast-trip outages than urban and suburban areas. These outages also tend to last longer. 3/

Since 2022, these outages have increased in number and in how many people they impact. In 2024, nearly a million customers experienced fast-trip outages, many of them repeatedly. 2/