PG&E initially warned that approximately 21,000 customers in three counties would lose power beginning Saturday evening but expanded the potential shutoff when the forecast changed. PG&E equipment has sparked past large wildfires, including the 2018 fire that destroyed much of the Sierra foothills town of Paradise and killed 85 people. A drier California means plants are more flammable. The threatened marijuana growing area is in the Emerald Triangle, a three-county corner of Northern California that by some estimates is the nation’s largest cannabis-producing region. Each farm has crops worth half a million dollars or more and many are within days or weeks of harvest.

Source: ABC News September 25, 2020 14:59 UTC