Bay Briefing: The present and likely future of PG&E power shut-offs - San Francisco Chronicle

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Good morning, Bay Area. It’s Wednesday, Sept. 9, and Oakland is looking for a transformative police chief — on a very tight schedule. Here’s what you need to know to start your day.

Loss of all kinds of power

A record 2 million acres have already burned this year in California even before the state enters what is normally its most dangerous time for wildfire. The first of PG&E’s preventative power shut-offs this year came Monday evening as dramatic wildfires were already burning around the state and followed the recent threat of rolling blackouts during a heat wave.

The rolling blackout crisis and fire-safety shut-offs are separate issues with distinct causes, reporters J.D. Morris and Michael Williams write. But the conditions underlying each — extreme heat and high fire danger — are expected to persist and even worsen in California’s warming climate.

Plus, the pandemic has changed the way the utility’s customers are affected by shut-offs — think residents working from home, including teachers trying to manage classes with no power.

Read more about how PG&E and Northern California residents are reacting.

PG&E power shut-offs: Here’s what you need to know and what’s new in 2020.

Fighting global warming from home: How climate change activists are adapting to the pandemic. MicroClimates: Sign up for The Chronicle’s local climate change newsletter here.

Latest on fires

A home is engulfed in flames by the Creek Fire in the Tollhouse area of Fresno County.

While the fires around the Bay Area are increasingly contained, wildfires continued to ravage Northern California on Tuesday and pump out smoke across the state. More campers were airlifted from blazes near Fresno and more than a dozen firefighters were forced to deploy emergency shelters in Monterey County near Big Sur.

Read the latest on fires in California here.

Red flag: Fire danger to drop by Wednesday morning as winds quiet and temperatures drop.

Air quality map: The latest air quality data in the Bay Area.

From Tom Stienstra: From Berryessa to Big Basin, park reopenings could take weeks to years.

New growth: Bay Area farm loses 100,000 bay laurel trees in fire — but it's not the end for this spice company.

School’s ope — oops, never mind!

Andrea Keenan distributes a laptop to a student after in-person classes were postponed at Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Sausalito.

The excited kindergartner arrived just before 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, a new Spider-Man backpack over his shoulders with matching Spider-Man pull-on shoes ready for his first day of school.

But instead of hugging his parents goodbye and heading to class, the Sausalito student, 5-year-old Majesty, was sent home.

Majesty’s school, Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy, was supposed to be one of the first public campuses in the Bay Area to reopen to in-person learning, but had to reverse course after a staff member’s coronavirus test result came back questionable. District officials notified parents and teachers at 11 p.m. Monday and some families never got the message.

The last-minute delay showed just how hard it will be to reopen classrooms in the middle of a pandemic, especially for public schools.

More:

Santa Clara County moves from the first- to second-most restrictive tier in California’s coronavirus monitoring framework. What does it mean for the county? Plus: Where all Bay Area counties stand right now.

The first day of kindergarten means going back to preschool for some Bay Area kids.

Around the Bay

• A very different job description: Oakland seeks a “champion” for new police chief in slimmed-down search process, columnist Phil Matier writes.

• From Heather Knight: San Francisco has a lot riding on the 2020 census. So why is it struggling to count everyone?

• Vaccine trial stalled: A trial by drug giant AstraZeneca was halted just as testing was to begin in the Bay Area because of a possible adverse reaction, Peter Fimrite reports.

• ‘Feels like a betrayal’: Stanford alums shocked by sports cuts are fighting back.

• For when you go to a store again: S.F. Mayor London Breed says IKEA store on Market Street will make “huge difference” for downtown.

• Takeout included: 7 highly anticipated Bay Area restaurants still opening this fall.

• Love of home: Giants’ Mauricio Dubón makes wishes come true for Honduran child.

The Throughline

Howard Chabner, near his home north of the Panhandle in San Francisco, had feedback for Peter Hartlaub.

“When I remember The Chronicle’s Throughline section, I’m going to think of Howard Chabner,” writes Peter Hartlaub.

Chabner, a disability rights advocate, sent Hartlaub a 11-page response to a Chronicle story on how to make San Francisco a “bike and pedestrian utopia.”

So Hartlaub called Chabner up — and they discussed what the piece missed, what they had in common and what’s changed in San Francisco.