Man’s death may be related to California power shut off
First responders in Northern California say a man on oxygen died about 12-minutes after Pacific Gas and Electric shut down power to his home.
El Dorado County’s fire chief says they got a call at 3:30 Wednesday morning and arrived to find an unresponsive man in his 60’s . The chief says the man’s oxygen equipment needed electricity to run, although he stopped short of blaming the shut down for his death.
A PG&E spokesperson says the utility cannot confirm the accuracy of the report and is not directly commenting.
The nation’s largest power company began turning off electricity Wednesday in parts of northern and central California to reduce wildfire risk in the face of high winds and low humidity.
Power lines have been blamed for sparking the Camp Fire last November.
The blaze killed 85 people, and destroyed nearly 19-thousand buildings. It literally wiped the town of Paradise off the map.
PG&E recently agreed to an $11-billion settlement to resolve insurance companies’ claims from that and a previous wildfire.
KYMA 2019
