California power outages: PG&E cuts power to prevent wildfires

Hundreds of thousands of people in California woke up in the dark Wednesday after Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) started shutting off power to prevent what the utility called an unprecedented wildfire danger.

PG&E said it cut power to more than 500,000 customers in Northern California and that it plans to gradually turn off electricity to nearly 800,000 customers to prevent its equipment from starting wildfires during hot, windy weather.