Edison International Faces Power Shutoffs in Los Angeles County

The utility said the precautionary outages were aimed at preventing equipment from igniting fires, a standard response during high-wind, dry conditions. Central and western Malibu were among the areas affected, while a 146-acre fire in Malibu had reached 17% containment by Friday morning.

Southern California Edison also carried out shutoffs on Thursday. There were no shutoff plans reported later Friday in Orange, Riverside or San Bernardino counties, underscoring how localized the risk can be as wind patterns shift across Southern California.

The event matters because repeated de-energizations can disrupt customers, pressure local economies and add to the operational burden on utilities already spending heavily on wildfire mitigation. SCE’s parent, Edison International, trades with the backdrop of wildfire exposure and a share price that has been highly sensitive to fire-season headlines and outage risks.

Other utilities were not immune to the wind conditions. In the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s territory, outages were reported in Granada Hills and Sylmar, though the city said its system was “holding up well” and that LADWP does not use public safety shutoffs in the same way as SCE.

With red flag warnings in place and winds expected to remain strong, the immediate focus is on whether more lines are de-energized, whether any new fires break out and how long the outages last. For utility investors, the bigger issue is that every wind event revives the same trade-off in California: preventing a potentially catastrophic wildfire at the cost of lower reliability and higher long-term operating risk.