Cal State San Bernardino closed on Thursday because of an electricity outage aimed at mitigating the threat of wildfires amid dry, windy conditions in Southern California.
All classes were canceled and business operations suspended for the day on the San Bernardino campus after Southern California Edison ordered the power shutoff, according to the university’s website.
The closure won’t affect the school’s Palm Desert campus, which remains open.
Thousands of customers had their power turned off on Thursday, while more than 160,000 were under the threat of a potential shutoff.
(Find out if your community may be impacted here.)
SoCal Edison has warned it may cut electricity as a combination of Santa Ana winds and low humidity brought the threat of high fire danger to the area.
By mid-afternoon, firefighters were battling multiple fires in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, which destroyed several homes.
A red flag warning is in effect for large parts of Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside and Ventura counties through Friday evening, according to the National Weather Service.
Other parts of the state are also experiencing similar outages because of critical fire weather.
Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses were without power in Northern California on Thursday after Pacific Gas & Electric began cutting service the day before to reduce fire risk.
Some schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, including UC Berkeley, were forced to closed on Thursday as a result.
PG&E is taking drastic steps to prevent more blazes after catastrophic wildfires, including last year’s Camp Fire, forced the utility to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
