by Adam Saldivar
On Jan. 18, 2021, an emergency power shut down was announced by PG&E due to intense winds. The following day, thousands of residents in Madera County and even some in the Fresno area were without power for roughly the entire day. The outage did not end until the next day, Jan. 20 when most households receiving their power back.
Karra Zamora, a physical education teacher at Minarets High School, was one of the many people affected by the outage. She explained, “We lit candles and used kerosene and battery lanterns. We cooked on the woodstove and on the propane burner out at our outside 'kitchen.' We did get a generator going late into the second day. Then we had power to plug one fridge in, our modem (internet) restored!”
Around the same time frame as the blackout, a fire broke out as well in North Fork, which is still recovering from the recent Creek Fire. According to an update by the California Fire Department, “The Manzanita Fire started early in the morning of Jan. 19, 2021, near Lake Drive and Road 222 in North Fork.” It is known to have burned over twenty acres of land so far, and on Jan. 19 it was reported to be 35% percent contained. Minarets music teacher and volunteer firefighter Brett Moglia has been helping fight the fire. “I worked about twenty hours on the fire last Monday night into Tuesday evening,” stated Moglia.
Mogila did offer advice on how to be prepared for wildfire situations, saying, “If you’re going to live in these areas, you should always be prepared to remain on your property with no access to supplies with little to no notice… If driving anywhere during these conditions, always have a chain saw and other available tools (as long as you know how to use them) to mitigate travel challenges.”
The fire that started on Jan. 19 was extinguished the next day on Jan. 20, according to the California Fire website on the fire incident update. While the power outage is over and the fire is out, officials like Moglia always recommended being prepared in the case of these events happening again, and in this corner of Madera County, they likely will.
With all these unfortunate incidents happening, it's important to always be prepared in case of future incidents, whether it's a power outage or a fire.
For more information on the fire:
https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2021/1/19/manzanita-fire
https://sierranewsonline.com/update-from-calfire-on-the-manzanita-fire-in-north-fork/
For more information on the power outage:
Comments