304K Southern California Edison customers remain under shutoff consideration amid wildfire threat

ACTON, Calif. (KABC) -- Another windstorm is moving in and nearly 304,000 Southern California Edison customers face the possibility of losing their power.

It would be a pre-emptive move by the utility company to try to reduce the possibility of a brush fire.

"It's like living in a third world country. Today we might have power, maybe we won't. Who wants to live like this?" said Melvin Chikato, owner of Acton Ice Delivery.

Chikato is upset because the lack of power can quickly turn his ice into water.

"We manage but it's like running a race with one leg tied behind your back," Chikato said.

The outages have actually created a new business opportunity for him: People and businesses looking to buy dry ice to help keep their food from going bad.

The outages have also created safety problems with Metrolink.

The transportation agency had to scramble to make sure its crossing gates and other rail equipment had power when the electricity was cut in Acton Monday.

"We do work with Metrolink regularly. In the meantime we are doing several prevention efforts as far as installing covered conductor which prevents arcing and sparking on our power lines. We've installed weather stations. We've installed fire cameras as well that can monitor fire events," said Reggie Kumar, spokesman for SoCal Edison.

With the exception of nine customers, power had been restored to all customers by Tuesday evening.