Southern California Edison officials briefed the Carpinteria City Council on the utilitys process for public-safety power shutoffs (PSPS) and the resources available to customers affected by planned and unplanned outages. The presentation explained how SCE monitors weather, vegetation and other fire-risk factors beginning several days before an event and how it decides to de-energize circuits to reduce wildfire risk.

SCE told the council that it begins meteorological monitoring 4 to 7 days before potential high-wind events, tightens monitoring to three days out, and may provide further updates one to three days before a PSPS. The utility emphasized it now notifies customers directly (email, text or voice) and can hold multiple caregiver contacts on an account so households with medical needs receive timely alerts. "De a 4 a 7 dias antes del evento, comenzamos a monitorear el clima," the SCE representative said during the presentation.

SCE described restoration procedures: after crews identify the cause (fallen trees, equipment damage, animals, or underground failures), repair teams make circuits safe and restore power incrementally. The representative noted resources for customers during PSPS events, including local support centers, food-bank partners, battery loan programs and hotel vouchers in qualifying cases, and said the company offers a portable-battery coupon and targeted incentives for backup generators or solar-plus-storage.

Council members pressed SCE for data about whether Carpinteria experiences more outages than neighboring jurisdictions. SCE cautioned direct comparisons are difficult because cities sit on different circuits and infrastructure, but it offered to produce a reliability report for Carpinteria. The utility also provided figures used on its outage map and, when asked about near-term outages, indicated a recent scheduled outage on the map affected "215 clientes" in the city area.

The presentation included steps customers can take to prepare: enroll in SCEs outage notifications, report outages through the online outage map, and follow the utilitys guidance for customers who depend on electric medical equipment. SCE also described vegetation-management efforts and infrastructure upgrades such as covered conductors and remote devices it said have been installed to reduce impacts.

The council did not take formal action on the presentation itself; members asked staff to request the promised Carpinteria-specific reliability report from SCE and to return with any recommended local preparedness measures.