PG&E to cut power to 375,000 people

Pacific Gas & Electric says it will begin shutting off the power to about 375,000 people in 18 Northern and Central California counties today to avoid the risk of its equipment sparking catastrophic wildfires.

The utility announced last night that it reduced the footprint of the planned blackouts despite projected dry, windy red-flag conditions of extreme fire danger in the northern San Francisco Bay Area, California's wine country and the Sierra foothills.

PG&E says it expects to get the all-clear tomorrow morning to start restoring electricity.

The country's largest utility has hit California with a series of massive outages, including one last month for nearly 2.5 million people that outraged local officials and customers.

PG&E officials say they're aware of the disruption but outages are a public safety matter.