Power shut-offs

Pacific Gas & Electric has begun shutting off power to people in the San Francisco Bay Area and portions of California's northern coast amid warm and windy weather that can help fan wildfires. The utility is trying to prevent its power lines from sparking fires.

PG&E spokeswoman Katie Allen says some people in the wine country counties of Napa and Sonoma lost electricity at about 7 this morning. Power has also been cut in parts of Mendocino and Yolo counties.

No details were immediately provided as to how many people lost electricity, but the shut-offs are expected to affect 375,000 people and last into tomorrow.

Officials in some counties say schools, libraries and other public buildings will be closed today because of the outages.

It's the latest in a series of mass, planned outages prompted by extreme fire risk weather conditions over the past two months.