For Gov. Newsom, PG&E power outages offer political rewards — and some big risks

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - California Gov. Gavin Newsom stood in the nerve center of the state's emergency operations center Thursday and delivered a blistering critique of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.'s decision to blanket Central and Northern California with blackouts, affecting hundreds of thousands of residents.

As screens behind him displayed television news footage of a building in flames, maps of outages and weather conditions across the state, Newsom said, "This can't be the new normal."

"What has occurred in the last 48 hours is unacceptable," Newsom said, standing before the news cameras. "You've got people that can't even access water, or medical supplies. We're seeing a scale and scope of something that no state in the 21st century should experience."

But Newsom's well-staged excoriation of one of the nation's largest utilities, now wallowing in bankruptcy, came more than 36 hours after the blackouts began and