This week’s devastating wildfires in Southern California and the winds driving them have resulted in widespread and prolonged power outages and planned shutdowns, upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of people across the region.

As the outages drag on, they are sparking anger and frustration among customers, including those many miles from active fires or evacuation zones in Los Angeles County who are struggling to understand why their power is out and why was not restored.

More than 327,000 Edison customers in Southern California were without power Thursday morning in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

While some of these outages are due to wind-related damage such as falling trees and branches, which will take time for crews to repair, approximately half of affected customers are subject to planned power outages to reduce the risk of further damage occurring during one of these outages Fires spark the most severe wind events in years.

Another 95,000 customers were without power in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power area, where about 31% of the outages were due to planned shutdowns due to wind or to assist in firefighting.

With weather forecasters predicting increased fire danger through at least Friday and stronger winds expected next week, communities affected by outages and shutdowns may face days without power.

“There’s a good chance that many customers will be without power through the weekend and throughout the weekend,” Steve Powell, president and CEO of Southern California Edison, said in an interview Thursday afternoon at the company’s emergency operations center in Irwindale.

“We are focused on restoring as much power as possible as quickly as possible, as soon as it is safe to do so,” Powell added.

The widespread power shutdowns in particular are causing excitement among some customers and questioning Edison’s decisions arbitrary and persistent. Some have already been without power for a day or two. As they struggle to prevent food from spoiling, use or power essential appliances Medical and communication devicesthey are upset that the outages could happen move on much longer.

Adding to the aggravation, some communities near the fires also received boil water orders, including areas near the Eaton Fire in the Altadena area, the 90272 ZIP code in Pacific Palisades and the area north of San Vicente Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Edison officials said this was the largest wind event in the utility’s service area, in terms of both weather and customer outages, in more than a decade and one of the largest uses of preemptive power shutoffs, so-called public safety power shutoffs, since began in 2018 to use them.

At the peak of the outages on Wednesday, more than 430,000 of the 5 million customers were without power across the region.

Among them was Amanda Frye, 61, who lost power in her Redlands home early Wednesday. She and her family have tried to cope without heat by lighting their stove with matches, cooking dinner by candlelight and stocking up on ice to prevent perishable food from spoiling in the fridge.

She struggled to get answers from Edison in Southern California about why her and her neighbors’ power was shut off after the gusty winds that blew through earlier in the week had already passed. She said Southern California Edison replaced poles and wires in her area several years ago as part of wildfire prevention.

“I feel terrible for everyone who has been affected and lost their homes,” Frye said, “but it is questionable how sensible it is to shut down our power lines a county away when there is no wind or threat.” she said.

“There is something wrong with Edison’s modeling and logic,” Frye added. “Why is Edison allowed to cut off power to large areas when the wind is calm and there are no threatening weather conditions?”

Southern California Edison has described the planned outages as a “tool of last resort” based on a variety of factors including weather forecast, wind data and proximity to vegetation.

Powell, Edison’s CEO, said he understands residents’ frustration, but the company’s actions are a necessary safeguard against further fires and are as targeted as possible.

“It’s really hard to get our customers through situations like this. At the same time, the risks we are trying to avoid are exactly the things we see out there,” Powell said. “We want to prevent major fires from entering our communities and causing devastating damage.”

Powell said the utility can only be so precise in implementing power shutoffs because it can only shut off power at the circuit level. Its system includes more than 4,500 routes that can be miles long and often include hundreds of homes or businesses, only some of which are exposed to dangerous winds or other conditions that need to be mitigated.

“We are in no way able to do this at the individual home or block level at this point,” Powell said.

Powell said the company has installed more than 6,000 miles of insulated lines in high-fire areas since 2018, among other grid reinforcement and vegetation management projects aimed at reducing the risk of wildfires and the need for planned shutdowns.

“If the same wind event had happened five years ago,” he said, “there would have been many more … shutdowns than there are today.”