The FCC has extended its disaster reporting requests to an additional three dozen California counties.
At the request of the FCC's Homeland Security Bureau, the commission on Oct. 24 activated its voluntary Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) for communication outages related to the California wildfires and their related power shut-offs. It extended the request to an additional 18 counties Oct. 26.
There were reports that two new fires had started overnight Wednesday (Oct. 30). Broadcast, cable and other providers use the DIRS system to report "infrastructure status" and situational awareness.
As of Oct. 30, the FCC reported that 173,058 cable and wireline subs were out of service due to power shut-offs, down from 223,973 Oct. 29, which includes loss of telephone, TV and/or broadband. No TV stations reported being out of commission, while three FM radio stations said their power was out but programming was being distributed through another station and one AM radio station reported being out of service.
The FCC is requesting updates daily by 10 a.m. every day until further notice.
The new counties getting the requests: Alpine, Alameda, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Glenn, Humboldt, Kern, Lake, Los Angeles, Marin, Mendocino, Napa, Nevada, Orange, Placer, Plumas, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Solano, Sonoma, Tehama, Trinity, Tuolumne, Ventura, Yolo, and Yuba.
