Editor:

It's insane that the local power plant is not hooked up to the local area, only the grid ("Blackout," Oct. 17). This is something that PG&E should be forced to do now, not study. The state should never have allowed the power plant to just be hooked up only to the grid to save money, with no regard to the local area that it's in at all. Fire dangers are more than a hundred miles away, there's no reason for us to be without power, even without the grid when we have it in our backyard.

What's even worse is that PG&E has to shut down vast areas on the grid when there are only problems in a few places. It's like having an apartment building with no separate circuit breakers, with only a main shutoff for the whole building and when one apartment has a problem, you have to shut down the whole building. The state wouldn't let you build an apartment building like that. Why does it allow the grid to be built like that?

If you don't think that our power should be shut off needlessly, please contact the California Public Utilities Commission, PG&E, the governor and your local representatives.

Elliott Linn, Eureka