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Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning

St Luke, 12:

0 dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon

John Milton

Since1974, the rate at which new electrical generating capacity has been built in California has fallen to less than half of the 1970-74 level s a result, the threat of an economically ruinous power crunch by the 1990's is very real; and there is already apprehension over the danger of brownouts and blackouts in the 1980's

Fortune azine

PART ONE

1

Heat!

Heat in stifling blanket layers Heat that enveloped all of California from the and Mexican border in the south to on Heat, oppressive and enervating Four days ago a hot, dry ther, three hundred wide, had settled over the state and sat there like a brooding hen This -a Wednesday in July-a Pacific frontal syste cooler air, with showers on the north coast and in the mountains It hadn't happened Now, at 1 pm, Californians still sweltered in terees to well over a hundred, with no relief in sight

Throughout cities and suburbs, in factories, offices, stores and homes, six million electric air-conditioners hummed On thousands of farricultural coulped water fro it to thirsty cattle and parched crops-grain, grapes, citrus fruits, alfalfa, zucchini, a hundred erators and food freezers ran unceasingly And elsewhere the normal electrical deet- populace continued unabated

California had known other heat waves and survived their consequences But in none had dereat "That's it, then," the chief electric dispatcher said unnecessarily

“There goes the last of our spinning reserve"

Everyone within hearing already knew it And everyone, in this case, included regular staff and coy Control Center of Golden State Power & Light Golden State Power-or,public utilities It was the wellspring which produced and distributed two-thirds of California's electric power and natural gas Its presence was as faes and wine, and usually taken just asand-by self-description-efficient Its all-pervasiveness sometimes earned it the sobriquet "God's Power & Love"