(TNS) - The day before firefighter radio transmissions revealed a malfunctioning PG&E power line may have triggered the state’s most destructive wildfire, a business owner in this tiny town near the Camp Fire’s origin said she received an email from the utility alerting her that workers had to fix a sparking problem on a nearby power line.

In the email received Wednesday, the company said they’d be coming out to work on one of their nearby towers that “were having problems with sparks,” said Betsy Ann Cowley, owner of Pulga, a former abandoned railroad town turned retreat popular with techies.

“This needs to become a class action lawsuit,” the former Oakland resident said.

Fire investigators in Northern California say they found the human remains of 6 more individuals, bringing the death toll to at least 48 people who have died in the wildfire that burned through the town of Paradise with shocking speed, making the Camp Fire the deadliest wildfire in state history.

Fire crews are working to fight that blaze, along with another large wildfire in Southern California, where at least two deaths have been reported.

(TNS) - Gusty northern winds, dry vegetation and low humidity across the Bay Area have created prime circumstances for wildfires, prompting a red flag warning Wednesday and possible power shutoffs for Northern California residents.

The National Weather Service in Sacramento issued the red flag warning to take effect from Wednesday night to Friday morning in the North Bay mountains and East Bay hills. Those areas are expecting wind gusts up to 45 mph, and any fires that spark could spread rapidly. The biggest threats exist in the hills of eastern Napa County and areas around Atlas Peak, Mount Diablo and Mount Hamilton, officials said.

The experience of moving through San Francisco in a car has gone from slow to crawl.

Congestion in the Bay Area flagship city has grown increasingly worse, and a new report by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority placed a sizable portion of that blame on ride-hailing services like Lyft or Uber.

“It appears that TNCs (transportation network companies) contributed approximately 50 percent of the overall increases in congestion in San Francisco between 2010 and 2016,” the report reads.

A Northern California utility received 146 demands for reimbursement from customers who say Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s controversial decision to cut power to prevent wildfires hurt them economically.

The utility said Wednesday in a report to California regulators that it won’t pay any claims. PG&E shut power to 60,000 Northern California customers from Oct. 14 to Oct. 16 after it determined that forecast sustained winds of 25 mph gusting to 45 mph threatened to bring down power lines and start wildfires. It was the first time PG&E cut power to prevent wildfires.

Cyberattacks increasingly target and succeed inside energy and utility companies’ IT networks, rather than their critical infrastructure, according to a new report from cybersecurity firm Vectra.

In the past, the energy and utility industry’s cyber efforts have focused on preventing disruption of power availability via industrial control networks.

But the Department of Homeland Security issued a technical alert in March warning the industry of a “multi-stage intrusion campaign” originating in Russia targeting IT networks in the U.S. energy sector.

The growing pains of shared electric scooter businesses have led one Southern California city to take a wait-and-see approach.

The Ventura City Council voted 5-0 this week night to ban scooters after a company called Bird filed an application to bring them to the city.

For Iowa City, Dubuque Street is an important corridor, providing an artery for roughly 25,000 vehicles to travel each day between the city and Interstate 80, which runs along the northern edge of town.

But historically the road has been prone to flooding from the nearby Iowa River, which snakes alongside it to the west, as well as flash floods caused by heavy rains. In 1993, floodwaters swamped the street for 54 days. Flooding in 2008 caused a month-long closure.

Authorities say a man apparently set a California home on fire while using a blowtorch to kill spiders.

KFSN-TV reported 29 firefighters were called to a Fresno housing development Tuesday night to put out a two-alarm blaze.