No other governor has faced four disasters simultaneously

SACRAMENTO >> It’s unlikely any previous California governor has faced such a cannonade of calamities — a grand slam of disasters.

All at the same time: devastating wildfires in both Southern and Northern California, and power blackouts in both as well.

It was bad enough in 2017 with Northern California’s devastating Wine Country fires in October, followed that December by Southern California’s massive Thomas Fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. But four disasters at once? That’s a governor’s nightmare. A few slip-ups and he might be yanked from office. Google Gray Davis.

So how is rookie Gov. Gavin Newsom doing? How is he performing as he hops around the state meeting with local officials, eyeballing charred ruins, standing before cameras in his official disaster uniform — windbreaker and jeans — and railing against PG&E?

He’s doing pretty well. He hasn’t been a grandstander. The uniform fits. He doesn’t seem to be interfering with the real work of firefighting and helping victims.

Newsom keeps pointing the finger at PG&E, where it belongs. The nation’s largest private utility is the main culprit because, as the governor keeps repeating, “for decades, they have placed greed before public safety” by not updating equipment and by allowing flammable vegetation to grow around power lines.

This isn’t a Gray Davis calamity in the making.

Davis was recalled in 2003 largely because he resembled a deer in headlights when the Texas power pirates — Enron, mostly — began holding back electricity to drive up the kilowatt price, resulting in brownouts all over the state and higher profits for the pirates.

Newsom is in no immediate political danger. In fact, Newsom’s job approval ratings could conceivably climb from their pre-fires position in the mid-40% range.

Newsom scored some invaluable points last week when PG&E reversed itself and agreed to the governor’s request to provide rebates for customers whose power was shut off so wildfires wouldn’t be ignited.

“This is significant because utilities in the past have never credited customers for these disruptions,” Newsom said.

I called Garry South, who was Davis’ chief strategist when he was elected and when he was recalled.

“I think he’s doing well,” South says of Newsom. “He’s doing a pretty good job of pointing out who the real villain is. And that’s PG&E.

“How can we allow a public utility to essentially say, ‘The only way we can stop ourselves from burning down your house is to shut off the power to your house’? I mean ...”

But South thinks the dual dilemma of blackouts and wildfires makes Newsom’s situation potentially “more dangerous” than Davis’ 16 years ago. “Even in our brownouts, we weren’t burning down half the state.”

South believes Newsom should make a major speech soon to explain what he’s doing about blackouts and wildfires. Davis did that about the energy crisis too late, South says.

Newsom’s been doing a lot, along with the Legislature and previous Gov. Jerry Brown.

He has budgeted $1 billion for new planes, helicopters, fire detection cameras — replacing the old mountaintop lookouts — and a lot of other fire fighting and prevention tools. Equipment and crews have been prepositioned to where fires are most likely to erupt. And the state just created its own information hotline and website because PG&E’s haven’t been working.

At one point during the last weekend of October, 3 million people were without power in Southern and Northern California, the governor’s office estimates.

Newsom speaks for virtually every Californian when he repeatedly declares that’s unacceptable.