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Hook on PG&E Tower Eyed as Cause of Deadly Camp Fire
- chongli 8y agoI've never understood this urge to find the spark that started a wildfire. The cause of the fire was the large amount of dry vegetation in the area. It doesn't matter what the spark was. If it hadn't been this hook, it would've been something else, such as lightning. Lightning strikes start fires all the time. Why don't we put more of our efforts into controlled burning in order to keep the fuel load down? Seems like a much safer approach than trying to prevent all fires no matter the cause.
- saas_sam 8y ago1. No evidence to suggest we are not putting in adequate efforts into controlled burning. Perhaps you have some? 2. Even if we were putting satisfactory efforts into controlled burning, we would still need to know where sparks are likely to occur to, you know, clear or burn the vegetation around said sparks. 3. Sparks also matter when they are coming from unexpected places, or places that are owned by individuals charged with preventing said sparks.
- IAmGraydon 8y agoA fire that burned 240 square miles and killed 88 isn’t sufficient evidence for you?
- saas_sam 8y agoSo you think any time something bad happens that's evidence that not enough things were done to prevent those types of bad things? Presumably the only things we are well-prepared for in society are things that never, ever occur? Guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that point.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- thaumasiotes 8y agoI've been reading an amateur anthropologist's blog, and an eternal theme is that primitive people get trapped in a cycle of violent retaliation with every other group nearby. It's very common for the mechanism to be a lack of belief in chance. If Joe was bitten by a snake, that's not because he stepped near a snake. It's because someone cursed him, attracting the snake. If he died from the bite, then a neighboring tribe / village needs to be raided to teach them a lesson. Attributing all misfortune to malicious intent is a universal urge.
- IAmGraydon 8y agoI’m not sure what you’re commenting on, but my post certainly didn’t attribute it to malicious intent. Quite the opposite, actually.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoThe idea that a bad thing happening is evidence that somebody did something wrong is enough to call it "attribution to malicious intent" for my purposes here. A bad thing happening is not in fact evidence that anybody did anything wrong.
- pixl97 8y agoThat would depend if you got bit by that snake in a snake pit. If so, Joe's extreme lack of caution in a dangerous area points to his misfortune. Fire hazards are not much different. These places will burn. That is the natural state of the habitat. The fire has no intent, just the necessity of chemistry.
- dahdum 8y agoThe evidence is pretty open, hardly anyone arguing against controlled burns. Here is some: https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/08/03/lack-of-controlled-burns-contributing-to-california-wildfires/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/08/03/lack-of-control... > Calfire currently has a goal of burning 20,000 acres a year, a goal put into place in 2016. Last year.. Calfire came close with 19,000 acres control-burned. But two years ago, only 13,000 acres were burned while the previous three years each saw only around 3,000 acres burned.
- drhousejr 8y agologging policies are making things worse https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Logging-California-s-dead-trees-is-harmful-to-9698896.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Loggin...
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoWhen it comes to the environment in CA I don't know what to believe anymore. Like I fully expect CA to be anti-resource extraction, even if it's good for them, but I also don't trust the corporate interests that want to extract those resources.
- Shank 8y ago> I've never understood this urge to find the spark that started a wildfire. Because ultimately, the legal system allows you to blame people for negligence and mischief. If you intentionally ignite a national park or a nature reserve, that's a very different issue than if lightning struck it. One has malice and intent and is a crime. One is a random act of nature.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoOr in this case, it may be negligence. (The hook itself is not a random act of nature. It presumably is not malice and intent. But it still could be negligence.)
- briffle 8y agoCan they blame and sue for negligence the towns that didn't keep a fire-line on their highways out of town? or Towns (and HOA's) that have laws/rules against some of the best practices [1] for defensible space that the federal government publishes? Those 2 things seem to have done much more damage than a single spark in some dry brush. [1] http://www.readyforwildfire.org/Defensible-Space/ http://www.readyforwildfire.org/Defensible-Space/
- dd36 8y agoYes, you can sue a town or city.
- nowarninglabel 8y agoEverything has a cost. Controlled burns cost money. Is the cost of regular controlled burns < the cost of eliminating most risk of wildfire starts? Im not sure we are qualified to answer that question without data and analysis.
- pixl97 8y agoThen the cost of fire insurance needs to increase dramatically to stop development in these areas.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago>>I've never understood this urge to find the spark that started a wildfire. One word: INSURANCE. Controlled burning etc will be dealt by the government, lawyers are suing PG&E to recover damages
- reaperducer 8y agoWhy don't we put more of our efforts into controlled burning in order to keep the fuel load down Because it's ugly. The high amount of available fuel is primarily a California thing. Every other state conducts preventative burns. But California changed its policy on this about ten years ago because rich people don't like smoke in their backyards. When Trump pointed this out, he was ridiculed by those, including California's governor, who say it was purely global warning. The president may be a buffoon, but he's not always wrong.
- Breefield 8y agoCan you cite this policy change? I could really use this info.
- reaperducer 8y agoCA only started controlled burns again this year. Why California's Best Strategy Against Wildfire Is Hardly Ever Used: https://www.kqed.org/science/1927354/controlled-burns-can-help-solve-californias-fire-problem-so-why-arent-there-more-of-them https://www.kqed.org/science/1927354/controlled-burns-can-he... Lack Of Controlled Burns Contributing To California Wildfires: https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/08/03/lack-of-controlled-burns-contributing-to-california-wildfires/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/08/03/lack-of-control... A Century of Fire Suppression Is Why California Is in Flames: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/12/a-century-of-fire-suppression-is-why-california-is-in-flames/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/12/a-century-of...
- ghouse 8y agoDo you have a citation for California's change in policy? A brief search suggests that CA still does controlled burns: https://sf.curbed.com/2018/5/14/17352394/jerry-brown-budget-california-wildfires-orders-governor https://sf.curbed.com/2018/5/14/17352394/jerry-brown-budget-...
- reaperducer 8y agoCA only started controlled burns again this year. Why California's Best Strategy Against Wildfire Is Hardly Ever Used: https://www.kqed.org/science/1927354/controlled-burns-can-help-solve-californias-fire-problem-so-why-arent-there-more-of-them https://www.kqed.org/science/1927354/controlled-burns-can-he... Lack Of Controlled Burns Contributing To California Wildfires: https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/08/03/lack-of-controlled-burns-contributing-to-california-wildfires/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/08/03/lack-of-control... A Century of Fire Suppression Is Why California Is in Flames: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/12/a-century-of-fire-suppression-is-why-california-is-in-flames/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/12/a-century-of...
- reissbaker 8y ago> If it hadn't been this hook, it would've been something else, such as lightning. Yes and no. While it's true that occasionally there will be natural disasters such as lightning strikes that occur in high-risk areas during times of high winds, power lines are carrying huge amounts of power all the time and thus coincide with high winds more than lightning strikes. As an example of how to mitigate this risk, PG&E has a policy of cutting power to lines temporarily during high-risk times like extreme winds in high risk areas — although in another sign of negligence in this case, they failed to follow that procedure during the windstorm that led to the outbreak of the Camp Fire. You can't prevent all disasters, but you can mitigate risk, which at least reduces the incidence rate of disasters. It's starting to look like PG&E was negligent in their prevention efforts. I agree that doesn't mean they're entirely to blame, but as a society we still need to hold companies accountable for negligence so that we help incentivize safety.
- bpicolo 8y agoSerious question - how can you hold such companies accountable when fines would be passed directly to consumers? What sane mechanisms exists for this?
- alasdair_ 8y ago>Serious question - how can you hold such companies accountable when fines would be passed directly to consumers? You wipe out the equity holders at a minimum. And possibly break the company up Ma Bell style.
- craftyguy 8y agoBecause sometimes a completely preventable thing caused it. Dismissing any attempt to reduce causes because "it will just burn anyways" doesn't seem right.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoHaving the hook start a fire is completely preventable. Having a fire start is not preventable. Reducing the number of fires that start doesn't make fires better -- it makes them worse. That was the lesson of the Yellowstone fire. There's a total amount of fuel to burn, and all of it will burn; the question is whether you want it to burn in more little fires or fewer enormous ones. That second point -- all of the fuel an area produces will eventually burn -- is why it doesn't really matter what started a fire. It's 100% correct to say that if one cause had been prevented, another cause would have started one later, and that later fire would have been worse the one that did happen (barring controlled burns to manage the amount of fuel in the area). You can think of wildfires using the same model as earthquakes. The movement of two tectonic plates against each other builds up a store of potential energy as one plate is driven out of alignment. The release of that energy is an earthquake. The amount of energy released by earthquakes is fixed by the amount of potential energy accumulated over time. The form of release is not -- you might see harmless earthquakes or city-destroying ones. If dynamite from a mining operation triggers a huge earthquake, that's bad, because huge earthquakes are bad. But the dynamite didn't cause anything that wasn't going to happen anyway. The same amount of energy gets released regardless, just at different times. For fires, the growth of plants in the area builds up a reservoir of potential fire energy over time, and you have the choice of either releasing that energy in fires or physically transporting the fuel somewhere else. Only the first is practical.
- akiselev 8y agoSure, if fires existed in vacuums that would be the end of the story. Instead, they often exist near camp sites and other inhabited areas. Tracking down and minimizing causes of man-made fires, which tend to cluster around inhabited areas, happens to minimize the chance of death in forest fires - regardless of the total energy built up.
- aphextron 8y agoIt's all just navel-gazing in the face of climate change. The Camp fire happened because we received precisely zero inches of precipitation from the beginning of April, to the end of November this year, not because of a spark. Short of curbing emissions worldwide and building new sequestration capabilities, this is going to be inevitable moving forwards. The best people can do is try to place blame for the immediate consequences to find some financial relief which will never come otherwise due to government's total refusal to acknowledge the problem.
- jrobn 8y agoThis, exactly. Don’t expect much movement on climate change until the political elite feel the pain. When the fisheries collapse, fires rage across our corn fields, beef prices skyrocket, and our coastal cities sink into the ocean will you see a climate change denier stand up and throw up their hands and yell “How did this happen! We need to act! Also, why is my steak so expensive. Outrageous!”
- will_brown 8y agoDoes it matter what the cause of death is? I mean murder, accident, natural causes...it’s all the same because the person was going to die anyway right? There is already massive effort put into controlled burns and training/funding firefighters...and you are right sometimes an act of god (lightning) will cause a fire, but those acts of god are more likely to occur in non populated areas and actually provide the benefits of a controlled burn. So the point is firefighters have enough to contend with naturally, they don’t need people/companies running around starting fires in populated areas. FYI 84% of wildfires are started by humans, nearly 1/3 if wildfires are intentional arson.
- twblalock 8y agoIf somebody in your neighborhood was being careless and accidentally burned your house down, would you handle that situation exactly the same way you would if your house had caught on fire because it was struck by lightning? Would it make a difference if that person had a history of disobeying safety rules, had been warned a number of times, and had caused significant damage in the past? The fact that some subset of fires can't be prevented doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and never try to prevent any fires. When somebody causes one we should investigate and take appropriate action.
- jfoutz 8y agoSo, fuck pg&e. I’m not a fan. That said, this isn’t quite burned down a house, which they should absolutely be on the hook for, this is the whole city burned down. There is sort of a structural responsibility to limit blast radius of bad actors that also failed.
- adrianmonk 8y agoIf I improperly stored tons of firewood right against my house, and someone caught the firewood in fire, and then my house burned down, I think I'd share some of the blame. Some blame would have to go on the other person too.
- chongli 8y agoYour analogy doesn't quite fit. A wildfire zone with large amounts of flammable dry vegetation isn't analogous to an ordinary house. It's more like a house with a gas leak that's been left alone long enough for the entire building to fill up with natural gas. Now, in that situation, does it matter whether your house gets struck by lightning or your neighbour's cigarette lighter happens to set it off near a cracked window? Assuming your neighbour is miraculously unhurt, the answer is no.
- oasisbob 8y agoDrive onto ranch land with a hot exhaust system, pull off the road into tall grass, start a 200 acre grass fire, and try to use that line of reasoning with a with a straight face.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> I've never understood this urge to find the spark that started a wildfire. The cause of the fire was the large amount of dry vegetation in the area. Well, in the same way that if someone is shot in the chest, the cause of rapid bleeding out might be the big blood pumping organ in the area.
- nas 8y agoAnalogies are fun. If you have a tower of sand that collapses, do you find the grain that started moving first and put the entire blame of collapse on it? Your example is of relatively stable system (presumably healthy human life) that takes a big external disturbance to cause failure. The sand tower is an unstable system that takes a tiny disturbance to trigger failure. I think the California forest situation is somewhere between these two extremes.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> If you have a tower of sand that collapses, do you find the grain that started moving first and put the entire blame of collapse on it? No, put finding where that first movement happened is perhaps key to finding the hand that flicked that first grain, and does bear the whole blame. > Your example is of relatively stable system (presumably healthy human life) We don't consider the healthiness relevant for most legal purposes; are you familiar with the eggshell rule? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull
- pixl97 8y agoThe hand that flicked the first grain was the idiot that built a house in the wildland fire zone. That's the problem, is people aren't looking at the actual problem. Fires are natural for this area, your house is not.
- avree 8y agoLightning strikes don't start fires "all the time". Lightning strikes account for <5% of all fires in California.
- wahern 8y agoRegardless, for such a vast system wildfires are to some extent inevitable. From a macroscopic perspective a poorly maintained tower is just as foreseeable as an arsonist or an overheating car that pulls onto the side of the highway. And at some point the marginal cost of prevention far exceeds the marginal reduction in risk. In other words, a some point we just need to accept the risk. To the extent we require PG&E to be perfectly diligent, then we incentivize people to build their houses with matchsticks. It's annoying when people get upset about California "bailing out" PG&E. As a regulated utility PG&E can't control the prices they charge users, nor do they have any power over, e.g., building regulations that would minimize damages. In a free market for PG&E to completely internalize (and minimize) the fire hazards they create, electricity prices would almost certainly be politically unviable, particularly in remote communities. No matter what we do the costs of these fires will be socialized. PG&E is a heavily regulated public utility. The time to punish PG&E is when they fail to abide by regulations, not after big fires. As a society we've already decided on the principle mechanism for incentivizing diligent behavior on the part of PG&E. When big fires happen we'd be better off emphasizing remediations like changing building codes (including requiring retractive remediation), and maybe tightening PG&E regulations. But of course it's far easier and more politically expedient to simply blame PG&E outright. And the politicians who understand this dilemma? We blame them for being corrupt for not doing the "obviously right" thing. And this is why politics is broken; because we refuse to accept that there are trade-offs, that no matter what we do bad things happen, people will get hurt, and we have to make difficult decisions about maximizing equality (sic) while trying to avoid moral hazard.
- CocaKoala 8y ago> The time to punish PG&E is when they fail to abide by regulations, not after big fires. Regulations like "Maintain your equipment to keep it in good working order" and "Follow policies in place to prevent disasters"?
- guelo 8y agoLightning mostly does not start fires in California. California doesn't get hit with very much lightning at all.
- floatingatoll 8y agoIn this case, it's partly because PG&E negligence resulted in a massive gas explosion a few years back in Redwood City, and now no one trusts them to perform long-term maintenance on their infrastructure — and evidence is mounting that their unmaintained infrastructure is responsible for both this year's fire in California _and_ last year's. So, everyone ought to do the things you describe, yes — but I can't fault residents of California for having a vested interest in keeping PG&E from burning them down every year, either. EDIT: It would have cost them ~4x the original build cost to bury all those power lines in the forest, but they chose not to spend on infrastructure and may be bankrupted by their poor choices.
- mschuster91 8y ago>EDIT: It would have cost them ~4x the original build cost to bury all those power lines in the forest That figure is valid for flat plains. Much more if you're all in a forest (e.g. in Salzburg a cost factor of 8-9x was projected). Ever tried to run a sewer pipe through a forest? I actually worked in trench digging, it's incredibly hard. Mostly we did telecom wiring, but one particularly fucked up job was running a sewer line with ca. 300m downhill through a forest. Can't use anything larger than a small tiny 1.4 ton excavator. For a 380kV cable it's even harder as you have to dig two meters deep and about 30m wide, and you're straight outta luck when you don't have 2m of soil but only 1m and hard rock below. The trenches required are massive. In addition the waste heat from the power lines heats up the ground (thus impacting the forest) and you gotta maintain the trench plus side margin space to be entirely tree free, as you absolutely do not want tree roots to pierce the cables.
- floatingatoll 8y agoI believe they said last week it was about 3.8x for the mountains that burned last year, but I can’t find a good source. Post here if you find their estimate?
- eigenstuff 8y agoYou forgot about the part where they were also responsible for the entire plot of Erin Brockovich!
- lambdasquirrel 8y agoIt’s easy enough to do a controlled burn on BLM land, i.e. actual forest land. But most of the destroyed property in this fire and last year’s fires were on the urban-wildlife interface.
- dredmorbius 8y agoMuch of the land between the ignition point and structures was not, and is in fact part of Plumas National Forest. http://www.gentryoffroad.com/php/maps/california/nationalforestmaps/plumasnationalforest/plumasblank.jpg http://www.gentryoffroad.com/php/maps/california/nationalfor... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/USA_National_Forests_Map.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/USA_Nati... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumas_National_Forest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumas_National_Forest
- oasisbob 8y agoSome causes are well-known and easily preventable. For example, Power transmission systems use arrestors and other devices to protect their system from lightning and other badness. Taking a hit may result in the device blowing apart, including hot metal bits. Knowing this, a regulatory agency may implement vegetation clearance rules around transmission towers, knowing that these are high-risk areas. If the initiation point for a fire is in an area that's supposed to be bare mineral soil (and maybe isn't), that's interesting.
- dangerboysteve 8y agourge = ligigation And the cause could have been a piece of glass acting as a magafying glass, a spark from a car or hundreds of other causes.
- King-Aaron 8y agoIt should be noted that at least in Australia, DFES no longer refers to burn-offs as "controlled burning", rather as "prescribed burning". They're finding more and more frequently it's harder to control them in a lot of cases, and it's easier to manage the PR by just calling them prescribed.
- bhhaskin 8y agoWarning! Auto playing video ad!
- 8bitsrule 8y agoThe attitude which leads to failure to maintain fits right in with the thousands of D-rated bridges in the U.S. Hey, it's still working and the profits are nice, who needs taxes. Seems laughing at Grandma Millie is still in style.
- matis140 8y agoI would think it is a bit different. PG&E is not government and doesn't collect taxes. Those lines originally may have been public property, but I do not know if they still are? I know PG&E talked about burieing them a few years ago after a large fire caused by overloaded transmition lines in North Cali....too expensive. Pretty sure that math Will come out the same way again. Anyway Gov collects plenty of money for infrastructure projects they would just rather funnel the money into their own pockets via war spending.
- pixl97 8y agoWhen uncontrolled sprawl is allowed, you never have time nor cash to fix the old things.
- cma 8y agoWhy don't we have a system of aerial drones to monitor this stuff with thermal cameras and be able to respond to incipient fires extremely fast by dispatching aerial firefighting, etc.?
- stdplaceholder 8y agoWhy would an executive at PG&E give two shits about that? They get paid via the shell company that owns the utility and their profits are guaranteed by the public regulator while their liabilities are limited by their corporate structure.
- tedsanders 8y agoI worked at SDG&E shortly after they paid $700M for starting fires in 2007. From my vantage point in the org, I saw that (a) the executives felt pressured, (b) much of the cost was borne by shareholders not ratepayers, and (c) this incentivized the company to invest more proactively in fire prevention strategies. Sources: -CPUC rejects SDG&E's attempt to pass on costs: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/sd-fi-sempra-earnings-20171030-story.html https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/s... -Sempra (the parent company) settles for $700M in damages: https://uk.reuters.com/article/sempra/update-1-san-diego-utility-to-pay-700-mln-in-fire-claims-idUKN2635565720090627 https://uk.reuters.com/article/sempra/update-1-san-diego-uti... -Sempra's earnings and shares down as a result: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-sempras-1st-quarter-marred-settlement-weak-earning-2010may04-story.html https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-sempras-1st-quarte...
- ceejayoz 8y agoHaving had a drone's battery catch fire, I'm not sure the math necessarily works out on that.
- cma 8y ago(edit: I meant human piloted aerial firefighting, not more far-fetched drone fire fighting)
- maxxxxx 8y ago
- ruytlm 8y agoWorth noting that in the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Australia, there was an AU$494 million class action[0] settlement against a power company (and others), as that fire was determined to have started from power lines. That said, I'd wait until a proper forensic decision is reached; I can't say I expect a news channel to be too rigorous in its determination of whether a damaged tower caused the fire, or whether the fire damaged the tower. I also agree with the other comment regarding the need for more controlled/prescribed burning; in Australia again, it is a reasonably established prevention strategy[1], with a long history among indigenous Australians[2]. [0]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-23/judge-approves-black-saturday-class-action-settlement/5984374 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-23/judge-approves-black-... [1]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-13/is-the-prescribed-burn-window-closing-in-australia/10236048 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-13/is-the-prescribed-bur... [2]: https://landcareaustralia.org.au/project/traditional-aboriginal-burning-modern-day-land-management/ https://landcareaustralia.org.au/project/traditional-aborigi...
- traek 8y agoPossibly more relevant than the 2009 Australian fires are the 2017 California wildfires from last year in the same area, for which this same utility (PG&E) has liability expected to exceed $2.5 billion[0]. [0] https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article213580349.html https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article213580349.html
- ruytlm 8y agoWasn't aware of this, thanks. Also interesting that three weeks before the Camp Fire began, PG&E were cutting power during high winds.[0] [0]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2018/10/15/pge-voluntarily-shut-off-power-north-california-wildfires/1646686002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2018/10/15/p...
- randyrand 8y agoWhen the Chicago fire happened, people scapegoated a cow. This feels much the same.
- ctdonath 8y agoMight "Atlas shrug"? Company could respond to liability lawsuits by literally taking down its infrastructure, every line & pole.
- jessaustin 8y agoThat would be a boon for solar installers!
- fasteddie31003 8y agoMy two thoughts from the Camp Fire. 1. Building codes allowed this to happen. Why are people allowed to build homes with asphalt roofs and wood siding in the urban-wildland interface? Indoor fire sprinklers are now required by code, why not outdoor fire sprinklers in interface environments like this? 2. Could we have an infrared geostationary satellite that could automatically alert fire crews to new infrared events? How about having helicopters on standby ready to respond within minutes of a satellite-sensed infrared flair up?
- s0rce 8y agoRooftop sprinklers don't even seem that difficult to install. The house I rent part of has them and they are basically just teed off the same lines that supply the hose bibs on the outside of the house. No risk of freezing pipes over here (SF Bay Area) so its pretty simple.
- stickfigure 8y agoI live on rural property just outside the Bay Area. I can tell you that when there is fire nearby, people do run sprinklers. Sprinklers aren't magic. They have a very limited range and you must run them for many hours to saturate the area. They might protect you against falling embers but they're not going to slow down a fire jumping tree to tree. And you aren't going to wet down multiple acres of land. If you're on well (and in the country, everyone is) then you need electricity to run the pumps; did the fire cut you off? Did PG&E, for safety? Very very few solar systems can operate disconnected from the grid. But maybe you have a generator? When was the last time you started it, and do you know how to disconnect the grid and hook it up to the pumps? Maybe you have a pool and a gas powered pump. When was the last time you ran it? Will it start on the first pull or do you need to rebuild the carb before the fire arrives? We had a big scare just this last year. We (and everyone else in the neighborhood) ran every sprinkler we had for days. Would it have helped? Maybe, in marginal cases. Mostly it was a good exercise to make us realize how underprepared we really are.
- blendo 8y agoThe tower carried 115 kV and was built in 1919 according to https://www.chicoer.com/2018/12/07/it-was-originally-built-in-1919-what-failed-on-pge-tower-at-heart-of-camp-fire-probe/ https://www.chicoer.com/2018/12/07/it-was-originally-built-i... San Francisco Gas and Electric Company and the California Gas and Electric Corporation merged to form PG&E in 1905. This technology dates from the almost the earliest days: both Nikola Tesla (d 1943) and Thomas Edison (d 1931) were still alive when this tower was built, and George Westinghouse died only in 1914.
- ocschwar 8y agoMuch as Californians love to hate on PG&E, and much as PG&E has worked might hard to earn the hate, it's not appropriate to speak of a singular cause of the Camp Fire.
- dirkdk 8y agoyeah as a state we need to limit if not down right outlaw power lines above the ground. Which will be a huge investment and definitely something that PG&E is not going to suggest themselves. But home owners and insurance companies have an interest here. Apart from the 80 people that died, what is the damage in those buildings and loss of economic activity? Much more than putting power lines underground.