5 ms·

Nope, not a scapegoat. PG&E has a long history of negligence, poor planning, and straight up lying to consumers. I don't feel the same way about SoCal Edison, w

Nope, not a scapegoat. PG&E has a long history of negligence, poor planning, and straight up lying to consumers. I don't feel the same way about SoCal Edison, whom I only switched away from last month. They have their problems, sure, but it's nowhere near the level of malicious incompetence coming from PG&E for the past 20 years. There are tons of news stories on PG&E if you look, many unrelated to the fires. They spent millions to lie to voters when Yolo County considered switching to SMUD. They routinely backdated maintenance reports to the government. They've had explosions in gas lines, and then there's the Diablo Canyon mess.

ip26 8y ago
Non-Californian; from here, it looks like it would have burned sooner or later, thanks to changing climate & history of forest management practices. Whether lightning strike, hobo camp, stupid teenager, OHV, train, it was a tinderbox waiting to go. Is that an inaccurate perception?
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  The situation in Paradise was problematic from a number of angles. Large fires returning seem likely from a multitude of factors. PG&E lines setting 1,500 fires was definitely a way to, uh, jump start whatever process might have happened anyway. One should remember that 60 people died that, many trapped by fire on the road out (where inadequate roads were another problem). So a big fire starting but simply more slowly, might have stopped this particular tragedy. Given that a few year back, a PG&E gas line exploded killing around 30 people, this is an organization I feel zero inclination to give a pass on "inevitability".
- prewett 8y ago
  I am living in California (but also consider myself non-Californian) near one of the areas that burned, and regardless of PG&E's incompetence, empirically the area was a tinderbox. The Carr fire was caused by a spark from a flat tire of an RV which caused the rim to create sparks against the road. Despite the forest service actively burning underbrush regularly, the fire was the largest in California history until the Mendocino fire unseated it a few weeks later. If sparks from a wheel rim can touch off a blaze, there isn't much margin for error.
  - j-c-hewitt 8y ago
    In situations like this I think we would have to ask that considering that CA in general has high fire risk compared to other regions of the country, are the right people and entities bearing the risk and shouldering the costs of development there appropriately? I should think a lot of people have a vested interest in blaming PG&E, but if a completely ordinary event like a spark from a flat tire can cause a massive fire in the area that impacts a lot of human settlement directly, then someone is not assessing the risk of building and living there appropriately.
    - pixl97 8y ago
      >then someone is not assessing the risk of building and living there appropriately. This is the answer no one wants to hear. For example almost 10 years ago Paradise almost burned. There was a grand jury review afterwards(that you can find online if you're willing to search some) that pointed out that the place was a tinderbox deathtrap and major changes needed to be implemented for safety. The problem is populations in these places, along with most humans in general, like trees and shade and the idyllic beauty of nature. People would rather have a pine tree and bushes around their house, rather than a 100 foot cleared defensive parameter.
      - jonnycoder 8y ago
        You are also leaving out environmentalists who fight against thinning and cutting down trees — source, the Angora fire in South Lake Tahoe, Canyon Creek complex in eastern Oregon, and many others. Playing politics and not acknowledging environmental lobby will not do anyone any good. If you know any actual foresters in the USFS, they will tell you as well because they are suid by environmentalists for stuff as simple as salvage logging.
    - stevietopsiders 8y ago
      Either NYT or WSJ (I forget) had some analysis for this after some of the fires. One of the cited reasons was that municipalities are fine building into sensitive areas, because it increases their tax base while the state shoulders the cost of fire prevention/fighting/etc.
- twblalock 8y ago
  There are always going to be unavoidable fires. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to prevent the ones that are preventable.
- thaumaturgy 8y ago
  Yes, it's been a tinderbox, but if you want to shift the blame away from PG&E, then you also have to shift the blame away from vagrants and arguably arsons. It's a weird psychology that wants to pardon resourceful corporations while continuing to fault private citizens.
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    Destroying PG&E will hurt an awful lot of people that had nothing whatsoever to do with faulty equipment.
    - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
      I'm curious: Who do you think will be hurt?
      - olefoo 8y ago
        Shareholders including pension funds. Nobody likes to be told that their retirement savings just lost 8% of their value because of a lawsuit.
      - tsuujin 8y ago
        I spent half a decade working as a PG&E contractor for the Energy Savings Assistance Program (ESAP) provided by PG&E. My job was to—at no cost to the occupant—install home weatherization measures into low-income housing. This ranges from new doors and seals to full attic, wall, and floor insulation. We provided this service to literally dozens of homes every working day of the year. If PG&E fails, not only are all of the contractors out of jobs, but people in need will be denied a valuable service. California provides a similar service (LiHEAP) with substantially less funding and far fewer benefits to the resident, and much of that funding has been eliminated in the past couple of years as I understand it. The point is that issues aren’t generally as binary as you may think. PG&E isn’t a perfect company, but asserting that nobody would be harmed by their bankruptcy is a bit naive.
        8y ago
- labster 8y ago
  Timing is important here. Yes, it's a tinderbox, but it doesn't have to burn at the worst possible time to cause a massive scale firestorm. If a wildfire forms when the weather is not very windy, or colder, or moister, they do not spread as far, or as fast, or cause as much damage. Exactly one of those is a non-anthropogenic source, lightning strike. Those tend not to occur during dry, windy conditions because of shear and needing to have enough moisture for cloud formation. Exception: when there already is a fire, pyrocumulus lightning strikes can add more ignition locations. So far as the anthropogenic sources, we're in control of those by definition. We should try to prevent those as much as possible outside of prescribed burns. Everything burns sooner or later, but it doesn't have to go up all at once. Much of the ecosystem depends on fire, but wildfires that do not do as much damage as the fires California has seen recently. But hey, the fires in Paradise shouldn't really be seen as a forest management problem, but rather as an intense urban conflagration. In much of Paradise, the trees survived, but fires jumped from house to house by wind-borne sparks. That was a disaster of urban planning, where evacuation routes had been made narrower in the past 10 years as population increased. So we can't blame PG&E for all of that. But we can blame them for crappy maintenance in an area that regularly sees 100mph winds.
alwaysdoit 8y ago
I agree that they should be held responsible for negligence or poor faith actions. But I'm not sure they should be responsible if their equipment caused a fire because it was shot full of bullet holes by some idiot with a gun[1]. My understanding is the law currently holds them responsible if their equipment was involved, regardless of whether or not they were negligent. [1] https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/fires/article222989595.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/fires/article22...
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  Keep in mind that, at scale, equipment is always breaking, whether the breaks are intentional or unintentional. The question is not whether the tower was broken by bullet holes or something else but how the equipment had been in this broken state beforehand. The task of a utility is to have a sufficient maintenance schedule to insure that most pieces of equipment unlikely to be broken even a few are. Overall, the "1,500 fires" part is what's damning, not any single fire. Again, overall, PG&E has terrible maintenance record and this is the impetus to hold them liable derives.
- twblalock 8y ago
  They should be held responsible for it if they don't repair it in a reasonable amount of time. They are required by law to keep equipment in safe working order, but they have a terrible track record of doing that. I wouldn't blame PG&E if somebody damages their equipment and causes a fire that day or sometime soon after. But if it's been months and the equipment is still lying on the ground with bullet holes in it that proves PG&E didn't inspect it or repair it for a long time.
- thaumaturgy 8y ago
  Read that article carefully. That report doesn't establish a timeline for that damage and certainly doesn't establish that shooting the pole caused the fire. That was an attempt by PG&E to muddy the waters on responsibility for the blazes.
someone7x 8y ago
SMUD... now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Not one person I knew chose PG&E instead of SMUD. The Yolo County stuff makes me sick, just like banning municipal wi-fi.

ip26 8y ago

Non-Californian; from here, it looks like it would have burned sooner or later, thanks to changing climate & history of forest management practices. Whether lightning strike, hobo camp, stupid teenager, OHV, train, it was a tinderbox waiting to go. Is that an inaccurate perception?

joe_the_user 8y ago
The situation in Paradise was problematic from a number of angles. Large fires returning seem likely from a multitude of factors. PG&E lines setting 1,500 fires was definitely a way to, uh, jump start whatever process might have happened anyway. One should remember that 60 people died that, many trapped by fire on the road out (where inadequate roads were another problem). So a big fire starting but simply more slowly, might have stopped this particular tragedy. Given that a few year back, a PG&E gas line exploded killing around 30 people, this is an organization I feel zero inclination to give a pass on "inevitability".
prewett 8y ago
I am living in California (but also consider myself non-Californian) near one of the areas that burned, and regardless of PG&E's incompetence, empirically the area was a tinderbox. The Carr fire was caused by a spark from a flat tire of an RV which caused the rim to create sparks against the road. Despite the forest service actively burning underbrush regularly, the fire was the largest in California history until the Mendocino fire unseated it a few weeks later. If sparks from a wheel rim can touch off a blaze, there isn't much margin for error.
- j-c-hewitt 8y ago
  In situations like this I think we would have to ask that considering that CA in general has high fire risk compared to other regions of the country, are the right people and entities bearing the risk and shouldering the costs of development there appropriately? I should think a lot of people have a vested interest in blaming PG&E, but if a completely ordinary event like a spark from a flat tire can cause a massive fire in the area that impacts a lot of human settlement directly, then someone is not assessing the risk of building and living there appropriately.
  - pixl97 8y ago
    >then someone is not assessing the risk of building and living there appropriately. This is the answer no one wants to hear. For example almost 10 years ago Paradise almost burned. There was a grand jury review afterwards(that you can find online if you're willing to search some) that pointed out that the place was a tinderbox deathtrap and major changes needed to be implemented for safety. The problem is populations in these places, along with most humans in general, like trees and shade and the idyllic beauty of nature. People would rather have a pine tree and bushes around their house, rather than a 100 foot cleared defensive parameter.
    - jonnycoder 8y ago
      You are also leaving out environmentalists who fight against thinning and cutting down trees — source, the Angora fire in South Lake Tahoe, Canyon Creek complex in eastern Oregon, and many others. Playing politics and not acknowledging environmental lobby will not do anyone any good. If you know any actual foresters in the USFS, they will tell you as well because they are suid by environmentalists for stuff as simple as salvage logging.
  - stevietopsiders 8y ago
    Either NYT or WSJ (I forget) had some analysis for this after some of the fires. One of the cited reasons was that municipalities are fine building into sensitive areas, because it increases their tax base while the state shoulders the cost of fire prevention/fighting/etc.
twblalock 8y ago
There are always going to be unavoidable fires. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to prevent the ones that are preventable.
thaumaturgy 8y ago
Yes, it's been a tinderbox, but if you want to shift the blame away from PG&E, then you also have to shift the blame away from vagrants and arguably arsons. It's a weird psychology that wants to pardon resourceful corporations while continuing to fault private citizens.
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  Destroying PG&E will hurt an awful lot of people that had nothing whatsoever to do with faulty equipment.
  - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    I'm curious: Who do you think will be hurt?
    - olefoo 8y ago
      Shareholders including pension funds. Nobody likes to be told that their retirement savings just lost 8% of their value because of a lawsuit.
    - tsuujin 8y ago
      I spent half a decade working as a PG&E contractor for the Energy Savings Assistance Program (ESAP) provided by PG&E. My job was to—at no cost to the occupant—install home weatherization measures into low-income housing. This ranges from new doors and seals to full attic, wall, and floor insulation. We provided this service to literally dozens of homes every working day of the year. If PG&E fails, not only are all of the contractors out of jobs, but people in need will be denied a valuable service. California provides a similar service (LiHEAP) with substantially less funding and far fewer benefits to the resident, and much of that funding has been eliminated in the past couple of years as I understand it. The point is that issues aren’t generally as binary as you may think. PG&E isn’t a perfect company, but asserting that nobody would be harmed by their bankruptcy is a bit naive.
      - 8y ago
labster 8y ago
Timing is important here. Yes, it's a tinderbox, but it doesn't have to burn at the worst possible time to cause a massive scale firestorm. If a wildfire forms when the weather is not very windy, or colder, or moister, they do not spread as far, or as fast, or cause as much damage. Exactly one of those is a non-anthropogenic source, lightning strike. Those tend not to occur during dry, windy conditions because of shear and needing to have enough moisture for cloud formation. Exception: when there already is a fire, pyrocumulus lightning strikes can add more ignition locations. So far as the anthropogenic sources, we're in control of those by definition. We should try to prevent those as much as possible outside of prescribed burns. Everything burns sooner or later, but it doesn't have to go up all at once. Much of the ecosystem depends on fire, but wildfires that do not do as much damage as the fires California has seen recently. But hey, the fires in Paradise shouldn't really be seen as a forest management problem, but rather as an intense urban conflagration. In much of Paradise, the trees survived, but fires jumped from house to house by wind-borne sparks. That was a disaster of urban planning, where evacuation routes had been made narrower in the past 10 years as population increased. So we can't blame PG&E for all of that. But we can blame them for crappy maintenance in an area that regularly sees 100mph winds.

alwaysdoit 8y ago

I agree that they should be held responsible for negligence or poor faith actions. But I'm not sure they should be responsible if their equipment caused a fire because it was shot full of bullet holes by some idiot with a gun[1]. My understanding is the law currently holds them responsible if their equipment was involved, regardless of whether or not they were negligent. [1] https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/fires/article222989595.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/fires/article22...

joe_the_user 8y ago
Keep in mind that, at scale, equipment is always breaking, whether the breaks are intentional or unintentional. The question is not whether the tower was broken by bullet holes or something else but how the equipment had been in this broken state beforehand. The task of a utility is to have a sufficient maintenance schedule to insure that most pieces of equipment unlikely to be broken even a few are. Overall, the "1,500 fires" part is what's damning, not any single fire. Again, overall, PG&E has terrible maintenance record and this is the impetus to hold them liable derives.
twblalock 8y ago
They should be held responsible for it if they don't repair it in a reasonable amount of time. They are required by law to keep equipment in safe working order, but they have a terrible track record of doing that. I wouldn't blame PG&E if somebody damages their equipment and causes a fire that day or sometime soon after. But if it's been months and the equipment is still lying on the ground with bullet holes in it that proves PG&E didn't inspect it or repair it for a long time.
thaumaturgy 8y ago
Read that article carefully. That report doesn't establish a timeline for that damage and certainly doesn't establish that shooting the pole caused the fire. That was an attempt by PG&E to muddy the waters on responsibility for the blazes.

someone7x 8y ago

SMUD... now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Not one person I knew chose PG&E instead of SMUD. The Yolo County stuff makes me sick, just like banning municipal wi-fi.