10 ms·

PG&E Says Its Equipment Was Probable ‘Ignition Point’ of Camp Fire

53 points by gdubs 8y ago

glass-droid 8y ago
Is this the fault of PG&E or is this the reality of climate change - systems that were once safe are now fire hazards in an increasingly dry climate.
- gdubs 8y ago
  It’s both. The impression I’ve gotten over the years is that PG&E has been negligent. In this situation you have a line they knew was faulty, for quite some time, in a tinderbox, and they sat on their hands.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  PG&E can't plausibly claim they were unaware California is dry.
  - iscrewyou 8y ago
    Especially when they have a meteorology department.
  - 0x445442 8y ago
    The only thing that was not "normal" was how late in the year it was before significant rainfall came. Look at the rainfall totals since like two weeks after the fire. It's quite normal for this area to get next to no rainfall from Memorial day into October.
- jerkstate 8y ago
  They deferred necessary maintenance (including replacing outdated equipment & tree clearing around lines) for years. I'm not saying that climate change isn't an important issue to address, but there was another report just a few days ago: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-delayed-safety-work-on-power-line-that-is-prime-suspect-in-california-wildfire-11551292977?mod=hp_lead_pos5&mod=article_inline https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-delayed-safety-work-on-pow... about the necessary maintenance that was deferred. Climate change is being used as an excuse because the fact is there was plenty that PG&E and CalFire could have done to prevent these disasters.
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  I'm not privy with the gory details, but insofar as I'm aware that seems besides the point. California is dry. They knew it. California is drier because of global warming. They also knew it. Ultimately, this is about the fact that ensuring their equipment is safe (by clearing brush and trees around their lines, etc.) is under their responsibility. And if I got the reporting on this right, they cut corners in doing so.
- jrockway 8y ago
  I think it's just externalities in action. Fixing your power lines to not sag into trees and warm them up to the point of igniting is expensive. Burning down a city accidentally is cheap (maybe they will be made to pay, but the calculation has to be done as % of a catastrophe happening * cost of fixing catastrophe, which probably ended up quite low). So it's logical what option they went with. As many people have said, the state of infrastructure in this country is not amazing. When New York City got hit by Sandy, power was off for a week. There was a single point of failure with no replacement stocked; for the largest and most dense city in the country. ConEd doesn't care. Maintaining basic infrastructure is the least glorious thing anyone can do right now, and people treat it that way. The results can be deadly.
  - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    Nobody gets a ribbon cutting ceremony and their picture in the paper for maintenance.
    - jrockway 8y ago
      The utility companies get really nervous when politicians show up in front of their power lines with giant scissors.
- waynecochran 8y ago
  You can actually blame the "Smokey the Bear" policies of the last century instead of climate change. The complete prevention of forest fires have lead to heavy fuel loads on the forest floor. Before this, fires were lower in intensity and actually cleaned out ll the debris. Also, many species of trees require fire to split open their cones (e.g., Lodge Pole Pines) and other species of plants need fire for germination (e.g. Manzanita). Ponderosa Pines have thick bark for the purpose of surviving fires -- now the fires are too hot. Look at forest pictures in Central Oregon from 120 years ago -- you could drive a car thru since there was not a lot of debris on the forest floor. Fires used to be a good thing. Native Americans would even manage fires with controlled burns. Now all fires are completely destructive! Source: Dad was a research scientist for US Forest Service.
  - cm2012 8y ago
    The thing is...research scientists like your dad have known this for a long time. If this was preventable by allowing more fires, it would be done already.
    - bluGill 8y ago
      Research scientists don't have much input to policy. Smokey the bear is cute and Bambi movies are each more powerful forces against doing controlled burns.
  - abalone 8y ago
    This is overly simplistic. This fire was not just the result of an accumulation of “debris”. You’re leaving out two major factors: years of severe drought followed by a year with lots of rain. This both weakened older trees and produced a lot of young growth which acted as kindling. Conservatives like to pin the blame in forest management just as a desperate attempt to take the heat off climate change. But the extremes we experienced were the primary factors here, and that’s climate change.
    - setr 8y ago
      >Conservatives like to pin the blame in forest management just as a desperate attempt to take the heat off climate change. Im pretty sure the primary appeal would be failure of widereaching goverment policy, versus climate change.
pdx_flyer 8y ago
I would say PG&E's biggest fault is their maintenance and inspection practices being subpar. Regular line and pole inspections would work wonders to prevent these types of things. It's hard for PG&E to argue against this when they are willing to spend millions on lobbyists after the fire knowing full well the event may mean regulations that closely resemble what the natural gas utilities have to follow. Deferred maintenance is typical in the utility world. You look at the item being maintained and the criticality and safety of it and determine if it can be deferred. In something like a transmission line, maintenance should not be deferred as the knock on effects are far greater than say a small transformer on a city block. In the utility world there are a lot of software options to help you manage your assets and do preventative maintenance of those assets. I am sure a deeper investigation will look to see if those tools were being used and if they were properly being audited.
- JPKab 8y ago
  I'm not a California resident, so I'm actually curious and definitely not trying to have an opinion: I've heard from co-workers in California that PG&E has routinely been regulated to keep prices at a certain level, and this has hampered their ability to perform proper maintenance. Is this a remotely fair assessment, or grossly incorrect?
  - pdx_flyer 8y ago
    Most utilities are regulated at some level. I am not a PG&E employee but work in the industry. Just about every utility goes through a rate case with the local/county/state governments where they make the arguments for an increase in utility rates. This usually takes into account capital spending and new or significantly improved infrastructure to justify a rates increase.
  - thaumaturgy 8y ago
    PG&E's retail rates have been regulated by the state for a long, long time, since they provide a utility which is vital to the public interest and past deregulatory efforts have immediately resulted in market manipulation and energy crises [1]. However, this doesn't prevent PG&E from performing the appropriate maintenance on their equipment. That fault lies with the policies of upper management. CPUC is well aware of PG&E's obligations to maintain their equipment and regularly audits them and has made hay in the past about PG&E's reactive approach to maintenance [2]. The people who bring up the regulation of retail prices tend to be the ones who have an ideological love for deregulating everything. That's the wrong hammer for this particular screw and hasn't worked out so well in the past. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis [2]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/PG-E-cited-for-late-maintenance-work-more-often-12303697.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/PG-E-cited-for-...
ct0 8y ago
There are thousands of buildings in NYC that need fire inspections, but only a few inspectors to handle them. How to they prioritize the buildings that need the inspections most? The answer could have prevented this tragic event for PG&E.
- godzillabrennus 8y ago
  Require buildings to pay for a fire inspection. Use that money to hire more fire inspectors. These solutions are not difficult. Lives are on the line. There was a big fire on my street last night in New York. The city has a ton of old dumpy buildings.
  - jcims 8y ago
    Aren't most building owners already paying property/city taxes of some form?
    - smileysteve 8y ago
      This is to say, either the tax is not high enough for services (note that fire, sprinkler inspection, etc are typically additional fees) or the property taxes are not properly earmarked for the direct costs that they entail. It's also easy to suggest that these costs and inspections could be "free market" attributed to the insurer.
eigenvector 8y ago
From my perspective as a power utility engineer, this turns on whether PG&E made reasonable and diligent effort to maintain and operate its system in a way that mitigated potential fire hazards. Quoting from Ars Technica's coverage of this: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/pge-its-likely-our-equipment-was-ignition-point-for-deadly-camp-fire/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/pge-i... >The utility goes on to state that its Caribou-Palermo 115 kilovolt (kV) transmission line deenergized approximately 15 minutes before a PG&E employee observed a fire in the vicinity of a tower on the line. In addition, "a suspension insulator supporting a transposition jumper had separated from an arm" on the tower in question." Mechanical failure of a suspension insulator in the absence of something physically falling on it is a very rare occurrence, and would only plausibly occur if the insulator is well outside its normal service life. To me this points to inadequate maintenance. We're talking about equipment that already has a 30-year service life and a miniscule failure rate. Obviously, there will be more detailed investigation to come. But PG&E doesn't look good here, and unless they can show they were inspecting and maintaining that line in accordance with normal industry practices, they are going to get nailed for this.
- turtlegrids 8y ago
  >Mechanical failure of a suspension insulator in the absence of something physically falling on it is a very rare occurrence, and would only plausibly occur if the insulator is well outside its normal service life. What about one or more bullets being shot at it, as numerous locals have stated happened?
  - eigenvector 8y ago
    That will certainly cause insulator failure. And if PG&E can show that's what happened it would certainly help their case that the ignition was not preventable (by the utility).
    - turtlegrids 8y ago
      will it really help their case, though? I thought the whole issue here is that even if not negligent, if a California utility's infrastructure is a cause (not THE cause) and even if not negligent, the utility can and will be held liable for the damages. One random source (Thanks Duckduckgo!): https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-approves-bill-to-limit-utility-liability-for-wildfires-but-not/531483/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-approves-bill-to... > California courts use a "strict liability" interpretation of the doctrine that holds utilities accountable for wildfires caused by their equipment, even if a company is not found negligent.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
Could it be that no company can bring power to Californians if they were to be held liable for such events? One fire can cost you $10 Billion and to repair /replace /maintain correctly the lines they probably need 100 billion. I guess they could bring power, but at 50 cent a KWh...
- crushcrashcrush 8y ago
  Hence, it should be a publicly owned utility like water.
  - jedmeyers 8y ago
    How would it help to lower the costs?
    - dahdum 8y ago
      It won't at all, but never going to happen. Legislators know full well this will happen again, they need a "bad guy" or they'll take the heat themselves.
  - gscott 8y ago
    The roads of San Diego are full of potholes. Leaking water lines are causing sinkholes. School fountains had high level of lead for years until a dog wouldn't drink water put into a bowl and an interested teacher started looking into why. Government has too many funding priorities not to mention Government contracts do not come in under time and budget.
    - enraged_camel 8y ago
      Well yes, it turns out you can’t burden a local government with something unless you increase taxes sufficiently to pay for that thing.
      - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
crushcrashcrush 8y ago
How many more utter disasters need to happen before the State of California starts garnishing corporate profits from PG&E for punishment? Why is no one on trial? Let's just turn this into a completely publicly owned utility, focus on modernization, and be done with it. Remember the neighborhood that quite literally exploded?
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >Let's just turn this into a completely publicly owned utility, That's a bad idea if you want accountability in the event of a disaster because then the taxpayers are still ultimately on the hook. Making it a government organization all but guarantees government bailout in the event of a disaster. Better to just make PG&E pay (if it does turn out to be their fault) and then roll with whatever happens.
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  The problem is that government isn't any better at maintenance than private companies, as far as I can see. Where does the money come from? You either raise prices (taxpayers are pissed) or subsidize from the general fund (taxpayers are pissed).
kolbe 8y ago
https://outline.com/gnTpbH https://outline.com/gnTpbH
cft 8y ago
Longed them in January- stock's up 200% since. They are in the too big to fail category.
packet_nerd 8y ago
When the conditions are right its extremely easy for a wildfire to start. Lightning strikes, a glass bottle in the sun, a camp fire, there's so many different ways it could get started. Does it really matter that it happened to be PG&E's equipment in this case? If not them, it would have happened anyway from another cause. It seems unfair to hold them liable, or at least, the extremely hostile tone in these comments seems a bit overboard. In my early teens my family moved to rural northern Idaho and my dad decided one day to burn some of the brush on our land to clean it up. Well, being from a much more suburban setting we didn't know that that's a real no-no that time of year. The fire got out of control and started burning into the trees and my mom, brothers, and I frantically fought it with hoes and buckets of water while dad tried to plow over it with the bulldozer (we didn't have a phone and this was an hour drive from a fire department). Anyway, we finally got it put out before it got into the national forest bordering our property on the east. Very very scary. A week later there was a lightning strike fire in the national forest which ended up burning several hundred acres.
- thaumaturgy 8y ago
  > Does it really matter that it happened to be PG&E's equipment in this case? If not them, it would have happened anyway from another cause. It seems unfair to hold them liable... Okay, so an arsonist sets off a massive wildfire. Should they not be found at fault? Surely the fire would've barely burned at all if it weren't for the conditions. Nobody disputes that conditions were a contributing factor. On the contrary, that's why it was more important than usual to prevent sources of ignition as much as possible. It wasn't a lightning strike, it wasn't a hot muffler, it wasn't arson, it was PG&E's equipment that ignited the fire that destroyed an entire community, and that equipment failure was the direct result of their chronic poor maintenance. I think the comments here are quite civilized all things considered. PG&E has a long history of poor equipment maintenance and has been the proximate cause for numerous environmental disasters. They are responsible for the deaths of over a hundred people over the last few years, the endangerment of thousands more, the displacement of tens of thousands more, and the destruction of multiple communities. No action currently being taken against them is inappropriate under the circumstances.
  - 8y ago
mistrial9 8y ago
Based on recent reports, PG&E filed for, and received money for, maintenance of this exact location, in the 2010 time frame, then submitted in writing a justification to postpone those exact repairs in 2013, then again at least once after that.. A speculation is, that if specific uses of those funds for other purposes are found, it could be the basis of criminal charges against individuals in the company.

53 points by gdubs 8y ago

Is this the fault of PG&E or is this the reality of climate change - systems that were once safe are now fire hazards in an increasingly dry climate.

gdubs 8y ago
It’s both. The impression I’ve gotten over the years is that PG&E has been negligent. In this situation you have a line they knew was faulty, for quite some time, in a tinderbox, and they sat on their hands.
darkpuma 8y ago
PG&E can't plausibly claim they were unaware California is dry.
- iscrewyou 8y ago
  Especially when they have a meteorology department.
- 0x445442 8y ago
  The only thing that was not "normal" was how late in the year it was before significant rainfall came. Look at the rainfall totals since like two weeks after the fire. It's quite normal for this area to get next to no rainfall from Memorial day into October.
jerkstate 8y ago
They deferred necessary maintenance (including replacing outdated equipment & tree clearing around lines) for years. I'm not saying that climate change isn't an important issue to address, but there was another report just a few days ago: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-delayed-safety-work-on-power-line-that-is-prime-suspect-in-california-wildfire-11551292977?mod=hp_lead_pos5&mod=article_inline https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-delayed-safety-work-on-pow... about the necessary maintenance that was deferred. Climate change is being used as an excuse because the fact is there was plenty that PG&E and CalFire could have done to prevent these disasters.
ddebernardy 8y ago
I'm not privy with the gory details, but insofar as I'm aware that seems besides the point. California is dry. They knew it. California is drier because of global warming. They also knew it. Ultimately, this is about the fact that ensuring their equipment is safe (by clearing brush and trees around their lines, etc.) is under their responsibility. And if I got the reporting on this right, they cut corners in doing so.
jrockway 8y ago
I think it's just externalities in action. Fixing your power lines to not sag into trees and warm them up to the point of igniting is expensive. Burning down a city accidentally is cheap (maybe they will be made to pay, but the calculation has to be done as % of a catastrophe happening * cost of fixing catastrophe, which probably ended up quite low). So it's logical what option they went with. As many people have said, the state of infrastructure in this country is not amazing. When New York City got hit by Sandy, power was off for a week. There was a single point of failure with no replacement stocked; for the largest and most dense city in the country. ConEd doesn't care. Maintaining basic infrastructure is the least glorious thing anyone can do right now, and people treat it that way. The results can be deadly.
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  Nobody gets a ribbon cutting ceremony and their picture in the paper for maintenance.
  - jrockway 8y ago
    The utility companies get really nervous when politicians show up in front of their power lines with giant scissors.
waynecochran 8y ago
You can actually blame the "Smokey the Bear" policies of the last century instead of climate change. The complete prevention of forest fires have lead to heavy fuel loads on the forest floor. Before this, fires were lower in intensity and actually cleaned out ll the debris. Also, many species of trees require fire to split open their cones (e.g., Lodge Pole Pines) and other species of plants need fire for germination (e.g. Manzanita). Ponderosa Pines have thick bark for the purpose of surviving fires -- now the fires are too hot. Look at forest pictures in Central Oregon from 120 years ago -- you could drive a car thru since there was not a lot of debris on the forest floor. Fires used to be a good thing. Native Americans would even manage fires with controlled burns. Now all fires are completely destructive! Source: Dad was a research scientist for US Forest Service.
- cm2012 8y ago
  The thing is...research scientists like your dad have known this for a long time. If this was preventable by allowing more fires, it would be done already.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    Research scientists don't have much input to policy. Smokey the bear is cute and Bambi movies are each more powerful forces against doing controlled burns.
- abalone 8y ago
  This is overly simplistic. This fire was not just the result of an accumulation of “debris”. You’re leaving out two major factors: years of severe drought followed by a year with lots of rain. This both weakened older trees and produced a lot of young growth which acted as kindling. Conservatives like to pin the blame in forest management just as a desperate attempt to take the heat off climate change. But the extremes we experienced were the primary factors here, and that’s climate change.
  - setr 8y ago
    >Conservatives like to pin the blame in forest management just as a desperate attempt to take the heat off climate change. Im pretty sure the primary appeal would be failure of widereaching goverment policy, versus climate change.

pdx_flyer 8y ago

I would say PG&E's biggest fault is their maintenance and inspection practices being subpar. Regular line and pole inspections would work wonders to prevent these types of things. It's hard for PG&E to argue against this when they are willing to spend millions on lobbyists after the fire knowing full well the event may mean regulations that closely resemble what the natural gas utilities have to follow. Deferred maintenance is typical in the utility world. You look at the item being maintained and the criticality and safety of it and determine if it can be deferred. In something like a transmission line, maintenance should not be deferred as the knock on effects are far greater than say a small transformer on a city block. In the utility world there are a lot of software options to help you manage your assets and do preventative maintenance of those assets. I am sure a deeper investigation will look to see if those tools were being used and if they were properly being audited.

JPKab 8y ago
I'm not a California resident, so I'm actually curious and definitely not trying to have an opinion: I've heard from co-workers in California that PG&E has routinely been regulated to keep prices at a certain level, and this has hampered their ability to perform proper maintenance. Is this a remotely fair assessment, or grossly incorrect?
- pdx_flyer 8y ago
  Most utilities are regulated at some level. I am not a PG&E employee but work in the industry. Just about every utility goes through a rate case with the local/county/state governments where they make the arguments for an increase in utility rates. This usually takes into account capital spending and new or significantly improved infrastructure to justify a rates increase.
- thaumaturgy 8y ago
  PG&E's retail rates have been regulated by the state for a long, long time, since they provide a utility which is vital to the public interest and past deregulatory efforts have immediately resulted in market manipulation and energy crises [1]. However, this doesn't prevent PG&E from performing the appropriate maintenance on their equipment. That fault lies with the policies of upper management. CPUC is well aware of PG&E's obligations to maintain their equipment and regularly audits them and has made hay in the past about PG&E's reactive approach to maintenance [2]. The people who bring up the regulation of retail prices tend to be the ones who have an ideological love for deregulating everything. That's the wrong hammer for this particular screw and hasn't worked out so well in the past. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis [2]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/PG-E-cited-for-late-maintenance-work-more-often-12303697.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/PG-E-cited-for-...

ct0 8y ago

There are thousands of buildings in NYC that need fire inspections, but only a few inspectors to handle them. How to they prioritize the buildings that need the inspections most? The answer could have prevented this tragic event for PG&E.

godzillabrennus 8y ago
Require buildings to pay for a fire inspection. Use that money to hire more fire inspectors. These solutions are not difficult. Lives are on the line. There was a big fire on my street last night in New York. The city has a ton of old dumpy buildings.
- jcims 8y ago
  Aren't most building owners already paying property/city taxes of some form?
  - smileysteve 8y ago
    This is to say, either the tax is not high enough for services (note that fire, sprinkler inspection, etc are typically additional fees) or the property taxes are not properly earmarked for the direct costs that they entail. It's also easy to suggest that these costs and inspections could be "free market" attributed to the insurer.

eigenvector 8y ago

From my perspective as a power utility engineer, this turns on whether PG&E made reasonable and diligent effort to maintain and operate its system in a way that mitigated potential fire hazards. Quoting from Ars Technica's coverage of this: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/pge-its-likely-our-equipment-was-ignition-point-for-deadly-camp-fire/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/pge-i... >The utility goes on to state that its Caribou-Palermo 115 kilovolt (kV) transmission line deenergized approximately 15 minutes before a PG&E employee observed a fire in the vicinity of a tower on the line. In addition, "a suspension insulator supporting a transposition jumper had separated from an arm" on the tower in question." Mechanical failure of a suspension insulator in the absence of something physically falling on it is a very rare occurrence, and would only plausibly occur if the insulator is well outside its normal service life. To me this points to inadequate maintenance. We're talking about equipment that already has a 30-year service life and a miniscule failure rate. Obviously, there will be more detailed investigation to come. But PG&E doesn't look good here, and unless they can show they were inspecting and maintaining that line in accordance with normal industry practices, they are going to get nailed for this.

turtlegrids 8y ago
>Mechanical failure of a suspension insulator in the absence of something physically falling on it is a very rare occurrence, and would only plausibly occur if the insulator is well outside its normal service life. What about one or more bullets being shot at it, as numerous locals have stated happened?
- eigenvector 8y ago
  That will certainly cause insulator failure. And if PG&E can show that's what happened it would certainly help their case that the ignition was not preventable (by the utility).
  - turtlegrids 8y ago
    will it really help their case, though? I thought the whole issue here is that even if not negligent, if a California utility's infrastructure is a cause (not THE cause) and even if not negligent, the utility can and will be held liable for the damages. One random source (Thanks Duckduckgo!): https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-approves-bill-to-limit-utility-liability-for-wildfires-but-not/531483/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-approves-bill-to... > California courts use a "strict liability" interpretation of the doctrine that holds utilities accountable for wildfires caused by their equipment, even if a company is not found negligent.

onetimemanytime 8y ago

Could it be that no company can bring power to Californians if they were to be held liable for such events? One fire can cost you $10 Billion and to repair /replace /maintain correctly the lines they probably need 100 billion. I guess they could bring power, but at 50 cent a KWh...

crushcrashcrush 8y ago
Hence, it should be a publicly owned utility like water.
- jedmeyers 8y ago
  How would it help to lower the costs?
  - dahdum 8y ago
    It won't at all, but never going to happen. Legislators know full well this will happen again, they need a "bad guy" or they'll take the heat themselves.
- gscott 8y ago
  The roads of San Diego are full of potholes. Leaking water lines are causing sinkholes. School fountains had high level of lead for years until a dog wouldn't drink water put into a bowl and an interested teacher started looking into why. Government has too many funding priorities not to mention Government contracts do not come in under time and budget.
  - enraged_camel 8y ago
    Well yes, it turns out you can’t burden a local government with something unless you increase taxes sufficiently to pay for that thing.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago

crushcrashcrush 8y ago

How many more utter disasters need to happen before the State of California starts garnishing corporate profits from PG&E for punishment? Why is no one on trial? Let's just turn this into a completely publicly owned utility, focus on modernization, and be done with it. Remember the neighborhood that quite literally exploded?

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>Let's just turn this into a completely publicly owned utility, That's a bad idea if you want accountability in the event of a disaster because then the taxpayers are still ultimately on the hook. Making it a government organization all but guarantees government bailout in the event of a disaster. Better to just make PG&E pay (if it does turn out to be their fault) and then roll with whatever happens.
amanaplanacanal 8y ago
The problem is that government isn't any better at maintenance than private companies, as far as I can see. Where does the money come from? You either raise prices (taxpayers are pissed) or subsidize from the general fund (taxpayers are pissed).

kolbe 8y ago

https://outline.com/gnTpbH https://outline.com/gnTpbH

cft 8y ago

Longed them in January- stock's up 200% since. They are in the too big to fail category.

packet_nerd 8y ago

When the conditions are right its extremely easy for a wildfire to start. Lightning strikes, a glass bottle in the sun, a camp fire, there's so many different ways it could get started. Does it really matter that it happened to be PG&E's equipment in this case? If not them, it would have happened anyway from another cause. It seems unfair to hold them liable, or at least, the extremely hostile tone in these comments seems a bit overboard. In my early teens my family moved to rural northern Idaho and my dad decided one day to burn some of the brush on our land to clean it up. Well, being from a much more suburban setting we didn't know that that's a real no-no that time of year. The fire got out of control and started burning into the trees and my mom, brothers, and I frantically fought it with hoes and buckets of water while dad tried to plow over it with the bulldozer (we didn't have a phone and this was an hour drive from a fire department). Anyway, we finally got it put out before it got into the national forest bordering our property on the east. Very very scary. A week later there was a lightning strike fire in the national forest which ended up burning several hundred acres.

thaumaturgy 8y ago
> Does it really matter that it happened to be PG&E's equipment in this case? If not them, it would have happened anyway from another cause. It seems unfair to hold them liable... Okay, so an arsonist sets off a massive wildfire. Should they not be found at fault? Surely the fire would've barely burned at all if it weren't for the conditions. Nobody disputes that conditions were a contributing factor. On the contrary, that's why it was more important than usual to prevent sources of ignition as much as possible. It wasn't a lightning strike, it wasn't a hot muffler, it wasn't arson, it was PG&E's equipment that ignited the fire that destroyed an entire community, and that equipment failure was the direct result of their chronic poor maintenance. I think the comments here are quite civilized all things considered. PG&E has a long history of poor equipment maintenance and has been the proximate cause for numerous environmental disasters. They are responsible for the deaths of over a hundred people over the last few years, the endangerment of thousands more, the displacement of tens of thousands more, and the destruction of multiple communities. No action currently being taken against them is inappropriate under the circumstances.
- 8y ago

mistrial9 8y ago

Based on recent reports, PG&E filed for, and received money for, maintenance of this exact location, in the 2010 time frame, then submitted in writing a justification to postpone those exact repairs in 2013, then again at least once after that.. A speculation is, that if specific uses of those funds for other purposes are found, it could be the basis of criminal charges against individuals in the company.