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Alsup is my favorite jurist. He's 74; may he preside forever. The above quote benefits from a little more context. Alsup's point is that PG&E paid dividends

Alsup is my favorite jurist. He's 74; may he preside forever. The above quote benefits from a little more context. Alsup's point is that PG&E paid dividends while slashing the maintenance budget — and as a judge, he's willing to step in and say "that's not right".

wavefunction 7y ago
I heard a working-class lady on the radio discussing the $150 of groceries in her refrigerator that were going to waste and how that's a lot of money for her family. I'd rather have that $150 than a silly opportunity to blame some old out-of-touch judge.
- snagglegaggle 7y ago
  There is also a man who was on oxygen who died. He was not able to get to his unpowered backup. The cause of death was listed as heart failure, though it is very likely the heart appeared stressed due to the hypoxia.
  - stickfigure 7y ago
    I hate to sound callous - every death is a tragedy to friends and family - but this seems like the least sympathetic victim in the whole affair. If your life depends on oxygen, then it is your responsibility to ensure its continued supply whether or not the wall socket works. The fact that there were generous warnings only compounds the self-neglect. Oxygen-dependent COPD is no joke. PG&E is not your healthcare provider.
    - shortandsweet 7y ago
      Incredibly callous. You should be ashamed. A 2 day notification is nothing especially as the entire state scrambles for backup power. What right does pg and e have to decide who lives and dies?
    - snagglegaggle 7y ago
      Do not overestimate people's ability to stay informed. The elderly and infirm may have issues receiving those alerts. The given times may not actually reflect when the blackout will occur. Most utilities handle this by keeping a list of people with life-critical medical devices. In case of an outage they send emergency services. It appears he did have a backup, but was not able to get to it in time. People get hit criminally and civilly for things far lamer than this. Are some of those wrong? Yes. But interrupting what is supposed to be a continuous service is not acceptable, especially as the lack of maintenance was self-inflicted.
      - amanaplanacanal 7y ago
        I don't know about you, but I have never lived anywhere that there were not occasional power outages. Continuous over Short periods of time, yes. Over long Periods, no.
    - dkersten 7y ago
      Where I live, the power goes out maybe twice a year (typically for between half an hour and maybe five or six hours, depending on the fault). Where my mother lives, in the country, it could go out for two days when it goes. Luckily its not that often, but when it does, there's never an advance warning. If your life depends on continuous power, planning for an occasional no-warning outage seems like the prudent thing to do.
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      > I hate to sound callous... No, you don't. Not everybody can do everything they need to be safe against collapse of society. Many thousands die every year for lack of the dollars safety would cost. Medical costs regularly bankrupt families. A backup generator, vs. food on the table? Clearly, the generator has to wait. It is clear that power was cut over hundreds of square miles that were under no fire threat. People died just to give PGE leverage to force the state to indemnify them against their own negligence. PGE provided a tent at the El Dorado County fairground, with outlets. For 100 people, for the entire county. All were taken by people's medical equipment, and many, many more turned away.
- leereeves 7y ago
  It sounds like you're saying she shouldn't have bought those groceries, but PG&E only promises 2 days warning, and $150 is maybe a week's groceries for a family. Should people to go to the grocery store every 2 days to avoid food spoiling during blackouts?
zaroth 7y ago
He also made that point. But his point here is that if we’re willing to assign liability to PG&E for damages from a brushfire sparked tomorrow... if in your mind PG&E is truly responsible for any resulting death or destruction if a tree falls on their transmission lines during a time of critical fire risk and sparks a blaze.... then it is not only prudent, but it would be morally and economically imperative to shut down the lines during those critical risk periods. There are several competing theories of liability and responsibility. Under strict liability, a fire happens, the root cause was an electrical spark, the utility is liable. You can’t operate a grid across all of California during 55mph winds at the end of the hot dry summer under those terms, and not go bankrupt. From PG&E; “California is one of the only states in the country in which courts have applied inverse condemnation to events caused by utility equipment. This means that if a utility’s equipment is found to have been a substantial cause of the damage in an event such as a wildfire – even if the utility has followed established inspection and safety rules – the utility may still be liable for property damages and attorneys’ fees associated with that event.” There are a lot of variables in how damaging a wildfire may be. What sparked the fire is only one small variable in the chain of events. Forest management, building zones encroaching on forested areas, presence of fire brakes, disaster preparedness and response, emergency alerts all play a significant role, and those are just the factors CA can directly control. The weather, the climate is another matter. “But for the spark” is a reductionist way to lay the blame for a multi-billion dollar fire. CA wildfires will burn every single year. The sparks are inevitable. The amount of preventative maintenance that theoretically can be done amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars. It doesn’t serve CA’s common interest for electricity to cost $1/kWh. Risk mitigation is a statistical analysis, not an absolute. At some point you’ve invested enough that the risk is “mitigated” even if it isn’t “eliminated” and we accept this type of risk mitigation everywhere in modern life, the electrical grid should be no different. How many people die driving on CA’s highways every year? How many could be saved with $100 billion of safety improvements? Do you shut them down until you can be certain no one else will die due to a deficient design or, perhaps, due to a gore point impact attenuator that hasn’t been reset? A cursory look at PG&E financials shows that on ~$17b in revenue they spend ~$5b on supply and ~$7b on maintenance. They had been running $1-$1.5b surpluses the last few years. I wonder looking at other utilities how those ratios would stack up. Would $1b more maintenance have prevented the Camp Fire? Entirely impossible to say. We do know that the full maintenance list runs into the $10s if not $100s of billions.

wavefunction 7y ago

I heard a working-class lady on the radio discussing the $150 of groceries in her refrigerator that were going to waste and how that's a lot of money for her family. I'd rather have that $150 than a silly opportunity to blame some old out-of-touch judge.

snagglegaggle 7y ago
There is also a man who was on oxygen who died. He was not able to get to his unpowered backup. The cause of death was listed as heart failure, though it is very likely the heart appeared stressed due to the hypoxia.
- stickfigure 7y ago
  I hate to sound callous - every death is a tragedy to friends and family - but this seems like the least sympathetic victim in the whole affair. If your life depends on oxygen, then it is your responsibility to ensure its continued supply whether or not the wall socket works. The fact that there were generous warnings only compounds the self-neglect. Oxygen-dependent COPD is no joke. PG&E is not your healthcare provider.
  - shortandsweet 7y ago
    Incredibly callous. You should be ashamed. A 2 day notification is nothing especially as the entire state scrambles for backup power. What right does pg and e have to decide who lives and dies?
  - snagglegaggle 7y ago
    Do not overestimate people's ability to stay informed. The elderly and infirm may have issues receiving those alerts. The given times may not actually reflect when the blackout will occur. Most utilities handle this by keeping a list of people with life-critical medical devices. In case of an outage they send emergency services. It appears he did have a backup, but was not able to get to it in time. People get hit criminally and civilly for things far lamer than this. Are some of those wrong? Yes. But interrupting what is supposed to be a continuous service is not acceptable, especially as the lack of maintenance was self-inflicted.
    - amanaplanacanal 7y ago
      I don't know about you, but I have never lived anywhere that there were not occasional power outages. Continuous over Short periods of time, yes. Over long Periods, no.
  - dkersten 7y ago
    Where I live, the power goes out maybe twice a year (typically for between half an hour and maybe five or six hours, depending on the fault). Where my mother lives, in the country, it could go out for two days when it goes. Luckily its not that often, but when it does, there's never an advance warning. If your life depends on continuous power, planning for an occasional no-warning outage seems like the prudent thing to do.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    > I hate to sound callous... No, you don't. Not everybody can do everything they need to be safe against collapse of society. Many thousands die every year for lack of the dollars safety would cost. Medical costs regularly bankrupt families. A backup generator, vs. food on the table? Clearly, the generator has to wait. It is clear that power was cut over hundreds of square miles that were under no fire threat. People died just to give PGE leverage to force the state to indemnify them against their own negligence. PGE provided a tent at the El Dorado County fairground, with outlets. For 100 people, for the entire county. All were taken by people's medical equipment, and many, many more turned away.
leereeves 7y ago
It sounds like you're saying she shouldn't have bought those groceries, but PG&E only promises 2 days warning, and $150 is maybe a week's groceries for a family. Should people to go to the grocery store every 2 days to avoid food spoiling during blackouts?

zaroth 7y ago

He also made that point. But his point here is that if we’re willing to assign liability to PG&E for damages from a brushfire sparked tomorrow... if in your mind PG&E is truly responsible for any resulting death or destruction if a tree falls on their transmission lines during a time of critical fire risk and sparks a blaze.... then it is not only prudent, but it would be morally and economically imperative to shut down the lines during those critical risk periods. There are several competing theories of liability and responsibility. Under strict liability, a fire happens, the root cause was an electrical spark, the utility is liable. You can’t operate a grid across all of California during 55mph winds at the end of the hot dry summer under those terms, and not go bankrupt. From PG&E; “California is one of the only states in the country in which courts have applied inverse condemnation to events caused by utility equipment. This means that if a utility’s equipment is found to have been a substantial cause of the damage in an event such as a wildfire – even if the utility has followed established inspection and safety rules – the utility may still be liable for property damages and attorneys’ fees associated with that event.” There are a lot of variables in how damaging a wildfire may be. What sparked the fire is only one small variable in the chain of events. Forest management, building zones encroaching on forested areas, presence of fire brakes, disaster preparedness and response, emergency alerts all play a significant role, and those are just the factors CA can directly control. The weather, the climate is another matter. “But for the spark” is a reductionist way to lay the blame for a multi-billion dollar fire. CA wildfires will burn every single year. The sparks are inevitable. The amount of preventative maintenance that theoretically can be done amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars. It doesn’t serve CA’s common interest for electricity to cost $1/kWh. Risk mitigation is a statistical analysis, not an absolute. At some point you’ve invested enough that the risk is “mitigated” even if it isn’t “eliminated” and we accept this type of risk mitigation everywhere in modern life, the electrical grid should be no different. How many people die driving on CA’s highways every year? How many could be saved with $100 billion of safety improvements? Do you shut them down until you can be certain no one else will die due to a deficient design or, perhaps, due to a gore point impact attenuator that hasn’t been reset? A cursory look at PG&E financials shows that on ~$17b in revenue they spend ~$5b on supply and ~$7b on maintenance. They had been running $1-$1.5b surpluses the last few years. I wonder looking at other utilities how those ratios would stack up. Would $1b more maintenance have prevented the Camp Fire? Entirely impossible to say. We do know that the full maintenance list runs into the $10s if not $100s of billions.