“there’s little incentive, financially that is, for PG&E to invest in fire safe power lines”
This is untrue, the law of inverse condemnation in CA means that any entity with eminent domain authority (including utilities) is liable for any harm caused by their facilities, without any requirement for them to have acted negligently. That allows your insurance company to recover its costs from PG&E if your house burns down. So there are massive liabilities associated with the fires over the last two years, which caused PG&E to file for bankruptcy and there will potentially be even more from the Kincade fire (which get priority over existing claimants because the company is already in bankruptcy).
The problem is that as noted in post #109, the PUC only agrees to let PG&E spend money on things like additional maintenance after a disaster (like the San Bruno gas explosion a few years ago, which led to lots of pipeline inspections) because it causes consumers’ rates to increase. It will be interesting to see what happens with attempts by cities like San Jose and San Francisco to take over their own facilities from PG&E. The problem if that happens is that PG&E will just be left serving the rural parts of the state that have these massive potential fire liabilities and deferred maintenance and those customers will have to bear all the costs of fixing the problems. But the rich coastal cities don’t care about those places. And politicians in Sacramento are unlikely to change the law to fix the inverse condemnation issue.
We’re on the SF Peninsula and have been without power since Saturday evening, unlike in the prior shutoff. It was pretty windy yesterday but hopefully the power will come back on today before everything in the freezer has completely melted. We may be off again as soon as tomorrow.
There were over a dozen little and medium fires yesterday in Northern California, in addition to the big one in Napa: Milpitas, Lafayette, two in Vallejo, more. If the cutoffs prevented more fires, they were worth it. So far (crossing fingers) the Santa Cruz Mountains have been spared.
After half of the undergrads and faculty had made it to campus or were on their way, it should be noted. I’d already taught my 8 AM class and noticed that attendance was way down.
The problem is multi leveled. We have a generator but are still without internet or phone access. Comcast/xFinity (or whatever their name is today) needs the power grid to keep their equipment running. Many rural areas have limited internet provider options.
Verizon is also dependent on the power grid. While the towers can run for a while, they are also dropping out and what’s left is over loaded. We had difficulties even sending a text message.
Many ‘rural’ (is it rural if you are 5 minutes from a Starbucks/Peets/High School/major freeway access/movie theater/grocery store) areas are without power, internet, phone service of any kind. No way to call for help in case of medical emergency. In our case I’d hop in the car, run a stop sign and go to the local fire station - about 2 minutes away. I’d take the person in crisis with me.
I was listening to some of the KQED Forum program this morning and they were discussing just how hard it has been to get information out to people about evacuations when the power is out. One of those things that wasn’t really thought through all that well in advance. So you cut power to prevent a fire but a fire happens anyway and now you have to evacuate the area but you can’t alert residents by cell alert system because all of the cell towers are down and they aren’t watching tv because the power is out. The only way to get information out is really either by radio if people have a battery-powered one and happen to be listening to it… which they might not be at 3am… or by going out into the community with a bullhorn.
We lost power again with this outage. The cell towers around us went down with the last power outage, but it appears they upgraded the backup power this time around. We were out for 40 hours this time in the bay area. Our cabin in the Sierra is still out.
Berkeley doesn’t have class today (yet another midterm pushed back for my kid) and it’s very possible there might not be class for the entire week. This on top of the 3 days that was lost a couple of weeks ago. What a disaster.
I am not where I can presently look at the outage and fire maps. Can someone post the links? My s’s and spouses say they are ok, but not sure about the in-laws. @jshain are you ok?
With all the previous discussions about ideal weather/climate for college, I think the hurricane risk is safer than the fire/outage and earthquake risk.
Holly crap!
Yesterday was one of those days in remembrance. We had the hellacious wind in the hills, at 7:30am, I was awakened by the pool covers flapping in the wind since it was closed. I had to get up trying to tie it down to no avail, the wind was so strong, I could hardly stand up and I had to handle that 100 sf pool cover in that condition was a battle by itself. Finally, I was forced to remove the pool cover to prevent it to be blown off. After one hour of struggle, I finally could take that pool cover inside, cutting all the ties and removing all the weights.
The sky was covered with smoke and half of the sky was in red, due to the fire in Laffeytte, only 20 miles away. Interstate 80 was closed for 5 hours because of the two fires in Contra Costa County and the fire jumped the highway. I am glad I have sold that house because it was on the edge of the fire.
Miraculously, we did have electricity because all the wires are underground when they build this 1000 home community in the 90’s. Regardless, vegetation is VERY High in our surrounding, as right behind our community is the East Bay Regional Park.
Strangely, when I got down to the tri-cities area to paint the bathroom at 10am, there was no wind at all, it was all in the hills.
We are being told that we may be off until 6pm Tuesday. Unclear if that will run into the next wind event on Wednesday and will be extended further. Fortunately it’s only 5 mins drive to places with power so we have options for recharging and cell service is slow but usable.
And S18 has the Getty fire close by at UCLA. Looks like his sister is the lucky one with only record cold temperatures for October and up to 6 inches of snow expected tomorrow.
We had some good air this morning, after yesterday afternoon’s dangerously smoky air, so I decided to take a bike ride. I stopped off at a little picnic area on a reservoir to take off a layer, and noticed that at the picnic table next to mine, flames were coming out of the barbecue grill. Flames. Someone was there, starting up a fire to grill some food. Normally I love to see people enjoying themselves in the park, but What The Heck? Could it possibly be legal to use a barbecue in a county park now?
No. I went over to check the sign, and no of course you can’t have open fires now are you crazy there is a red flag warning fires are breaking out everywhere. So I told one of the people starting up the grill that, sorry, fires are not allowed now. He went over to check the sign, came back, talked to the other person and… they continued with their grilling.
This was a little picnic area, at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Oak grasslands, dry as tinder oak grasslands, extend all the way from the bottom to the top 3000 feet up, and these jamokes were upwind of those grasslands. I know they wanted barbecued hot dogs, but I was about to climb that hill and I did not want barbecued me. So I snitched. And I hope the ranger came, put out their fire, and gave them a big ticket. Come the heck on, people. Have some sense.
I also live on the SF Peninsula and, while I have power, a whole section about 5 minutes west of me does not. I considered cancelling a social event I’m hosting at my house tonight and one of the attendees said she’d been w/o power for a few days and really wanted to come over both to get out of her house and also to charge some devices so, of course, we’re on! I invited her to bring her laundry!
And I have family that has been evacuated due to the Getty fire in west LA, where I grew up. The park near my elementary was on fire this morning and I’ve heard that a friend’s childhood home is gone.
Very tough times in CA right now. Stay safe, everyone!
a ton of people were lighting fireworks yesterday because of Diwali. I probably should have said something, especially since fireworks is illegal in my city of residence.
Looks like UC-Berkeley will resume classes tomorrow. Hopefully for good. There’s an initiative for professors to find ways to be more “resistant” to these shutdowns. Video conferencing, voice AI, all of this has been in the workplace for a while now. Berkeley of all places should be a leading innovator.
I don’t think I mentioned it on this thread yet (I’ve been on a number of websites the past couple of days) but my kids’ high school was supposed to have their annual auction this past Saturday night and it got cancelled because of the planned power outages at the venue. The organizers knew by Thursday evening that it was likely and made the call on Friday morning to postpone it (actually it was out of the hands of our school’s organizers as College of San Mateo cancelled all events on their campus for the weekend). I feel badly for the people who were working so hard on the party planning… and some of them lost power at their own homes as well. The upside is that we haven’t had any fires on our side of the bay so far, knock wood, and our air quality has held out quite well as well. But boy does PG and E have a lot of work to do with modernizing their equipment. I’ve been hearing how the San Diego power company can target their power cuts to very small areas because they’ve put the resources into upgrading.
Also true in LA, with SoCal Edison. But, tbf, the land mass is much different downstate. Much less wooded, and a lot of desert/chapparal. Moreover, the housing developments are a lot newer such that more lines are buried underground, and the equipment is just newer.
I would suspect the upshot of this in the end is that California will end up having to manage power as a properly state run institution with less ability to sue.
