The hilarious situation in California

[BudKing8806]

Y'all can survive without power for a week or so. Over here on the East coast, we do it fairly regularly when hurricanes hit.

 

[Arkain2K]

This happens to us about every other year when the hurricanes come on through (eastern North Carolina). Last year half the region was without power for 10+ days. Usually they shut off the power before the hurricane makes landfall, and it won't come back on until the crews have cleared all the debris from power lines and fixed the broken lines. It certainly sucks but it seems like it's a pretty normal and appropriate course of action to take until the threat has passed.

The winds in sunny California is nowhere near hurricane force.

Reality is that PG&E is REALLY behind on their maintenance schedule, on both their infrastructure as well as thousands of trees growing near them. With the company's history of falsifying maintenance record, no one actually know the full extend of the potential hazards, actually.

At it stand, there are so many overgrown branches protruding onto power lines that a mere 45 mph wind currently projected in weather forecast just might be enough to snap a bunch of them and cause another massive fire. That's the reason for NorCal heading back to the dark ages.

---

Report: PG&E Failed To Deal With Thousands Of Trees Near Power Lines
Thursday, August 15, 2019 | Sacramento, CA

A California utility blamed for some of the state's most devastating recent wildfires failed to clear away thousands of trees that posed a threat to power lines, according to a report from a court-appointed monitor that was made public Wednesday.

In a report submitted to a federal judge last month, monitor Mark Filip said his team found more than 400 cases in recent months where Pacific Gas & Electric contractors had failed to remove or trim hazardous trees, including three that were within a foot of or actually touching electrical lines, KQED News reported.

A total of about 2,600 trees were involved. In three cases, Filip said his team found issues "that could have resulted in fatalities, injuries or serious damage if not timely remediated."

Filip also found that PG&E's state-mandated wildfire safety program had "substantial record-keeping issues," including one false report from a contractor certifying that safety work had been completed on a dangerous tree.

"Not only is PG&E falling short of its ... goals for the year, but the quality of the completed work is questionable," the report said.

"We understand and recognize the serious concerns raised by the monitor and we are taking immediate action to address these issues, which are consistent with our own internal reviews," PG&E said in a statement.

Overgrown, dead or dying trees can hit power lines, causing them to spark or knocking them down. California sets minimum clearances between trees and power lines.

The utility said its service area includes more than 120 million trees "with the potential to grow or fall into our overhead power lines."

A PG&E power line was blamed for setting a November fire that virtually obliterated the Northern California town of Paradise and killed 86 people.

PG&E equipment also has been linked to several other massive wildfires in recent years.

http://www.capradio.org/articles/20...led-to-deal-with-some-trees-near-power-lines/

 

[HockeyBjj]

I really, really want to have been at the board meeting that determined a flying chainsaw was clearly the best option to clear trees close to powerlines

 

[usmctanker242]

The winds in sunny California is nowhere near hurricane force.

Reality is that PG&E is REALLY behind on their maintenance schedule, on both their infrastructure as well as thousands of trees growing near them.

At it stand, there are so many overgrown branches protruding onto power lines that a mere 45 mph wind just might be enough to snap them and cause another fire. That's the reason for NorCal heading back to the dark ages.

I totally understand what you're saying, but reading the original article you posted it sounds like they preemptively cut the power to avoid a potential wild fire. I was just comparing that safety precaution to the same kind of thing out here when the hurricanes come through. I am by no means excusing the PG&E for their failures (I'm taking your word on it) in regards to not taking the proper course of action to get ahead of the problem before it became such a big issue. Perhaps a class action lawsuit would be necessary....lots of people are going to lose everything in their refrigerators, and many others will have no job during this period of time.

 

[AtomicPanther]

At least you have water now.......right?

 

[woodguyatl]

This happens to us about every other year when the hurricanes come on through (eastern North Carolina). Last year half the region was without power for 10+ days. Usually they shut off the power before the hurricane makes landfall, and it won't come back on until the crews have cleared all the debris from power lines and fixed the broken lines. It certainly sucks but it seems like it's a pretty normal and appropriate course of action to take until the threat has passed.

Same down in SC. Where I live the preemptive shuttoffs are due to flooding of equipment. They say it is faster to bring stuff back online if it didn't get damaged due to a uncontrolled failure.

 

[AlexDB9]

I really, really want to have been at the board meeting that determined a flying chainsaw was clearly the best option to clear trees close to powerlines

Probably.....they are big fans of 007

 

[TheTimeIsNotNow]

I really, really want to have been at the board meeting that determined a flying chainsaw was clearly the best option to clear trees close to powerlines

Jesus christ..

 

[superpunch]

nm

 

[Protectandserve]

The winds in sunny California is nowhere near hurricane force.

Reality is that PG&E is REALLY behind on their maintenance schedule, on both their infrastructure as well as thousands of trees growing near them.

At it stand, there are so many overgrown branches protruding onto power lines that a mere 45 mph wind just might be enough to snap them and cause another fire. That's the reason for NorCal heading back to the dark ages.

---

Report: PG&E Failed To Deal With Thousands Of Trees Near Power Lines
Thursday, August 15, 2019 | Sacramento, CA



http://www.capradio.org/articles/20...led-to-deal-with-some-trees-near-power-lines/

This. PG&E has been insanely behind on basic maintenance and after the fires, a check through their service records showed they have also been BSing their completed services on power lines. Showed way more things being done or complete then were actually possible.

Saw another article that estimated the impact from this economically could be in the 100s of millions.

https://weather.com/news/news/2019-10-10-california-power-shutoffs-wildfire-threat

 

[*Z*]

I understand that, but to give us like a day’s notice and then not even specify what cities or even better what buildings in what cities would be affected and for how long is a joke.

They gave probably a weeks notice and you can look at the outage map on many sites. I am just outside of it. Power is out a couple miles from where I live and work.

 

[Swing]

I really, really want to have been at the board meeting that determined a flying chainsaw was clearly the best option to clear trees close to powerlines

I've got so many questions.

 

[all caps]

Rumour has it someone/people were shooting at pg&e employees yesterday

 

[Swing]

Not to derail, but here's a Popular Mechanics article on the saw.

 

[grimballer]

Socialism at work....

 

[Yecny]

They gave probably a weeks notice and you can look at the outage map on many sites. I am just outside of it. Power is out a couple miles from where I live and work.

The outage map was subject to change at any time. They didn’t even know which areas were going to be shut down. In fact they delayed the initial shutting down of the power in some areas until 8 last night instead of noon. This was just a mess.

The problem I’m having is that is this going to become common practice every time it gets a little breezy? Or is this PG&E covering their asses because they’re so behind on maintenance while they’ve been racking hundreds of millions of dollars in profits and then turn around and fuck the general public who doesn’t much have a choice in what company to buy power from. And the. It basically exposes the fact that power companies seem to be able to just do whatever they want, unregulated.

 

[Van_Damage]

Have any of you been keeping up with the PG&E situation in the Bay Area? They have basically told us with about 1-2 days notice we may or may not have our power out in our area, or maybe others, for maybe between 1-7 days.

This state is a joke for allowing this to happen.

It's definitely something unique from my experience. Even though I'm not in Northern CA, the company I've been with for almost 15 years manufactures transfer equipment for primarily portable generators/inverters to provide backup power to residential or light commericial, during utility power outages. The transfer equipment makes it possible to backup various household circuitry (or POS systems in a business) without having to run extension cords from a geneator through windows or doors during power outages.

I've been studying power failures and their causes for this entire time, along with providing applicational support and many other things. The tropical storm/hurricane situations in the gulf and southeast, through the Carolinas to New England, Maine and even parts of Canada due to Atlantic storms, have been occurring for a long time. These can have devastating effects, but the people have been living through these seasonal storm/weather power failures for years, with the ability to backup circuits with generators for not much beyond 30 years. Further south generally, the main concern is flooding which basically leads to evacuation - there is no living in your house through that. These storms can roll through later in the year too, when it's super cold. There are similar major weather event power failure issues with ice/snow storms in the pacific northwest and occassionally the midwest and other areas. Obviously fires are a huge problem, but this situaiton stems from obvious reasons other than simply power failures due to damaged equipment or downed lines. It's preemptive, and even during a lot of the past Atlantic storms, much of the east simply doesn't have any serious history of preemptive power shut offs, especially for up to a week, especially for winds that may be considered soft by much of the country.

This issue in California is specific to PG&E, and their liability of past incidents related to their power distrubtion systems, maintenance, etc. The wildfires specifically in recent years is what has created this to happen it seems, and I don't know the solution (nobody wants to be liable for billions). California hasn't had nearly the massive week long type power outages as other parts of the country have had especially due to the Atlantic storms, which is why this is a big thing right now. It's new to the area, it's not a result of direct weather event based damage, it's all decision based shut down which is entirely subjective and decided by this supplying Utility.

All I know is that would suck to live there, because I don't see anything changing for a long time. Instead of the "brown out" issues Californians have generally been used to in the past, basically nuisance power failures that don't last very long, now northern CA will be seeing massive preemptive shut downs of huge areas for days at a time, just due to the wind blowing above certain speeds in certain areas. Hopefully PG$E will learn to better distribute power and maintain their systems without being direclty the cause to fires, and will better handle these intentional shut downs as it's brutal to the community. I feel bad for anyone without electricity as it's been my career dealing with this topic, but this is a bit more concerning than a hurricane ripping through the gulf or the east coast and causing massive wind damage to power distribution equipment - direclty resulting in unavoidable power failures. Obviously that sucks but it's just not preventable, although I don't agree with the term...the hurricane or tropical or ice storms are really acts of God, where the outages going on in NorCal are acts of Man.

 

[Oliver Clothesoff]

Tell me about it. I'm in one of the affected areas. Been getting calls every 6 hours from PG&E telling me that my power is about to be turned off "due to possible high winds in the area" and could be off for up to 7 days. Spent the last two days calling Generator Companies and virtually all of them are booked out for at least a month.

It's a total shit show and 100% preventable. Our leaders here are cowards. The areas around the power lines need to have all the dead brush removed and the areas directly underneath the lines be cleared (like we used to do) but they are too afraid of the powerful Environmental Lobbies we have here who have been blocking it. PG&E is at fault too. Lots of deferred maintenance issues with them too.

Bottom Line: PG&E is covering thier asses because they don't want to get sued by any more people. I suspect they may be trying to shift liability to California for the next fires or they will simply cut power to anyone anywhere near wooded areas.

 

[Oliver Clothesoff]

Good time for the state to take control of the power infrastructure

Put thousands to work at good wages repairing the infrastructure private business refuses to

Jesus Christ NO! Our leaders here are too corrupt to have that much power. They'd simply use it to fund raise via fines. The LAST thing we need is to give Gavin Newsom any more power over us.

 

[VivaRevolution]

California is one of a few states where solar power is viable right now.

Put your money where your mouth is Ca. and put the fossil fuels out of business.