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Fire weather
Fall in California is sometimes called "fire season" -- September and October are often the hottest months of the year, and after the long dry summer (the last rain is usually in late May or early June, and it doesn't start again until late fall), vegetation is dry and ready to go up with the smallest spark. Add into that the high winds that are also typical (particularly in Southern California, where they're known as the Santa Anas, but they've gotten more common in NorCal as well), and you have a recipe for wildfire. Climate change patterns are exacerbating all these issues and making the fire season longer -- it goes well into November and even early December now.
Bad enough as all this is, the real problem right now, and the thing that makes me want to yell and throw things, is the reaction of our power company, PG&E. Not every wildfire is caused by downed electrical lines or sparks from power substations, but a high percentage of them are, including the fires that so badly damaged Santa Rosa, my hometown, in 2017 and last year's Camp Fire, which killed more than 80 people and destroyed an entire town. After facing numerous lawsuits, PG&E -- which is a for-profit, publicly-traded company -- has declared bankruptcy, and then, instead of spending money on long-deferred power line maintenance, tried to give big bonuses to its executives (fortunately that plan was slapped down by the courts).
So now, in their infinite wisdom, PG&E has decided that the correct course of action is to turn off power to potentially millions of customers (1.3 as of this writing, up to 2.8 if they widen the area) in order to prevent fires from starting. How's that working out so far? Well, Sonoma County is on fire. AGAIN. Most likely because of a faulty transmission tower -- the same thing that caused the Camp Fire. Fix the power lines? Take responsibility for their actions? Nope, just shut off the power, which is not just an inconvenience but can threaten lives. Depend on a respirator to breathe or a refrigerator to keep your insulin cold? Too bad. It would be a bad enough plan if it worked; it's not working, and the lack of power makes it harder to communicate with people about evacuations.
I don't know if we can do anything to hold PG&E responsible. Governor Newsom is certainly saying the right things. But in the end, I think the events of the last few weeks have shown like nothing else ever could that allowing public utilities to been owned by private, for-profit companies is a terrible idea, and I hope we can move away from that model as quickly as possible.
Bad enough as all this is, the real problem right now, and the thing that makes me want to yell and throw things, is the reaction of our power company, PG&E. Not every wildfire is caused by downed electrical lines or sparks from power substations, but a high percentage of them are, including the fires that so badly damaged Santa Rosa, my hometown, in 2017 and last year's Camp Fire, which killed more than 80 people and destroyed an entire town. After facing numerous lawsuits, PG&E -- which is a for-profit, publicly-traded company -- has declared bankruptcy, and then, instead of spending money on long-deferred power line maintenance, tried to give big bonuses to its executives (fortunately that plan was slapped down by the courts).
So now, in their infinite wisdom, PG&E has decided that the correct course of action is to turn off power to potentially millions of customers (1.3 as of this writing, up to 2.8 if they widen the area) in order to prevent fires from starting. How's that working out so far? Well, Sonoma County is on fire. AGAIN. Most likely because of a faulty transmission tower -- the same thing that caused the Camp Fire. Fix the power lines? Take responsibility for their actions? Nope, just shut off the power, which is not just an inconvenience but can threaten lives. Depend on a respirator to breathe or a refrigerator to keep your insulin cold? Too bad. It would be a bad enough plan if it worked; it's not working, and the lack of power makes it harder to communicate with people about evacuations.
I don't know if we can do anything to hold PG&E responsible. Governor Newsom is certainly saying the right things. But in the end, I think the events of the last few weeks have shown like nothing else ever could that allowing public utilities to been owned by private, for-profit companies is a terrible idea, and I hope we can move away from that model as quickly as possible.
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It's on a different scale, but I look at stuff like the regional transit authority here, which for years has had to spend capital budget on maintenance instead due to insufficient funding*, and I wonder if we'd have similar problems if electricity was a public utility as well.
* RTA is a mix of state funding and ride fares; they theoretically *could* hike fares enough to cover the full budget but then ridership would decline too far.