The Pacific Gas and Electric company (PG&E), California’s largest utility provider, is once again to blame for the state’s most devastating wildfire.
Surpassing last year’s record of the state’s worst wildfire, the Dixie Fire has burned through 731,000 acres in the last 42 days since it ignited and has shown no signs of slowing down as containment is at 41%, according to the New York Times wildfire tracking webpage.
The fire began July 13 at around 7 a.m. after a tree fell on a powerline in Butte county and ignited, according to PG&E’s electrical incident report.
Days after the initial outbreak in Butte county, PG&E announced its efforts to prevent its grid from sparking more wildfires when trees and other vegetation collide with its equipment in drought-stricken California.
The company is showing its lack of care for not only California but its 16 million customers in its new plan.
PG&E proposes to bury 10% of power lines at a projected cost of $15-30 billion, while making its consumers pay for a large section of that price tag, according to a July 21 NPR article.
Excluding the insane construction cost, the only difference between this daunting burial plan and what we’ve seen from PG&E’s past wildfire mitigation policies is they haven’t heedlessly neglected it yet.
The utility company admitted in a March 4 letter to the California Public Utilities Commissions that it failed to inspect any of its 24 hydroelectric substations in Tier 3 high fire threat areas, as part of its 2019-20 Wildfire Mitigation Plan.
PG&E runs hydroelectric substations in Tier 3 and Tier 2 high fire threat areas, also known as HFTD’s, according to its Community Wildfire Safety Program website.
Tier 3 areas, such as territories of the Dixie Fire and the 2018 Camp Fire, are at extreme risk for wildfires and Tier 2 areas are at elevated risk, according to the March 2021 PG&E High Fire-Threat District Map.
Ignited by a faulty electric transmission line, the Camp Fire started the morning of Nov. 8, 2018 and burned 153,336 acres in total, according to a May 15, 2019 Cal Fire news release.
The fire resulted in 85 civilian fatalities and several firefighter injuries, according to the same California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) news release.
In its full-year report for 2017-18, PG&E stated the company’s equipment was the ignitor in the Camp Fire.
The company knew months beforehand that the metal parts holding up a 72-year-old power line in the East Bay Area had “severe wear” and needed renewal, according to the report.
But of course, PG&E wanted to keep their pockets full and get a few more years of use before replacing its ragged parts.
How are Californians supposed to trust PG&E, which has been convicted of numerous felonies, to keep their homes from burning in fire and their children from inhaling smoke every time a branch falls on some of its equipment?
Recently hired PG&E CEO, Patricia Poppe, told NPR reporters in the same July 21 article while the company refrained from this plan for years, it’s “too expensive” not to push power lines underground because lives are on the line.
But lives have been on the line for decades.
After years of neglect, the company wants to push a multi-billion dollar plan in which PG&E customers will primarily shoulder the cost.
Why are PG&E customers being pushed to help the company out of the extensive hole it dug for itself?
PG&E said the burial plan would take several years as California has 25,526 miles of higher voltage transmission lines and 239,557 miles of distribution lines, two-thirds of which are overhead, according to the same NPR article.
Transmission lines are high voltage lines that carry electricity from a power plant to the substation, where it is further distributed to various areas, according to PG&E’s residential webpage.
Distribution lines are low voltage lines that carry electricity from the substations to the end users for residential and commercial use, according to the same PG&E webpage.
Underground burial is an expensive-ass Hail Mary PG&E hopes will drastically change the course of demise the company’s faulty equipment and lackadaisical management have put us on.
The company even “forgot” to include substation inspection in it’s 2019-20 Wildfire Mitigation Plan, according to PG&E’s letter to the California Public Utilities Commissions.
However, the scope of a hydroelectric substation inspection under PG&E’s “Wildfire Safety Inspection Program” includes way more than just substations.
According to the PG&E System Inspection Program, inspection is supposed to include: substations, switching stations and hydroelectric facilities with a focus on the failure mechanisms for transformers, conductors, connectors, insulators, switches, poles and other equipment.
California’s future is terrifying as it is.
We need PG&E to simply update and follow the wildfire mitigation policies they already have in place instead of trying to push a billion dollar plan it will neglect while the state keeps burning.
