PG&E management should go to jail and the company should be forced out of business and all assets sold to provide for the families who lost loved ones and everything they owned. Any other business whose negligent maintenance caused their equipment to malfunction which killed people and destroyed property would be held accountable. There is no reason they should get off or be permitted to raise rates to recover from consumers at risk of death. Shameful. Time to get rid of this company.
8
The causes of this are complex to be sure - climate change; drought; poor forest management, to name a few.
But at the epicenter of this is PG&E, the California PUC, and the California Legislature. PG&E is an evil, corrupt corporation who gets rate increases to fund maintenance and then does not perform the maintenance. Needless to say, theft is very profitable, so they then pay their execs bonuses for being successful thieves. They then spend ratepayer money on TV ads to proclaim how great they are. Why does a monopoly need advertising??? The PUC is a revolving door, where industry execs rotate through, and turn a blind eye, and then return to industry for their reward. And the legislature, ever for sale to the highest bidder, has codified into law the concept of "privatize the profits and socialize the losses."
After 25 years of putrefaction, the only hope is to confiscate the remaining assets and start over.
13
Let's make sure senior management doesn't get any bonuses this year. And nationalize PG&E!!! Erin Brockavich - where are you!?
10
As someone who has lived in both northern and southern California most of my life, I have seen such a dramatic extension of the fire season in recent years. Firefighting used to be a seasonal occupation with firefighters having alternate jobs in the off season. There is no off season now. Many other small towns nestled in the mountains here, with high populations of retirees and elderly folks, are just one spark away from another Paradise disaster.
4
socializing the utility companies in Ca: water, gas and electric might be a good solution for its citizens.
6
All the best engineers in California work in Silicon Valley. Those who aren’t smart enough to get jobs there design buildings that tip over, bridges that collapse, inspect warehouses that burn killing dozens and work for PG&E.
Looks like PG&E is headed for its second bankruptcy in 15 years. Stock down 70 percent, bonds trading far below their face value, lines of credit exhausted.
1
There's a history to the PG&E mess. In 2000 the company got caught up in a fake energy crisis, signed some regrettable contracts and went broke. In the wake of that bankruptcy the management of the company was taken over by financial types that concluded that it was cheaper to repair transmission lines when they fail than to maintain them and therefore maintenance was drastically curtailed. As a consequence those of us who live in rural areas all must have generators since the power fails frequently every winter. The management never foresaw that the stoppage of the legally required maintenance would lead to the company being liable for loss of both money and lives. I hope that this comes out in the legal process and the management is held criminally responsible for the losses.
Dennis Barr
13
This is more than California's problem. America's infrastructure is crumbling and although California's utilities are privately owned, NYC subways and roads are in disrepair. Demographics are working against us and assuming demographics remain the same, our only option is tax multinationals more.
8
Where did all the profit go PG&E was sweeping in over the years. How does it come that in Europe they have the power line underground? That started a half century ago!! The power lines in the USA are resembling the power lines in the third world countries.
When do we tax the Wall Street? I'm pretty sure they would be a change in the conduct of business. More long term thinking instead of quarterly profits.
12
Since the wealthy investor utility deregulation mandate and subsequent Enron debacle, electricity companies like PG&E and SoCal Edison have had to defer maintenance to attending to only crisis situations. Ratepayers will now be stuck again with the results of financier greed.
8
Pacific Gas & Electric re-tooled themselves in the 1990s to become what I would call "A Wall Street Utility". They no longer saw their role as being a state-regulated monopolistic utility but rather a high-flying, executive-rewarding business that could enrich the executives and big investors.
They have done very well at their objective.
The cost: not doing maintenance that is required, lying about what they actually do vs. what they got PUC approval to spend money to do, killing residents in their gas line explosion and wildfires, raising consumer rates through the roof, buying politicians, and so on. In the manner in which they act, they appear to be a criminal enterprise.
35
How stupid can we get. PG&E may have set off the spark that started the fire, but it is climate change that caused it to be anything but a small easily contained fire. Send the bill to the real cause - the Koch Brothers and the Republican party.
25
@Jackie
think you are on to something. the hot dry conditions caused by climate change have degraded the integrity of power lines (manufactured by the Koch bros. factory in Mexico). hope it is not found that Mrs. O'Learys cow had something to do with this.
3
I'm with you in my heart...
but in my head, we still do not know the cause of this month's fires.
1
There is no alternative to PG&E, is there?! If the company is forced into bankruptcy, what then? Whatever happens, electricity prices are going to skyrocket, unless the state steps in.
1
You know... If I told people about a telephone line I had constructed with very durable, silk woven string, and the best quality Dixie Cups imaginable... I would get a certain reaction. Yet in all our major areas this is really what wooden poles and lines are. As of a few years ago Solar is viable. Why won't any of these giants invest in making the technology easy to use? There has to be a way to meter it...satelite, perhaps? a shell with generator, panels and batteries that fits over an area?
Tesla has the batteries, and in rural Nevada one can buy a set up complete with windmill, for under 5k that will run a home.
Instead of crying in their beer, and protecting their corporate welfare shareholders... who cost us a lot more than a thousand of the stereotyped welfare recipient with kids in tote....WHY don't these companies do what makes America great? Its called R&D! Find a way to make solar so damn good that people will lelt you meter it....make it cheap and make it work with Tesla batteries!
10
@darrell simon
Not sure where your information comes from, but for all its faults, PG&E has made sizeable investments in solar energy, including rebates for solar home roofs and electric cars, and we have so-called smart meters already.
Tesla batteries (https://www.tesla.com/powerwall) are a bit more costly than you suggest, and while I don't know what's available in rural Nevada, you can't have a windmill in urban or suburban California, and the cost of a solar installation that will run a home, will cost 4 to 10 times what you suggest (depending on how big a home and how much energy you want to consume).
FWIW, PG&E buys back electricity from my solar roof and others. I'll consider a Tesla or Electriq or other brand storage battery when the price goes down in a few years, assuming, of course, we're all still around.
2
Enough is enough.
Disastrous gas explosions, massive wildfires destroying and killing entire towns, smoke filling lungs of millions of people for days, etc...
The cost of safety upgrades & maintenance would have been small compared to the (ongoing) total cost of all this damage imposed on the public, due to short sighted corporate Wall Street-style bean counting & negligent management.
Take PG&E off the stock market, and have California take it over. Safety and LONG term efficiency should be made the highest priorities.
9
@TheUnsaid Oh, yeah, put safety in the hands of faceless, irresponsible dunces who work for the state where no one is held accountable. That is a splendid Idea.
2
@TheUnsaid
They don't care about the cost to the public. Those are external costs. The maintenance would directly impact their bottom line. All the costs and penalties from the fires will be passed on to customers.
1
It's one thing to keep the obvious dangerous conditions managed. PG&E can't seem to do that, consistently.
But, is now the time to consider all power in fire prone areas to go underground. And, if not now, when?
6
@live now you'll be a long time dead Great idea, just raise rates to pay for all of it. Now I bet better management would prevent at least some of these issues.
@live now you'll be a long time dead
Some power lines simply CANNOT be placed underground due to the high voltages and current.
2
No. You se NO overhead power lines in the UK or most of Europe. We can do it here.
7
There is no love lost between PGE and it's NorCal customers. They have spent millions over the years to fight its becoming a City-owned utility, or anything else that would threaten corporate profits.
Utilities, like health care insurance companies, increase shareholder profits by lowering expenses. What sort of model is this for vital services? PGE has a history of gas and electric-related fatal tragedies, and also passing expenses on to consumers.
The public customers should own utilities rather than corporate shareholders.
5
@Roberto Your idea is way too simple, as a regulated untility they make a return on investment so stupidly reducing effective costs actually costs money.
PG&E is not alone in snubbing its nose at regulators for not performing preventive maintenance. Our utility here in Lowell is also complicit.
There were power outages here several years ago. I went before the city council with pictoral evidence that trees proximate to power lines near my residence had caused downed 'hot' wires which had subsequently ignited fires in the grassy areas around the poles. The city manager indicated that the ulility was regulated by state agencies and that he - and the council - were completely without the ability to force the utility to do anything.
The executives of PG&E have a criminal complicity as well.
ps: Take a look the same circumstances that "stuck" us taxpayers with the costs of restoring improperly-maintained rail systems via federal takeover of our major rail systems.
2
@bnc Ahh, in my town the tree huggers went ballistic when the power company attempted to TRIM branches of trees on the public right-of-way. Guess who won that fight.
2
Not sure why power transmission is not government owned instead of delivered by privately held monopolies. We don't deliver water & sewer transmission services that way. When large power transmission & gas companies like PG&E and SDG&E are privately held they are more beholden to shareholder return than making safety improvements. The money PG&E and SDG&E spend to employ a large cadre of lawyers and CPUC lobbyists to protect their bottom line would be spent on safety improvements if they were government held.
7
You actually enunciated much better the sub-text in my comment. A for-profit publicly held "utility" is inherently going to look at their own profitability over the welfare and cost for the consumer.
PG&E should be seized in this 2nd bankruptcy by the State of California and run solely to benefit the citizens, not enrich anyone. In most of the world the essential utilities are owned and operated by the state for the sole benefit of those who are compelled to be customers by the monopolistic nature of utilities.
4
@common sense This is a gross misunderstanding of how rate-regulated private companies work. Privately-owned utilities like PG&E are in control of how they do maintenance, they are not in control on whether they do it or not, unless the regulator is failing to do its job.
The regulator defines objectives, and what constitutes a failure to reach them. If companies are saving a few bucks by not clearing branches where they obviously need to be trimmed, it means the regulator is not able to define the right incentives. It usually means it does not know what the utility is supposed to do (while it is supposed to, otherwise how do they define an efficient amount of costs?). And if the administration is not able to set up a regulator that works, how would it be able to set up a utility company that works?
The problem is that the administration needs to be able to understand the utility business and how to finance it in a durable way. If it doesn’t you will be in trouble, whether the utility is privately-run or not (which works both ways: privatizing because you think publicly-run companies are inefficient does not solve the problem).
2
PG&E is caught in a very bad situation. It failed to properly maintain the power lines the company is responsible for. Granted CA is a very difficult state to maintain total vigilance. But with what is happening now clearly major changes need to take place once this misery ends.
This public utility is too corrupt to save, so we should let it go bankrupt and then start over with new management. We need to have an outside state agency to check the poles and clear the brush around them, because neither PG&E nor the PUC (which oversees it) can be trusted to put safety first. The cost will have to be paid by taxpayers, but should not go directly into the bills of rate payers, which would just give PG&E the impetus it needs to keep gouging us. It's past time to start requiring all new PG&E lines to be put in underground. Maybe this time we'll learn from PG&E's mistakes.
3
@Diane
Underground is better for sure. But solar is viable. It can now work to keep a household running. BUT there is a catch and this is where the utility companies, could show red blooded Yankee ingenuity instead of being on the dole for corporate welfare: In a decent solar system one must maintain the batteries, the panels, there is a generator and often a wind generator at hand as well. The utility companies could make and maintain a system so well, that people would be willing to pay for the service.
Hire the nest innovators at Tesla... You won't make as much initially, but, as population grows, you will make much more in the years to come.
1
does PG&E have a record any worse than comparable utilities? are their failures run of the mill terrible or the result of exceptionally bad management decisions affecting maintenance?
2
@[email protected] I've had cause to be in the Oyster Bay area of Long Island after the past few hurricanes and although the power lines always go down (no clue why they don't bury them), I don't recall hearing of fires or loss of life and business from fire.
@MegaWhat
The North Shore of Long Island is a temperate rain forest -- or it was before it was developed -- that's why you don't see massive fires there when power lines go down.
1
having lived for years in rural Mendocino County, I know first hand about P&G's lack of line maintenance. as a volunteer firefighter I called several times about trees about to fall on lines. the company's attitude was always, wait till the power goes out. so this story is not surprising.
5
The United States is one of the only “developed” country that still widely uses overhead power lines. In Europe you find most of the power lines are underground and visitors here from Europe are surprised at what they see here, even in suburban areas, let alone in the countryside. But since the US doesn’t believe in investments in infrastructure, this is what we have.
9
@Jwwarren
No its the republicans who do not believe in investment in the people s infrastructure. The US used to have a nationwide regulatory system that encouraged corporations to do the work the people need done with stick and carrot tax policy.
7
@magicisnotreal Only Republicans?
@Jwwarren
Bingo! Absolutely correct. Its the equivalent of a state of the art phone system using fiber optic string and special dixie cups.
Utilities are "regulated" monopolies. They are supposed to "serve" the public, not fleece them. Check out the Mission Statement of the California Public Service Commission! These utilities caused climate change with their coal usage and efforts to undermine energy efficiency and solar energy. Let them claw back dividends and excessive salaries to pay for the damages!
7
@Mark Clevey This utility pays no dividends currently and try to claw back them and see what happens. Not only is it illegal, but a lot of elderly people would object.
1
I'm not usually the type of person who defends large corporations, but how much of this is directly PG&E's fault? Climate change means longer dry season and wildfires seasons that now start well before June 1st and end weeks after late October. Scientists have stated the risks of global warming for more than thirty years yet our politicians were too cowardly to do anything about it when the costs would have been minimal and voters let them get away with that. Since the mid twentieth century our wildfire policy has been to put all out all fires, leading to uniform (instead of patchy) massive forests of many, many trees. Controlled burns to remove brush have shown to be effective, but people who live along the wilderness-urban interface don't like controlled burns because of the smoke so they protest against control burns.
Investigations might show power lines accidentally lit the match, but our collective rejection of mitigating long-term risks set up all the fuel.
13
I wholeheartedly agree that climate change is a major factor but aside from that PG&E does have a truly terrible track record when it comes to maintaining their infastructre. I have seen it with my own eyes. I live in a very rural, very heavily forested area in northern California. There was a transformer on the power pole where I used to live that would "pop" every year with the first winter storm. It would make a loud gunshot like sound and would throw Sparks all around it. Every year this would happen for over a decade. I called PGE every time it happened and it was never replaced. It has still never been replaced. it's still there amongst the redwoods, mere yards from multiple houses. Yes climate change is a major factor. But PGE is far from a victim in this they are complicit as well
5
@CH Shannon
If I am running a power distribution corporation I would not have my head in the sand and I would have accelerated the already called for need to bury power lines while also making sure the crews that had to keep those power line right of ways cleared were fully staffed and working year round to make sure everything possible to keep the system running well was done.
Climate change has exacerbated a problem caused by greed based republican regulations, it did not cause this problem in any way at all.
2
@magicisnotreal
Yes to buried power lines! I've been to many suburbs where the utility lines were buried for esthetic reasons. But apparently the money isn't there to bury power lines in the name of fire safety.
Why would the rate payers be on the hook?
Shouldn't the people who run the company and the owner stockholders be liable for the negligence of their employees!?
Doesn't "owning" a corporation have any responsibility attached to it!?
This mess is what deregulation has created. Here the ridiculous and entirely destructive idea that the staff must earn every penny they can has prevented proper maintenance and precautionary action in favor of greed.
We have a fake economic world where investors never lose and the taxpayer always pays for the negligent mistakes of greedy people too lazy or stupid to take the time to run the business they own properly!
I say PG&E stockholders should have to dip into their past dividend distributions. That was money paid out that should have been used to due the maintenance that would have prevented these fires and pipe explosions etc. Maybe even hold the republicans who repealed proper regulation & passed the ridiculous laws that let this state of things come to be personally financially responsible for causing what they were warned they would be causing!
Utilities easy make enough money to pay for running themselves properly, the only reason these things have been ignored is greed and stupid republican regulations that make greed more important than common sense and being right.
19
@magicisnotreal
Stockholders take a risk when they buy stock. (Maybe you've got some stock yourself, in a 401K plan or wherever.) I bought some PG&E in the 90's, watched it go up and down over many years, and now it's underwater. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bellyaching, just making a point: Dividends are never going to be clawed back, that's just not how it works; but investors, even very small ones, can certainly lose money when the stock goes south, as PG&E has. That's the punishment you seek for what you call greed.
Back here in the real world, PG&E doesn't have enough in insurance or assets to cover all the potential damages from the Camp Fire -- even assuming they are entirely to blame, which has not yet been established -- and the fire season isn't over yet, so the rest of the money will have to come from somewhere else. That would be you and me (assuming your part of the earth is in California) as rate payers and tax payers plus, of course, homeowners' insurance.
On a related note, you can expect land slides once the rains begin and "the big one" is long overdue. It would be lovely if we could find someone to blame for everything and then make them pay. Sigh!
1
Just when these folks had been victimized by their President, utility company shareholders are next in line. What other vultures are next?
Great job at fairly apportioning blame, civil legal system! We'll make sure those evil people who caused the problem pay and pay and pay until we totally ruin the utility's shareholders (typically retirees and 401K holders) and after they are destroyed, we'll go after the terrible rate payers, both groups obviously acting in total disregard to the safety of Californians. Of course, we may be pretty sure that the people who actually ran the company and made any decisions that may have cause this disaster will, after getting jobs with another utility (or whatever replaces this one) land on their feet. But at least we can be happy in the thought that one group is certain to make out, the heroic lawyers who handle such actions.
4
@Bob
stop by the DMV in CA. this will give one a clear understanding of how much of CA govt. "works". ("works" is used loosely).
1
Why not dilute shareholders by issuing more stock to get the money to pay for the damages? The shareholders have been benefiting from the underinvestment in tree trimming and maintenance.
3
@Djt Interesting idea, but who would purchase them?
1
Count of more of this to happen as wind and solar are more heavily promoted. There needs to be more transmission lines built to link solar and wind generation sites to the urban areas that need the power. More transmission lines means more opportunities for problems like this.
As the saying goes, you can pay me now or you can pay me later. Pay the high costs of putting lines underground (if you can get regulatory approval) or pay the costs of wildfires like this. Regardless, it will the utility customers who will pay - unless you can get the taxpayers from other states to bail you out.
2
or, we could err on the side of environmental safety and aethetics - and not always on the side of cheapness - by burying transmission lines.
of course, ratepayers would also have to pay for that somehow, so it's a nonstarter unless mandated by law... and who would risk ther seat to even sponsor such a bill?
So I have to ask, just how much money did they save by not burying those electrical lines and then not maintaining those which they know are prone to cause fires?
11
@DavidF I hate to be in the business of defending a conglomerate, but they have 120,000 miles of power lines in CA. Undergrounding costs at least $1 million dollars per mile. So you would have to ask the rate payers to fork out at least $120 Billion--good luck with that. (The reason they do it in Europe is because they have density--it makes economic sense). And they do maintain those lines which are known to cause fires. However, we do not have many fires which consume the equivalent of 80 football fields per minute--that one just happened. We need to plan for fires like that in the future, not just sue the spark that ignited the tinderbox.
3
@Bryan
San Francisco is the second most dense city in the country... power lines overhead.
Utility customers will always be on the hook if the costs are not covered by insurance purchased by the utility. Transferring the cost to the shareholders will drive up the utility's cost of capital, which ratepayers ultimately pay. Instead, there should be a regulatory action to sack the executives responsible for the utility's decisions and strip them of their pensions. That will chill the willingness of the remaining executives to take undue risks.
7
@RM
First we need to reestablish proper regulation of corporations that force them to run themselves properly and safely again.
It was not an accident that our economy worked for everyone before deregulation. It takes planning and intent. Everyone made money then.
1
PG&E is now completely uninsurable.
Downed electrical lines causing fires is another reason for people to go solar (or use wind, etc) for their energy and become independent of the grid. And power lines, where necessary, should be buried. Individual energy independence should also be looked at as a national security priority. Right now the country is vulnerable to attacks or failures of energy grids that can wipe out electricity to vast regions of the country.
8
@Mary
Absolute 100% truth here... Bottom line truth. Yet anyone who dares bring this up is an alarmist. The truth is that utility companies could easily make themselves useful and provide a state of the art set up for solar. Replete with back up generator, photocells well made and batteries manufactured by Tesla, who have the best mass battery technology available. You could sell a unit with all these pieces in it, similar to when someone gets a satelite system.
Many people would pay a decent fee for a great state of the art unit for solar energy...heck even include a water heater... In the long run they could charge a fraction for what power costs, and lock up the market for the long term future by providing state of the art equipment.
But no...America don't work that way no more... Better to hold on for dear life to a technology that will ultimately kill us, or the planet first, because God forbid a welfare recipient (corporate welfare) take a shave.
1
@darrell simon
It doesn't take an alarmist to point out that the energy grid is vulnerable to attack. Unfortunately, putting transmission lines underground does nothing to mitigate this condition.
On the other hand, I hope your Tesla stock does well.
The "free market " has shown us how well it works once again. Years of maximum "profits " to pay dividends pocketed by investors were legally stolen from the company's safety and maintenance budgets due to deregulation. Those dividends should be clawed back before customers are charged to cover the costs due to paying those stockholders.
16
In prior decades, rural fire prevention measures were allowed that are now prohibited due to environmental regulations. From this article it would appear the only answer is that private companies no longer distribute electricity in rural areas. The liability costs cannot be justified by the revenues! Then the state would have to take over.
1
@Donna Gray If they buried the lines to rural areas they wouldn't have to worry about weather, fire related issues and therefore they wouldn't have such liability exposure and therefore wouldn't have the cost. It's paid upfront with the upside of no liability. But that doesn't look good on paper so they pay for their negligence.
1
@Donna Gray Look up the CALFire Butte County Unit Plan. A quick Google search and then a read of it will show you that dozens of "rural fire prevention" projects costing hundreds of thousands of dollars were put in place around Paradise in the past decade. This fire blew right through them. We have to ask tougher questions--was it worth spending all that money building fuelbreaks that would likely fail? Should we be allowing residents to build in these areas with catastrophic firestorms being the new normal?
This article is not only jumping the gun, and relying on speculators and lawyers instead of hunting down facts, it's rank populism, giving everybody a bogeyman to blame the wildfires on. Nowhere in this article is the figure 80, for the winds in Northern California prior to and during the fire, nor the winds in excess of 80 mph in Southern California. Nowhere is the fact that we haven't had even a hint of rain here and its almost Thanksgiving.
It's more than irresponsible for the press to conduct its own "investigation" of the cause of the fires, all done without the slightest hint of scientific expertise, or the slightest gathering of any data, only advocacy pressers from lawyers and speculations from too big to fail banks guilty in previous years of their own disasters but never admitting any guilt.
6
@ondelette
You have a point.
Also, nowhere in this article is the litany of deadly 'accidents' in recent years for which PG&E has been held legally responsible, more than a few fatal fires among them.
Nowhere is the almost $90 million penalty for inappropriate lobbying of the Public Utilities Commission.
The Times wisely refrains from dwelling on the fact last year's PG&E profits were up 18% from the very profitable year before.
And I saw no snark regarding a number of recent similar PG&E fires that might have convinced the company it would be wise to use some of the massive profits (almost a billion and a half, in profits) to bury a few of these cables and save themselves a lot of future trouble.
What I did see was a company and investors not as patient as you lining up to tell the government to give them some of that good corporate welfare and let them soak their customers for billions. Customers those same investors would rather die than provide with welfare of their own.
I saw that, right here in print.
5
It's nature's way of telling you something's wrong.
~ Randy California (1970)
3
Wait a second...
Your publication, from Business to Society to Politics you buries me under an avalanche of lurid hagiography, chronicles of the lives, the excellence, the power and sagacity of America's Business Heroes, the few who make America great, the only who can run a proper country, the ones who make our lives possible, mean and depleted as they may be.
Heroes who take all the risks and so, correctly, grab all the rewards. Which makes them more worthy, more wise, and prettier.
This was a risk. They took it. Your much-bruited rules dictate its their turn to pay.
Wealthy rats dumping stock on what amounts to a massively public instance of insider trading need to pony up for their failure.
I don't care who owns PG&E today; I want to see the people who owned stock while this crime was in progress pay for their perfidy and greed.
It appears, on top of the blubbery oversight these monsters of investment provided, they actively promoted negligence and fraud.
A state lies in ruins, a hundred plus people likely are dead, and the best and brightest are running to the government for welfare, with plans to fix this cost on the ignorant masses they hold in such contempt.
Take their money, all of it. Take their investments and use that history to hold them personally responsible. If corporations are people, they can go to jail like people. They can spend the next years sweeping up human ashes and rebuilding ruined lives. They can afford it.
6
@oogada
Not sure what you're on about here, Oogada. or why you're ranting about The Times. If PG&E was indeed to blame for the Camp Fire, there will be consequences, although it's hard for me to see an individual to blame for this one, as you seem to want to do. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, and this year's fire season isn't over yet.
Also, FWIW, utilities are usually seen as conservative investments (financially, not politically) that fluctuate little in price but pay dividends. PGE and EIX stock have taken enormous hits, if that makes you feel any better, although I doubt the pension fund managers are happy about it.
For destruction on this scale, we'll all have to pay: tax payers, rate payers, property owners, renters, insurance companies, utilities, not to mention the victims. The same goes for the next big earthquake.
1
@GPS
When PG&E causes its next earthquake, we'll talk. Although that seems more like a trick of the frackers, who are perfecting the technique.
This massive destruction certainly requires, as you say, all of us to pay.
But nowhere in there does it say executives, Board members, investors should be held harmless, or pay less than the rest.
Tap them out. They made their play, it didn't work (at least in part due to bad management, lax oversight, and a pathetic focus on immediate profit).
They have lived lives of massive privilege and great reward. This time it didn't pan out, now they need to pay.
You never heard that? Maybe you're more familiar with America style capitalism, where massive companies demand the government guarantee profits, pay all the start-up costs, and agree to soak the taxpayers if anything goers wrong. Or even if it just pays less than investors would prefer.
We do that a lot.
Since people died and all, I'd like to see them avoid that here.
FYI, PG&E had an increase in profits last year of 18% to a billion and a half dollars. That's not the operation, that's the profit.
They should have done better.
They owe us, all of us, big time. And they deserve to be the precedent that helps set American enterprise back on a rational course, like they do in the civilized world.
2
Before and when the latest round of fires began, PG&E was running a PR campaign on TV telling Californians how much they cared and were out making sure their equipment worked; that they made quick and safe repairs; that they were just like us living in neighborhoods whose electricity was provided by PG&E; and laughably that they had installed weather monitors so they could get real-time data, as if knowing current wind speeds would stop their electrical equipment and lack of preparation statewide from starting fires. I recall, literally, seeing a news story about PG&E successfully lobbying the state legislators to limit their liability followed by one of these commercials, unable to control my gasp. The message is clear. PG&E is a corporation spending money behind the scenes influencing legislators (who are not blameless) in the interests of their bottom line all the while projecting a false image of themselves to customers instead of doing the hard work, as mentioned in a post below, to make their lines as fireproof as possible. CA legislators will no doubt spend their time figuring out how to save PG&E after the latest fires rather than its citizens. Hey Governor Brown and Governor-elect Newsome, take back the electrical grid and fix it. There's no better time. It will only get worse in the future. And BTW, you can't "manage" the forests of CA any more than you can "manage" the forests of Applachia.
25
PG&E has had transmission and distribution lines running across NorCal for decades. Those lines have been occasionally sparking fires as well for decades. The reason there have been two fires in two years which have killed at least seventy-five people, however, is not PG&E negligence. It is climate change and a failure of those who live in high hazard areas to recognize this. Suing PG&E will not solve this problem. We must address climate change and adapt how we live. To think that we are going to prevent every spark for future Camp and Carr fires is ridiculous. People who live in those tinderboxes had better come up with a plan to survive them, even if that means hunkering down in the parking lot of.the local Safeway instead of racing for the only narrow road out of town.
10
It costs too much to put power lines underground, yet, somehow, the entire country of Sweden has done so.
Perhaps it's time to revive the Rural Electrification Administration and, this time, put everything underground.
13
In Sweden, in makes more sense to bury the lines, as the harsh Winters means heavy ice accumulation on suspended lines that would lead to outages and massive expenditures for repairs. In the US, it's not such a simple decision. For high power transmission, the cooling provided by the exposure to open air means these lines can use less material than if they were buried. Further, the cost of burying lines are usually about 4x the cost per unit length compared to suspended, and repairs on buried lines are more difficult due to access issues. Now that's not to say we shouldn't be burying power lines, but it probably won't happen under a capitalist system where cost is the sole deciding factor
4
@Angry
The collective will of the involved citizens, not cost, should be the sole deciding factor in our country. However, up until recently, that will was heavily diluted with apathy. Perhaps now we will see better initiatives and results.
1
@NorthernVirginia Sadly, the collective will of the people means nothing under capitalism. Don't misinterpret that as an endorsement of the status quo. I want America to build an underground, nationwide HVDC grid that could be fed by hydro, solar, wind, and nuclear sources across the country without the phasing issues experienced in our current AC grid. But that will never happen in our vulture capitalist system
This article is a perfect illustration of why all companies and corporations (especially the large ones with a huge global footprint) need to get on board with sustainability and taking care of the environment. When the climate goes down, the corporations are going with it - and they will be the first to go - how ironic. Try doing business in an unstable environment, let us know how that goes.
2
It is, of course, too soon to apportion responsibility for these horrific fires, but it seems possible that PG&E is at least partially to blame.
What's worse is that pointing the finger of culpability is an easy way to vent but not, in and of itself, a solution to the problem. Deregulation of the utility industry, over the longer term, is what has allowed utilities to take their eyes off of the ball.
Expunging an inbred, "if we build it they must come" culture within these companies has proven to be a challenge. As is the case in so many industries, pressure for short-term results seems to have suppressed a focus on admittedly costly, longer-term safety and control.
When the public's well-being is at stake, identifying a lack of controllership and abrogation of responsibility after the fact is small consolation for the loss of life and damage to entire communities. Apportioning financial responsibility to shareholders and rate payers is not going to solve the problem either.
Anathema though it may be to our political culture of late, regulation and governmental oversight of critical infrastructure industries, like utilities, is not a bad thing in and of itself. It will not bring back the lost lives, but it might go a long way toward preventing such catastrophes in the future.
3
I would have liked to see some link to climate change in this story of PG&E financial liability. Where does the buck stop? Children are suing the United States for failing to act on climate change. Perhaps PG&E could do the same. Their wires haven't changed, but the climate has. We have elected officials who are on the record denying climate science and blocking legislative solutions. What is their culpability? Since they are virtually all members of the Republican Party what is their liability? Where does this buck stop? I'm afraid if it stops at the PG&E and their customers nothing will change. The perpetrators will have gotten away with murder, again.
6
The problem with the California fires comes down to the environment and the amount of people.To put the blame on the power company and in the process bankrupt them is absurd.Accidents happen and this fire as well as all the others were just a matter of time.Obviously some equipment failed but the same failure in the East would not have had the same result.
6
I agree that accidents happen but if that accident causes another person or people harm shouldn't the party at fault be liable? I'm a plumbing contractor, if I accidentally flood somebody's house should I not be on the hook for fixing it? If you mess something up, you should have to make it right.
So if you apply any small amount of reason to that is going on here, it is clear that there are substantial hidden costs in both property and life when it comes to electrical distribution. Especially in the dry west. And here in North Carolina with our numerous cool ash pits bursting at the seems. And with every aging nuclear plant on the planet.
Holding the power companies feet to the fire, (sorry, too soon?) will be utterly fruitless as they will reach their insurance limits on the first 3% of the damage these catastrophic events hit them up for “restoration” of the personal property alone much less the restoration of the grid. Which, by the way, is based on techonology that has changed very little since it was first strung along poles a hundred years ago. So...
Since the neighborhood of Paradise is now completely razed, lets not keep repeating the same mistakes with ancient technology that makes the reoccurrence of this event a “when” and not an “if.” Incorporate fire breaks to whatever standard works, and do not let city planners and developers build whatever makes their profits and tax revenue for the stake of lives and property. Incorporate electrical systems that do not allow for 10,000 volt systems to explode in the air and on the ground to start these insane fires. There is a HUGE opportunity here that will, sadly, be ignored for the sake of short term profits. PGnE high ups are packing their chutes as we speak...
2
What is wrong with California? I can only assume that most of the state’s government is taking money from the utility company. Why else would they not pass laws that force to pay for the destruction they cause out of their own profits? It makes absolutely no sense to pass the bill onto consumers who are not responsible for the inaction of the utility companies to repair lines, cut back trees, and clear brush around their lines. When a citizen causes a fire their are held personally responsible. Many are fined, have their belongings taken, and imprisoned. But there not a single thing done to the people who run the utility company.
Every single electrical line across the country should be underground. For most of my life I wondered why anyone would be so stupid to suspend electrical lines in the air from wooden poles or even the steel ones. It never made sense to me, even when I was 12 years old. Somebody has to have some brains here and start burying these lines, now, and it should be paid for by the for-profit utilities that refuse to do regular maintenance because doing so would cut into their massive profits, or if run by the state, than taxpayer dollars along with federal assistance. Not only would doing so eliminate many of the wildfires in California, but keep most residents from losing power from high winds, trees falling, snow and ice, and many other natural and human caused accidents.
2
@Dave P.- You need to do some research regarding the incredible size of the US power grid and the cost to move those wires underground! Even a 12-year should understand that electricity prices would triple with the requirement that wires move underground!
@Dave P. A partial alternative to underground distribution is local generation from solar and wind sources. Moving residences off grid obviates the need to distribute electrical power. In Ontario where electrical rates are quite high especially for isolated rural customers, this is starting to happen.
@Dave P.
Absolutely correct. Go to Europe. You'll be hard pressed to find an above ground power line. Why is it that we here live in the 3rd world?
In general, maintenance of infrastructure always gets the short shrift. We expect our electricity, our water, our gas to flow. We expect that our highways and bridges and mass transit to work. We expect that our forests and lands to be properly managed but we don't want to always pay for that upkeep or keep the people (government or corporations) who are responsible for maintenances on the ball with legal sanctions and large fines.
PG&E was already responsible for an explosion that leveled an area of an SF suburb and should have been put on extreme notice. After the Tubb Fire, there should have been a total takeover since it was apparent that PG&E wasn't able to maintain their multitude of towers safely (which when you think about it, it is an enormous responsibility). Nature definitely plays a major role here, but that should have just increase the scrutiny and urgency of the matter.
2
@MomT
If PG&E were owned by the state government rather than shareholders, do you really think the ageing infrastructure would be better maintained? Maybe, but for me, it's a toss-up.
BTW, the San Bruno gas line explosion is an interesting case: The gas line was put in shortly after WWII, when San Bruno was rural and sparsely populated. Housing was developed over it much later. PG&E was held responsible, OK. But the outcry of "How could they put a gas line under high-density housing?" stood facts on their head.
1
Interesting that there was not one word in this article about the part that global warming supposedly played in making this and other fires much more frequent and devastating. It will be interesting to see how, once it inevitably heads to court, blame is allocated. If PGE is found liable, it's hard to understand how Exxon, BP or other carbon producing industries will not be likewise subject to eventual legal penalties for their part in the ongoing destruction of the planet.
Thing is, we still use electricity and drive our cars every day and build new houses in tinder dry forests and flood zones. You can't in good faith benefit from a system you participate in and then turn around and sue those companies that supported that very lifestyle.
2
@JeffB
"You can't in good faith benefit from a system you participate in and then turn around and sue those companies that supported that very lifestyle. "
Of course you can, if they were negligent to the point of incompetence and focused only on their bottom line.
Yes, its a business, and yes it exists only to make money, but you don't just 'make money', you have to earn it. In theory.
Gotta love Californians. Always going to live in dangerous places. Always looking for someone to sue so they can afford to rebuild. Check out "The Control of Nature" by John McPhee for examples of how the litigation culture allows people to rebuild in mudslide areas, while diverting tax money to lawyers and homeowners.
3
@Daedalus Did you intend for your post to come across as callous? Living in Rochester, the worst weather you have to deal with is snow and ice dams. I’m a licensed property claims adjuster of 30 years and have worked every catastrophe during that time frame. California hasn’t always been a dangerous place to live. Santa Ana winds, El Niño, La Niña have always been a thing...but not these huge, destructive wildfires. They used to occur occasionally, not every yeah, all year. By your logic, Floridians always rebuild when they know hurricanes come every, single year. And Texans , Oklahomans always rebuild after tornados, which also happen every year. Hurricane Sandy wrecked havoc in NY. I assume you must feel like none of these people should rebuild, either. The US, in general, is a litigious society. So, your statement regarding Californians suing sounds like you have animosity against folks who live there. I’ve been with people as they stand in shock and tears, seeing nothing but a chimney left standing...with loved ones and pets missing...often with just whatever they could grab and throw in the car when they evacuated. It’s heartbreaking. The insurance companies will subrogate against anyone who is found to have caused or contributed to the fires. So, the litigation goes far beyond the people themselves.
1
@SMB
Good plan, extrapolate ad absurdam. Your point would be better if not for the fact that people do indeed rebuild in hurricane zones and tornado alley. Hurricane Sandy is guilty of causing a huge fire in a fire trap on Long Island. Probably they'll build another fire trap.
Seems like the philosophy here is a lot like Obama-era bailouts after the 2007-8 crisis: privatize the profit, socialize the losses.
No matter how many regulations Democrats add to the mix to mitigate the damage of corporations that by law act in the primary interests of their shareholders, not the public or the nation, they cannot correct against this essential premise of capitalism.
Until ‘we the people’ properly hold both parties accountable for the externalized costs of pollution and catastrophe corporations export to us, we will constantly be putting out these fires one at a time, figuratively and literally.
Bankrupt the utility and let the people run the next one, subject to democratic control and community input and dialogue. Change the law so that the violations exposed in this article don’t fundamentally contradict with the law that says corporations must serve their shareholders first.
And for whatever other capital is needed to repair the communities destroyed by this philosophy, expropriate whatever dividends the stock had already paid out the last 10 years from the small group of people who profited from years of negligence and violations.
9
Part of the problem here goes to a fundamental conflict of motivation for rate-of-return regulated Investor Owned Utilities, like PG&E. In this model of regulation, PG&E is allowed to earn a certain percentage of its electric system assets as profit, which is of course the basis of its stock price. Its only available method to increase profits is to increase its asset base by building more transmission and distribution wires, buying battery systems, building generation plants etc.
In contrast, it is allowed to simply recover (through charges to customers) the costs of maintenance and repair activities such as clearing vegetation from around lines, and repairing poles and towers. Since it is not allowed to make a profit on these activities, one can see how the corporate motivation to devote resources to such activities would have lesser priority.
At the end of the day, the fault lies with the California Public Utilities Commission, the politically-appointed body that is charged with policing the activities of California Investor Owned Utilities. Perhaps they have lost focus on the fundamental requirements of citizen safety and reliable supply of electricity in favor of zero carbon goals. In any case, it is their responsibility to compel Investor Owned Utilities to do a better job of system maintenance, and their job to make the public case to citizens about the consequent increases in their electric bills.
6
The BP oil spill in the Gulf root cause was poor maintenance on the oil rig. BP slashed their maintenance budget again and again moving the funds on paper so quarterly results would meet Wall Street expectations.
Betcha the electric utilities did this in California. There is an article in the Times discussing the poor upkeep of lines.
This is all part and parcel of short term profits above everything thinking that needs to change!
10
@S Exactly. If the people have to pay for a corporation's misdeeds they should at least have ownership in the corporation.
1
The comments advocating bankruptcy as the cure for this loss made me wonder, who are the major shareholders of PGE stock?
Blackrock is a major shareholder; easy to hate, right?
But so is Vanguard and other IRA and 401k managers. Do you know where your retirement nest egg is?. Change your mind?
1
Where is climate change in all this?
3
This lack of investment in electrical infrastructure is endemic to every public electric utility in the country that was privatized in the 80's by Reagan and the Republican Party. The results were predicted by anyone with a brain at the time. For-profit utilities will put profits over prudent long-term investment such as putting lines underground instead of on poles, installing resilient metal poles, starting a comprehensive tree trimming program, and upgrading to smart grid technologies. The cost of moving from above ground to underground lines should be made mandatory and paid for by the private utility companies. If PG&E were smart, they would have started doing this in fire-prone areas thirty years ago. Now they expect Californians to bail them out.
29
@Tommyboy
Good call T-boy. Some/all rural and suburban areas should mandate underground utility supply via micro tunnels.
There is about to break, a great entrepreneurial opportunity for engrs and tunnelers. Do your due diligence on that process and invest in the implementation, execution, and the supply side of the operation. That's how capitalism can work for all.
2
Let's not forget First Energy's cheapened vegetation management program which, in 2003, plunged much of the eastern U.S into darkness. This same company drove a nuclear plant almost to the point of explosion in 2000. About one sixteenth of an inch of corroded metal kept the Great Lakes from being poisoned, all in the name of extracting the last kilowatt, and dollar. Close call huh?
There are those of us PGE customers who see SB901 as a bailout. State Senator Jerry Hill has called for discussions on making PGE a publicly owned utility. The Utility Reform Network has been criticizing the company for years after it was found negligent for the San Bruno explosion in 2010.
For years it has been more invested in ensuring profits, dividends for its ahareholders, and big salaries for its execs than public safety. The new normal of these very destructive wildfires requires that a new approach to utilities be taken. They should be nonprofit entities where the focus is on serving customers and public safety rather than profits.
27
@richard
Got my vote!
Share holders should fire managers 4 levels down from the top as accountability. That is immediately after rcpt of their severence
1
Wall Street is to blame. Utility Companies used to be called public "utilities" for a reason. With government oversight they served the public by providing essential needs.
Now they're a prime example of Republican economics at work. Republicans love to point at reduced costs and higher stock prices. See? The private sector is so much better at running businesses without government regulation.
For the California fires and the San Bruno and Merrimack Valley explosions the profits already taken out of these companies were not available to make the energy supply safer before the fact. After the fact they're also not available to cover the tab for the dozens of people who have been murdered in the name of making a quick buck.
How many deaths does it take to offset the profits made by the relatively few private owners at the top?
Especially now, with a rapidly warming planet, energy companies need to become public utilities and get subjected to increased government scrutiny and prohibited from issuing stocks. Yes the day to day costs will get more expensive. Consider it the cost of saving lives. With their Wall Street masters gone maybe Utilities will return to serving their original masters, the American people.
36
I lived in California's Gold Country, east of Sacramento, for a few years in the 1970's. Even then I was told by neighbors that PG&E did not maintain its equipment, until it was beyond totally necessary. What it did do, was charge us unreasonable rates for our heating and air conditioning with or without repairs.
I went into shock one July day, to find that we had a bill to pay of $800.00 + dollars for the month of June, which had had reasonable temperatures and so we didn't have to use the air conditioning everyday. I was expecting a bill of $300.00. I wasn't the only household that received a large increase.
Why did this happen? PG&E had decided to do some much needed repair work a couple of months prior to that bill. Had the company done the repairs when they were first needed in the early spring, the cost would have been minimal. But they waited until the damage was dangerous.
To cover the utility's repairs, we ended up paying the cost of the company's maintenance with a huge rate increase, instead of a minor adjustment. It was then that I learned why the locals called PG&E, "Pigs, Goats and Elephants."
11
Denial of climate science, operating utilities as for profit entities instead of state of the art safe reliable systems, and ignoring the potential of nodal subsystems (clusters of building that generate their own power with renewable resources).
The cause of the California fires is multiple and the system is set up to bleed consumers when the destruction is catastrophic. This is the definition of unwise.
3
executives should be held criminally liable for the homicides, damage, pain and suffering! and shareholders should suffer the corporate losses.
16
So $15 billion last year, another $15 B or more this year and one has to wonder how many thousands of miles of electric lines could have been buried for that money? Maybe not in the most remote areas - but start somewhere.
5
A cursory read of the readers' response yield a sense of frustrations, which is understandable, but not solution.
Some want the utility to become a government entity but that doesn't solve the problem.
Solar panels without backup infrastructure won't give you reliable electric power.
The reason for utility is that it requires huge amount of investment. PG&E is suppose to spend $6B a year to build out, yet it is restricted to rate increase. People complain it is for profit but a lot of people rely on the company for their livelihood just the same.
I am not here to defend the company. Indeed, it is possible someones, especially the spreadsheet pushers in the corporate office, might be cutting corners. And it doesn't help when you have to deal with worker unions.
Nothing is free, folks! If power lines can transmit communication signals, chances are there are ways to design power grids to monitor malfunctions. But it will cost the customers. Also, maybe urban and community plannings are needed to minimize spread and maximize support. Of course, Mother Nature is still the biggest factor. Santa Ana winds have always plagued California. And Global Warming doesn't help. When you get Mother Nature, it is pointless to point fingers
6
The frequency and intensity of California wildfires demonstrate the need for decentralized power generation. Homes and businesses should use solar, wind and fuel cells to generate local power and large power companies that currently provide centralized power via high-intensity lines prone to sparking in high-risk fire zones should be phased out.
Decentralized power generation would reduce pollution, fire risk, and community-wide blackouts. The technology is cheap and readily available. Developing policy and the technical infrastructure needed to deploy decentralized power generation will require rapid, creative and substantial leadership.
4
@Paul Galat Are you aware that California recently passed a law that requires solar on all new home construction? Less that 20 years ago, we still had to fight local zoning regs and CCRs to get past the "solar looks ugly on roofs" culture (the same culture that mandated manicured grass lawns in the desert). Widespread undergrounding of power lines has been rejected as too costly, but maybe the latest fires will change the cost-benefit equation. Ironically, the communities that have undertaken major initiatives to relocated overhead power lines underground have done it primarily for aesthetic, not safety reasons.
Good job, environmentalists. You stopped logging and traditional management of the forests. And so the fuel loads became so great, why is anyone surprised this happened? Now you’re gonna break a utility’s back and put that on the taxpayers. So much smoke! How’s that carbon footprint working out for you?
1
@Edwin
Good job, vulture capitalists. You stopped maintenance and traditional management care of the infrastructure to yield more profit. Why is anyone surprised this happened, and that they are blaming the victims.
13
@Marie
If you look closely at the first photo of the women searching through the rubble, you'll see scrub brush right up to the building line.
The brush is so thick I bet it's tough to walk through.
Yes PG &E should maintain the lines and clear out the brush from their line routes. But who takes care of the surrounding areas. How far out does the utility responsibility go?
The Loss of life is terrible, but all folks in the area need to take responsibility to maintain their neighborhoods.
4
@jane blanda - "look closely....you'll see scrub brush right up to the building line."
But also looking closely you can see that most of the scrub is still green and the other leaves are browned by the heat of the fire of the building - they weren't the source of th fire.
While yes more maitenance would be good (I know I can't afford to have the trees next to my house cut down), if the first hadn't started in first place the house wouldn't have burned.
I believe that if you start a fire you are responsible for the entire fire - not just the 1 foot square where you started it.
2
Isn't this part of how almost all utilities operat now? They pared down their workforce, to increase profits, and pay investors dividends, which is what brings investment. They stopped doing old fashioned periodic line maintenance and repair: they wait until there is an outage, trees that have taken down lines etc, and then they hire contractors to go out and do a repair. It is one of the reasons some of the electric outages in the Northeast have resulted in weeks of outage - which would have been unthinkable going back years.
In California the conditions mean a down line could create a disaster; I con't believe they didn't see this coming. But I also wonder what the role of Public Utility Commissions has become: a defender of public interests or a an enabler of the utilities?
The problems will reverberate in the small world of utilities ( small in number of firms, not in impact): always considered a "safe" investment because, in the end, we all need them and generally, the government backs them up.
7
California should subsidize solar panels for its citizens and let PG&E fail.
6
@E Bennet
California does subsidize solar panels, but who will maintain the grid after PG&E is allowed to fail? Everybody wants service, nobody wants to pay for it.
1
It seems that this episode adds evidence that PGE cannot respond and change. Three strike (2010, 2017 and 2018) show it is time to consider the basic failure of for-profit utilities. California should take over its major utilities and contract out the repair and billing responsibilities to the existing employee groups. Clearly, the profit motive from activities that are essential to life confounds responsible management and places the populations served at risk. Such poorly managed companies as PGE should be dissolved and replaced with a state-owned entities. We will all sleep better.
16
@Edward Mocarski The state can't even take care of it's roads and water systems and you want them to handle your utilities????
WOW!
1
Yet another illustration of how readily so many of us accept the concept of privatizing profit and socializing cost.
Exactly what will happen (not fires, but socializing cost) with the new Amazon HQs. Heaven forbid we demand companies take on the cost to society of their profitmaking activities.
49
@Anne Hajduk
Thank you. I agree 100%
3
@Anne Hajduk, in PG&E's case, it's not that simple. The "profit" that shareholders earn from PG&E is an administrative agency (the California Public Utilities Commission) dictated return on equity (generally around 10%). This is built into electric rates. If PG&E's shareholders are forced to bear all of the costs of wildfires, no shareholder will invest in the company without an astronomical return on equity, which would in turn mean higher electricity rates -- imagine investing in a business that was in danger of bankruptcy every wildfire season.
Overhead exposed power cables are an open invitation to disaster. It’s about time Americans learned to run them underground. An expensive proposition given the urban and suburban American sprawl, but the most effective.
17
Too expensive and hard to maintain. When there's a fault in underground cable that is big trouble with a long outage and angry customers.
If this is true, they caused so much suffering. This company should die and their leaders arrested for manslaughter. Another electric company will take over and with state aid improve electric services
6
@Danilo Bonnet "Another electric company will take over and with state aid improve electric services "
Magical thinking.
1
If the fires are proved to have been due to negligence on the part of the utility then the costs should not be included in the rate base.
14
It is time to stop subsidizing building in fire-prone areas (and floodplains too). Remote locations can be powered economically and more safely with solar now.
10
@Carolyn C Is/was Paradise "remote" or just a small town? What about Alpine, Julian and Ramona here in San Diego County? How about the communities of Scripps Ranch and Rancho Bernardo, which were devastated by the Cedar Fire in 2003 and Witch Fire in 2007, respectively? Or more recently, the 9 concurrent county-wide fires in 2014 that included San Marcos and Carlsbad? I don't know where you live in San Diego, but past fires in San Diego County should have taught you that there is no longer anywhere in California that is not fire-prone. Oh, and by the way, the utilities, particularly SDG&E, have fought solar for decades.
1
Welcome to sunny California!
Hope you brought your wallets!
1
If electrical equipment owned by PG&E is starting deadly fires that destroy billions of dollars worth of homes and lead to so many horrific deaths, perhaps we should consider rebuilding with individual solar power for homes and businesses all over the state so we don’t have so many dangerous power lines threading through the vast wooded areas of California.
59
@Stephanie. And when the sun doesn’t shine for a few days and your batteries are depleated you are going to do what?
1
@TW Smith Mr. Smith, I imagine that California is more than capable of augmenting solar power with wind power.
6
@SES. Still the same problem. I am fully in favor of renewable energy, but the simple fact is that no current technology eliminates the need for a backup source of power independent of weather unless people are prepared to forgo modern technology for indefinite periods of time.
2
What's happened to the old fashioned idea of regulation and enforcing it? With privatisation (which I'm not against) you obviously will get laxer observance of equipment by commercial companies. That's just common sense. So you need effective government regulation. But it costs money! From tax payers! The state cannot afford or simply doesn't realise it needs better enforcement. So now the state has to regularly foot the bill for these devastating--and deadly--fires. Why not have a much better regulation apparatus in place? It might sound old fashioned, but in the end, it would save the state and commercial companies a lot of money. And, most important of all, it will save lives.
2
Let us burn your house down and destroy your property, and the best part? You pay for it! Better, you pay for us burning you neighbor's and town too.
26
That is the price one pays for unlimited sprawl.
5
While safety and responsibly are paramount, at some point the utilities may give up. Then we can add no power for all customers to the basket of problems. There is no simple answer and someone must pay the operational and liability bills. But to eviscerate the company may cast a dark shadow on the ability to provide power. This needs careful thought before the financial obligations and who pays are determined.
2
@BCY123 This is the usual, Trumpian threat from businesses: make me pay for my bad behavior and I’ll hurt you big-time. It’s time for each building to become an independent energy producer through clean renewables such as solar panels, heat induction, etc.
2
Welfare for corporations and personal ‘freedom’ to pay for corporate messes for the rest of us.
Individuals must pick themselves up by the bootstraps- no handouts.
Yet -Corporations can be negligent, while reaping big profits for executives and shareholders, then walk away.
As deregulation and rollbacks of Obama era consumer protections continue ‘we the people’ are going to be sadddled with more of this. As infrastructure fails due to neglect and Mcconnell obstructing Obama’s sound infrastructure plans more Merrimack Explosions and Camp Fires will abound.
Why? Because corporations can get away with it and when you’re a corporation the GOP majority lets you!
Here in MA the frigid weather is settling in and these victims in Merrimack have no heat but for dangerous and inadequate space heaters.
The perpetrators will either flee in golden parachutes and/or get bailouts.
The Senate is the next group that needs to be purged of Republicans and then the White House needs to be purged of the grifters in residence.
69
@DMurphy : Sadly, the Democratic Party hasn't been any more willing to prosecute our malfeasant corporations than the Republican Party has. Some Democrats on occasion may speak in more compassionate tones about corporate-induced suffering, but that's about as far as the differences go.
Remember that after causing severe damage to the entire world's economy, which, in turn, caused immeasurable suffering worldwide, the American engineers of the Great Recession not only weren't sent to prison, they simply remained in their positions of power, ready to receive enormous bonuses after just one-year's hiatus—all while Barack Obama was president.
"My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks." That was Barack Obama speaking at the White House to the executives of bailed-out financial firms, on March 27, 2009. He wasn't threatening them; he was telling them that he was on their side.
1
Privatize the profits; socialize the losses.
How can PG&E possibly pay such incredibly high damages with barely more than $1B in liability coverage without raising its rates exponentially for its millions of consumers? The utility was well aware of the dangers from not maintaining its infrastructure and not taking proactive measures vis-a-vis tree trimming in highly arid areas.
Though our situation in the Merrimack Valley is different, we've also experienced significant damages from Columbia Gas's negligence in maintaining its gas lines and thousands are still without heat as we await our first snowstorm of the season. Friends of ours have already spent more than $10,000 on new heating systems and appliances destroyed during Sept.'s gas explosions and blowbacks. They are still awaiting reimbursement.
There is something terribly wrong when billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars via bond issuance, etc. are used to construct limited use football stadia, etc., while our schools, railways, subways and bridges are falling apart due to lack of funding. Obama proposed nearly a trillion dollars worth of such funding but McConnell, et al, scuttled that in an effort to destroy Obama from day one. The first two years of this admin. has done nothing whatsoever in that regard, even with Republican control. Trump literally fiddles while Calif. burns and he mocks the state in the process.
How have we as a supposedly intelligent nation fallen so far?
88
Your points well taken. You mention the first two years of this administration has done nothing to address this
The prior administration has eight years and did likewise nothing all. Are you equally angry at Obama?
@Joe Yoh As was said in the post you are criticizing, the Obama administration tried to do something on a major scale and Senate Republicans stopped it. And it was Republicans who initiated defunding of public works in the Reagan era.
51
@Joe Yoh
I specifically referenced Obama's insistence on prioritizing infrastructure funding and O'Connells's deliberate actions to subvert any and all efforts Obama put forth as part of his scorched-earth tactics to destroy Obama's presidency.
36
"State officials have determined that electrical equipment owned by PG&E, including power lines and poles, was responsible for at least 17 of 21 major fires in Northern California last fall."
If this is not negligence what is ?
If so, why should customers be the first in line on being the hook, rather than Geisha J. Williams Chief Executive Officer and President, PG&E Corporation ?
Compensation: Total Cash $991,667 +Other $108,575 ?
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@Gerhard Just because an electric facility starts a fire doesn't mean that there's negligence involved. For example, if powerful winds blow a tree that's outside the minimum vegetation clearance distance into wires, causing arcing and a fire, that's not necessarily negligence.