We’re told to expect an 18-24 hour cutoff tonight, comencing in about 4 hours. Lows tonight are mid-40s F so we can tolerate one heatless night, but any longer and we’re outa here, maybe into well-lit Nevada. A generator dealer will arrive in an hour, trying to sell us one, but demand is high, so nothing will be installed before January.
PG&E directors and managers should be tried, executed painfully, and their family wealth confiscated. That’s a start.
Think of all the carbon footprints that you aren’t leaving.
Dude, you’re a dick.
Hey now! Im not the one calling for torture over a problem the state is in part responsible for.
But I can tell the misanthropes around here are glass half empty types.
Now there is even more stink to this affair.
Southern California Edison equipment was responsible for the Woolsey fire which destroyed 1643 structures, killed three people, and forced the evacuation of more than 295000 people.
Additionally, they and Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) are being investigated for charging customers during the time their power is shut off.
So besides being thieves, they have money for parties and lavish offices and obscene pay to the top guys but no money to maintain equipment.
I think i’s time to END this government sanctioned private monopoly of utilities and take them over. It isn’t working. Socialize them and ramp up the oversight.
And maybe start locking people up for negligence and dereliction of duty.
Hubby and I traveled to California at the end of September. Drove from Auburn, CA (north of Sacramento) to San Diego. Beautiful drive. However, much of it was a tinderbox waiting to be lit. Irrigation is clearly allowing millions of people to live in places where they couldn’t otherwise; the downside is this constant threat of wildfires.
Since telling people to leave isn’t a plausible solution, IMO burying the lines is the only solution. Our subdivision has buried lines, and it’s not only more beautiful, but we are rarely without power when the rest of the city is.
Burying lines is going to cost a ton of money, tear up a lot of vegetation, and take a lot of time. But they need to come up with a Plan B. PG&E should invest its profits into making this happen. And customers should pony up some more, too.
P.S. Oh, and speaking of those irrigation channels, they should eventually be enclosed, too. I cannot imagine what percentage of water is being lost to evaporation. Works now but won’t work forever.
Yes, but buried transmission lines also cost more money every day they are in use, for the decades they will be used.
Buried lines are less efficient than overhead lines (mainly due to capacitance effects, with some minor effect from overheating). This results in higher transmission loss – this is electricity wasted in the transmission grid. This is already 10-15% wasted in the existing mainly-overhead transmission system; converting to buried transmission lines would waste 2-5% more electricity.
When we are all making efforts to conserve energy, like replacing incandescent light bulbs & adding light timers, we ought to look twice at changes that will cause a 33% increase in transmission line wasted electricity.
You think the current batch of workers and managers are useless? Have the state take it over and fill it with unionized government workers and you’ll need to prepare for real Armageddon.
Who said anything about the workers?
I grew up on a farm near a small town. Everyone got their electricity either from the rural co-op or the city municipal electricity. Both of those were effectively government workers, an they did a good job. (Both had crews that regularly trimmed trees, so they didn’t interfere with the power lines – something PG&E seems to have neglected.) And the electricity prices there were (and still are) cheaper than what I pay to the private electricity company in Minneapolis.
Besides, isn’t this problem related to PG&E management, not their workers?
The management decided not to do the needed maintenance work but instead spend the money elsewhere (management bonuses, profits for stockholders). If the workers had been assigned to do the maintenance, it would have been done. I haven’t heard complaints about the quality of their work, just that they weren’t assigned to do the work.
Seems to me that the fires are costing more than burying them would. YMMV.
Speaking as a unionized government worker…
…it probably isn’t worth getting into it with you. Suffice it to say I think you have either an entirely exaggerated view of how useless government workers are or a hugely inflated view of how comparatively competent private employees are. I work in close contact with a gigantic multi-national corporation - they do not conspicuously cover themselves with glory.
At any rate PG&E employees mostly are unionized and as a utility can effectively be considered quasi-governmental. The fault isn’t with the employees, it is largely with inadequate staffing and invested resources and the inappropriate pressures put on them by that inadequate staffing. And that all comes down to money.
Which to be fair is also a problem with fully government-owned utilities - we’re always under the gun in terms of funding, as there is a political cost to higher utility rates and taxes. But the profit motive adds a whole 'nother layer of complications.
Yeah, but the crucial point is that they’re not costing PG&E more than burying the lines would.
PG&E is offloading a lot of the cost of the fires on taxpayers (not just California taxpayers, but all American taxpayers). Burying the lines, on the other hand, would cut into the funds available for executive salaries and bonuses, lavish parties, and so on.
I stand corrected! That’s the third time this month.
PG&E to plead guilty to lethal crimes in 2018 wildfires.
If I pled guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter while I was on probation for similar safety violations, I would never be allowed to work in that industry again AND I would serve many years in jail. But corporate people are different than people people, and so no one will serve any jail time and they’ll still be in the same business.
Corporate personhood is a fucked up concept that the US should do away with.
Abolishing corporate personhood would just mean that each individual shareholder was personally liable for corporate debts. Like, if your retirement account owned shares in PG&E, PG&E having no corporate personhood would mean that your personal property would be sold to pay for PG&E’s debt.
Corporate personhood and limited liability are two separate concepts.
Of course! That is entirely obvious. But perhaps you could explain the inevitability to some of our slower members.
No; it wouldn’t necessarily mean that unless we said it meant that. There are more options available than you list. For instance:
Corporations can exist, they just shouldn’t be considered to be people. They aren’t people; they are property. Granting them legal personhood was a stupid, short-sighted shortcut for legislators and the unforeseen repercussions are awful for society.