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PG&E-friendly wildfire bill being prepared by lawmakers in wake of lethal fires

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Re: PG&E-friendly wildfire bill being prepared by lawmakers in wake of lethal fires

#11

Post by foxrob92 »

narutosasuke wrote: post #8
hydrox24 wrote: post #3

I want to know if backburning is a common practice in California, or in the USA at all. In Australia a big part of a Firey's job is running controlled burns in the (relatively) low fire risk season to keep the amount of flammable material around cities and property to a minimum. It is a continuation, in a way, of a much more ancient indiginous practice of regularly burning large swathes of bush. It is very much a par…

So controlled burns are definitely done, but it's difficult. There's issues with air quality after a burn, waiting for ideal conditions, and sometimes even losing control of the burns. Don't know how that compares with Australia. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/california-will-se... https://www.kqed.org/science/1927354/controlled-burns-can-he...

All of these things are issues in Australia, though out of control prescribed burns are very uncommon.

Basically all of the northern areas in the Northern Territory are burnt once every two years or so.

One thing to consider is that Indigenous Australians have been doing regular burns for tens of thousands of years. It's pretty well understood how the land burns, how often it needs to be burnt and what good/safe conditions look like.

Re: PG&E-friendly wildfire bill being prepared by lawmakers in wake of lethal fires

#12

Post by schoen »

lacker wrote: post #2

It seems like an odd quirk of liability law that all of the fire damage is blamed on PG+E if the initial spark that started the fire was PG+E’s fault. Surely some blame lies elsewhere as well. I think homeowners need to be paying fire insurance costs proportional to fire risk to properly incentivize fire protection (and I say this as a California homeowner in a somewhat fire prone area). In the end, PG+E is regulated…

There's a long discussion in Coase's classic "The Problem of Social Cost" about the apportionment of liability between railroads and landowners adjacent to the railways when fires are started by sparks from trains.

http://home.cerge-ei.cz/ortmann/UpcesCourse/Coase%20-%20The%...

Basically Coase says that it's not necessarily the most economically efficient to blame the railroad that created the sparks, and that it depends on other factors (in the super-simple formulation that people sometimes attribute to Coase, this could include who could most cheaply act to mitigate the fires).

I think Coase would agree with you that we can't automatically assume that blaming PG&E and making PG&E pay for all the damages will lead to the most efficient outcomes for California as a whole in the future.

Re: PG&E-friendly wildfire bill being prepared by lawmakers in wake of lethal fires

#13

Post by Scoundreller »

lacker wrote: post #2

It seems like an odd quirk of liability law that all of the fire damage is blamed on PG+E if the initial spark that started the fire was PG+E’s fault. Surely some blame lies elsewhere as well. I think homeowners need to be paying fire insurance costs proportional to fire risk to properly incentivize fire protection (and I say this as a California homeowner in a somewhat fire prone area). In the end, PG+E is regulated…

> PG+E is regulated so heavily that any costs they pay will basically just be passed on to consumers.

That assumes they survive. Their market cap is $12b and some cost estimates are nearing that, but their own insurance will cover a lot of the costs... for now.

Endlessly increasing rates works when consumers have no alternatives. But this is in California, solar just gets more and more viable.

Re: PG&E-friendly wildfire bill being prepared by lawmakers in wake of lethal fires

#14

Post by tolk460 »

tolk460 wrote: post #10
hydrox24 wrote: post #3

I want to know if backburning is a common practice in California, or in the USA at all. In Australia a big part of a Firey's job is running controlled burns in the (relatively) low fire risk season to keep the amount of flammable material around cities and property to a minimum. It is a continuation, in a way, of a much more ancient indiginous practice of regularly burning large swathes of bush. It is very much a par…

Im a wldland firefighter from the northern Rockies, just returned from a deployment to the Woolsey incident (LA and Ventura counties). Yes, prescribed burns are common in the off season for all fire districts. However, CalFire has some unique challenges [1] that most of the other states do not have to deal with when it comes to air quality and sufficient water conditions during their shrinking off season. https://www…

I'll add statistics for the 2018 fire season that includes southern and northern California [1] at a combined 55,000 acres versus the northwest (WA, OR) of a similar geographic size [2] and atmospheric conditions to Northern CA at over 100,000 acres in prescribed burns.

[1] https://www.nifc.gov/nicc/sitreprt.pdf (page 6) [2] https://www.nifc.gov/nicc/

Re: PG&E-friendly wildfire bill being prepared by lawmakers in wake of lethal fires

#15

Post by tathougies »

lacker wrote: post #2

It seems like an odd quirk of liability law that all of the fire damage is blamed on PG+E if the initial spark that started the fire was PG+E’s fault. Surely some blame lies elsewhere as well. I think homeowners need to be paying fire insurance costs proportional to fire risk to properly incentivize fire protection (and I say this as a California homeowner in a somewhat fire prone area). In the end, PG+E is regulated…

Fire insurance, like earthquake and flood insurance, does not work because of the scope of damages. Insurance works by pooling risk and taking income from low risk areas to pay for high risk ones. Due to the scope of wildfires, fire insurance is untenable.

The solution to this fire is absolutely to blame pg and e and its custoners (yes this includes me). This is the logical conclusion. The only thing preventing us from doing this is a refusal to count ourselves complicit in this fire.

The solution furthermore is to legislate to remove the barriers to competition that California has set up. Even though I try to do the right thing by buying my electricity from something other than pg and e, I am -- by government sanctioned monopoly -- forced to pay of and e for 'distribution'. I put this in quotes because I am not charged this fee if I buy direct from pg and e. The state allows this non competitive monopoly. When I confronted my congressman, his response to why the state allows this is that the ' pg and e lobby is strong'

If the state cannot preserve a competitive market for energy, then the state needs to seize energy production. Monopoly is not capitalism and it is not the free market and it is not freedom. A state run solution is very non ideal (I say this as a libertarian), but it is the best among all others.

As it is right now, people in England are able to buy shares in my utility and are more incentivized to cut costs and increase profit even to the point of causing harm that will never affect them.

Re: PG&E-friendly wildfire bill being prepared by lawmakers in wake of lethal fires

#17

Post by r00fus »

tathougies wrote: post #15
lacker wrote: post #2

It seems like an odd quirk of liability law that all of the fire damage is blamed on PG+E if the initial spark that started the fire was PG+E’s fault. Surely some blame lies elsewhere as well. I think homeowners need to be paying fire insurance costs proportional to fire risk to properly incentivize fire protection (and I say this as a California homeowner in a somewhat fire prone area). In the end, PG+E is regulated…

Fire insurance, like earthquake and flood insurance, does not work because of the scope of damages. Insurance works by pooling risk and taking income from low risk areas to pay for high risk ones. Due to the scope of wildfires, fire insurance is untenable. The solution to this fire is absolutely to blame pg and e and its custoners (yes this includes me). This is the logical conclusion. The only thing preventing us fr…

What about the Federal government for cutting the funding for existing CA fire programs?

Funding was cut last year and boom we have back to back years of fires.

Re: PG&E-friendly wildfire bill being prepared by lawmakers in wake of lethal fires

#18

Post by anon2775 »

lacker wrote: post #2

It seems like an odd quirk of liability law that all of the fire damage is blamed on PG+E if the initial spark that started the fire was PG+E’s fault. Surely some blame lies elsewhere as well. I think homeowners need to be paying fire insurance costs proportional to fire risk to properly incentivize fire protection (and I say this as a California homeowner in a somewhat fire prone area). In the end, PG+E is regulated…

Disclaimer: I barely survived the Camp Fire, with all the credit to our neighbors for letting us know.

That's a chick-little, strawman and blame-the-victim argument. The issues are:

1. PGE likely started the fire. They should be held responsible for this specific incident, not passing the buck to ratepayers or anyone else.

2. PGE is corrupting and coopting liability when it needs to pay the penalties for its actions, not pass the buck. This is separate from 1. because it indicates a greater decay of liability and they're insulating themselves to gradually become an untouchable mafia.

3. In order to get 2., removing SIG, PAC and large private monies, and all those who benefit from them, from politics is imperative.

4. Paradise is a tiny town that doesn't do a very good job with code enforcement. My mom had to mobilize the neighbors to get an abandoned propery's owner to mow their 7 ft tall, dried weeds and remove fire other hazards like an abandoned house with a tree crashed through it, but then the institutionalized owner later allowed a random tree-trimmer to dump dozens of piles of pine sawdust and logs on that property. SMH.

5. "Regulations" aren't an uniform obelisk to scapegoat that you implied. One regulation maybe advantageous or harmful uniquely to each and every affected group, depending. So don't even start spreading the tired, libertarian, utopian refrains like "If only there were no regulations, markets solve everything," which is utter horseshit. Regulations can and do work but only if the governed demand it and refuse to allow the rich and their corporations to have their way.

It's the POLR for most former/current homeowners to move to where professional town managers exist rather than deal with small-town incompetence like the bumblers in Paradise or Butte's Sheriff Kory's flimsy excuse for not activating the EAS, which likely caused the needless deaths of hundreds of disabled and elderly people.

Re: PG&E-friendly wildfire bill being prepared by lawmakers in wake of lethal fires

#19

Post by cronix »

tathougies wrote: post #15
lacker wrote: post #2

It seems like an odd quirk of liability law that all of the fire damage is blamed on PG+E if the initial spark that started the fire was PG+E’s fault. Surely some blame lies elsewhere as well. I think homeowners need to be paying fire insurance costs proportional to fire risk to properly incentivize fire protection (and I say this as a California homeowner in a somewhat fire prone area). In the end, PG+E is regulated…

Fire insurance, like earthquake and flood insurance, does not work because of the scope of damages. Insurance works by pooling risk and taking income from low risk areas to pay for high risk ones. Due to the scope of wildfires, fire insurance is untenable. The solution to this fire is absolutely to blame pg and e and its custoners (yes this includes me). This is the logical conclusion. The only thing preventing us fr…

> fire insurance is untenable

How do the insurance companies afford to insure places like in Florida and the lower East Coast, which seem to keep getting hammered with hurricanes year after year, getting worse year after year? And... can they keep up this pace? Apparently in 2017, fires "only" cost insurance companies ~$14B, out of ~$132B paid out. The majority was caused by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. 2017 was the 2nd costliest year on record in terms of natural disasters (have to wait for '18 numbers released in Jan). So why is fire insurance untenable while hurricane ins. isn't?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-insurance-aon/2017...

Re: PG&E-friendly wildfire bill being prepared by lawmakers in wake of lethal fires

#20

Post by [deleted] »

lacker wrote: post #2

It seems like an odd quirk of liability law that all of the fire damage is blamed on PG+E if the initial spark that started the fire was PG+E’s fault. Surely some blame lies elsewhere as well. I think homeowners need to be paying fire insurance costs proportional to fire risk to properly incentivize fire protection (and I say this as a California homeowner in a somewhat fire prone area). In the end, PG+E is regulated…

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