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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

#21

Post by saltedonion »

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…

Can you explain why wild fire insurance is not tenable? Here in Canada all home insurance include wildfire insurance.

All insurers have to do is to pool risk and diversify across geography. No way only California has homes near forests? There’s also reinsurers to pool even more risk.

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

#22

Post by paul7986 »

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…

California the land of sky high housing & rent, insane deadly forest fires, homelessness like no other state, landslides, earthquakes... it just doesn't sound very appealing.

What are the positives ... chasing and potentially realizing your creative (music/film) or tech dreams there? That can be done in other cities like Nashville or possibly close to here in a few years with Amazon building in Crystal City, VA (other big tech companies may follow). Well love to hear the positives of living in California!

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

#23

Post by Twirrim »

anon2775 wrote: post #18
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,…

I'm definitely in favour of PG&E getting hit hard for this one due to what appears to be gross negligence on their part.

_But_, doesn't the liability also, in part, apply to the state and/or the federal government? How far did the fire unnecessarily spread? Was the land in the area being properly maintained, with good fire breaks, routine controlled burns etc, or are they skimping like they have been all over the country?

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

#24

Post by dang »

claydavisss wrote: post #5

This is your veto-proof Democrat Monopoly over California politics. Democrats value people over corporations! Keep resisting.

Would you please stop it with the flamewar comments and political battle comments on HN? It's not what this site is for, we've warned you before, and if you keep doing it we're going to have to ban you. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

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

#25

Post by thisiszilff »

paul7986 wrote: post #22
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…

California the land of sky high housing & rent, insane deadly forest fires, homelessness like no other state, landslides, earthquakes... it just doesn't sound very appealing. What are the positives ... chasing and potentially realizing your creative (music/film) or tech dreams there? That can be done in other cities like Nashville or possibly close to here in a few years with Amazon building in Crystal City, VA (othe…

Weather.

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

#26

Post by bluejekyll »

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…

> The solution furthermore is to legislate to remove the barriers to competition that California has set up.

While I think you’re generally on point, this misses the mark a bit. We don’t want more transmission lines running in CA, right? We don’t want lots of little companies increasing the risk of fire by managing lines independently and the one that’s losing then doesn’t have the means to maintain those lines.

We might want competition at the generation point, but the transmission lines should be a monopoly. What needs to be fixed on the transmission is that there should not be a profit in maintaining them, bc the profit comes from lack of maintenance. The last three disasters caused by PG&E, can basically be boiled down to a maintenance problem, or lack of.

All the transmission lines and maintenance should be transferred to the state, and the profit motive, by not maintaining the infrastructure properly, be removed.

Again, competition in power generation (and storage) is good, competition in transmission is bad.

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

#27

Post by Digory »

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…

Isn't one theory of granting a government monopoly franchise that it allows pooling of risks related to that activity? PG&E is, in some sense, the government's insurance plan.

Other general liability insurance is now priced for damages that cannot be assigned or recovered. But "no fault fire insurance" would shift cost from the government-backed-utility-rate-pool to private insurers.

It's hard to imagine that such a shift would be more efficient, in part because PG&E is in the best position to assess its own risk -- and buy its own insurance and reinsurance.

Surely, somewhere in the utility, someone bought a SwissRe or Loyds policy against freak catastrophic loss.

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

#28

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

dang wrote: post #24
claydavisss wrote: post #5

This is your veto-proof Democrat Monopoly over California politics. Democrats value people over corporations! Keep resisting.

Would you please stop it with the flamewar comments and political battle comments on HN? It's not what this site is for, we've warned you before, and if you keep doing it we're going to have to ban you. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .

As someone who occasionally gets downvoted for reasons I don't understand, would you mind elaborating on what you find flame-ish about the GP?

AFAICT, the post contains hyperbole, but its main thesis seems worth discussing. Even if it's just to conclusively refute it.

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

#29

Post by burtonator »

paul7986 wrote: post #22
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…

California the land of sky high housing & rent, insane deadly forest fires, homelessness like no other state, landslides, earthquakes... it just doesn't sound very appealing. What are the positives ... chasing and potentially realizing your creative (music/film) or tech dreams there? That can be done in other cities like Nashville or possibly close to here in a few years with Amazon building in Crystal City, VA (othe…

"California the land of sky high housing & rent, insane deadly forest fires, homelessness like no other state, landslides, earthquakes... it just doesn't sound very appealing."

This is just sample bias. California is the size of NY all the way down to Florida.

If something bad happens on the west coast it has a 60% chance of being in CA but if it happens on the east coast it could be in VA, MD, DC, FL, GA, SC, NC, WV, DE

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

#30

Post by dang »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #28
dang wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you please stop it with the flamewar comments and political battle comments on HN? It's not what this site is for, we've warned you before, and if you keep doing it we're going to have to ban you. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .

As someone who occasionally gets downvoted for reasons I don't understand, would you mind elaborating on what you find flame-ish about the GP? AFAICT, the post contains hyperbole, but its main thesis seems worth discussing. Even if it's just to conclusively refute it.

The ideological rhetoric. It wasn't a thoughtful comment, which is what we want here.

In case it's helpful: people sometimes think that we enforce this standard because we're uncomfortable with intensity and only want (say) a nice and civil bourgeois discussion. And they make legitimate objections to constraining discussion for this reason. But it isn't our reason at all. Rather, it's because of the systemic effects such comments have on a large public forum like HN. Experience teaches that they lead rapidly to lower-quality threads, in which people drop thoughtfulness, start to yell, and eventually just try to blast and hurt each other. Since the whole point of HN is to try to sustain a higher quality level on the internet, we have to moderate such comments rigorously.

So when we moderate HN, we're not thinking so much of the specific comment we're replying to, but what that type of comment leads to. I don't usually explain this because, as you can see from this post here, it takes too long.

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