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This electrical transmission tower has a problem

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Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#371

Post by generatorguy »

_ph_ wrote: post #136
generatorguy wrote: post #128

Wind, ice, squirrels, birds, snakes and trees are going to cause power lines to fail and create sparks so while perfectly maintained power lines will fail less often failures will still occur. If the world is a tinderbox from now on there is a choice to be made between energized overhead power lines and no risk of fire.

That there are other risks for forest fires does not remove the burden of properly maintaining the power towers at all.

Those are other factors that cause sparks from power lines that are independent of maintenance. sparks are going to occur whether the towers are replaced with brand new ones every 10 years or if they leave them until there starts to be problems and then they go look to see what needs replacing.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#372

Post by Johnny555 »

bhawks wrote: post #127
Johnny555 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assigning them unlimited liability for catastrophic wildfires leads to the unintended consequence of making it risky for them to run power at all during high fire danger conditions, so they turn off power in these areas.

They've been willfully negligent and reckless to the infrastructure they own to service their customers. In this case we're not even talking about tree trimming, we have a 100 year old tower. It's obvious it will fail soon, there should be an internal maintenance program to replace/update it. There are no such programs, PGE operates in a way that there would never be such a program. PGE should be held liable for pred…

They've been willfully negligent and reckless to the infrastructure they own to service their customers.

No doubt, but I'm just pointing out the reality -- make them responsible for any size fire set off by their equipment, and they will respond by turning off electricity during high fire danger periods. This isn't something that "might" happen, this is exactly what did happen.

So simply assigning more liability is not the answer.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#373

Post by jaywalk »

biztos wrote: post #290
resonantjacket5 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the root of the problem is that there's too much forest that hasn't burned. Blaming PG&E is missing the actual problem. For instance the Beirut explosion was the fault from the welders causing the explosion. Yes, but the larger and more important issue is why are there so many explosives in the first place? California's mismanagement with it's forest is the same issue. These forests should be periodically burned t…

> California's mismanagement with its forest is the same issue. I agree that the forests should be managed differently, but if this being "California's mismanagement" is an actual thing as opposed to political disinformation, I'd love to see a couple links to back it up. Some quick googling suggests that it's mostly a Federal problem, which has very different implications especially right now. Am I wrong?

It's more complex than that: https://reason.com/2020/09/14/western-wildfires-can-be-preve...

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#374

Post by edge17 »

resonantjacket5 wrote: post #217
tshaddox wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With proper engineering and maintenance, PG&E could probably reduce the frequency of fires significantly, but there's always going to be a non-zero risk of fire, both from power lines and other sources, and it seems basically inevitable that one of them would have started another fire at some point. I don’t understand. You’re conceding that if PG&E were a competent and responsible company they could significantly r…

No the root of the problem is that there's too much forest that hasn't burned. Blaming PG&E is missing the actual problem. For instance the Beirut explosion was the fault from the welders causing the explosion. Yes, but the larger and more important issue is why are there so many explosives in the first place? California's mismanagement with it's forest is the same issue. These forests should be periodically burned t…

Seeing as there is a lot or harangue and no data being presented, here is some data https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s42408-019-0041-0#...

In general, the study contends that the fires are fuel-dominated (too much forest) and not wind-dominated fires. It also contends that the California drought climate has contributed significantly to the problem.

> On the timber-rich interior US Forest Service (USFS) forests of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, anomalously large fuel loading due to a century of successful fire suppression and timber harvesting practices has been a dominant factor

The problem is likely too much forest at these level of droughts, so forest management bears some responsibility. Economically speaking though if PG&E has been given such a lucrative business opportunity as a sanctioned monopoly, they ought to be held responsible as well.

Also, the part that is not clear to me and I would appreciate if someone has an answer - speaking cynically, if PG&E as a private company causes damage and tax payers pay, and if PG&E as a state run company causes damage and tax payers pay, why do I care who runs it? Is it just that the prevailing politics in California is that corporate=bad and civic=good?

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#375

Post by macspoofing »

jvanderbot wrote: post #364
macspoofing wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I agree that the forests should be managed differently, but if this being "California's mismanagement" is an actual thing as opposed to political disinformation, I'd love to see a couple links to back it up. There are two narratives here. The Democrats want to blame Climate Change. Republicans want to blame California's mismanagement. Both are correct but there is no policy that any government could implement that w…

Yes. Climate change should be met with mitigation (to avoid further climate change) and realistic adaptations of forest management. But, to make matters worse, the baseline expected rate of fires is higher due to climate change, and is much higher due to PG&E negligence. We can and should attack all factors with regulation, maintenance policy change, etc. The fact is, we had maintenance policies for PG&E's portion, a…

>the baseline expected rate of fires is higher due to climate change,

Yes. But we can't control the climate. Or rather climate change will require policies spanning decades or centuries.

>and is much higher due to PG&E negligence

Sure. PG&E should be held accountable for their part. But to mark them as a cause is not right. California was a tinderbox waiting for a spark to start the explosion. It could have been anything, and in fact, there were many 'sparks' that started a bunch of these fires. You make PG&E the scapegoat, you're going to miss the true culprit - bad vegetation management.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#376

Post by ComputerGuru »

bryan0 wrote: post #366
biztos wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California's mismanagement with its forest is the same issue. I agree that the forests should be managed differently, but if this being "California's mismanagement" is an actual thing as opposed to political disinformation, I'd love to see a couple links to back it up. Some quick googling suggests that it's mostly a Federal problem, which has very different implications especially right now. Am I wrong?

Here are some articles explaining California's role in forest mismanagement.[0][1][2] I think what's interesting, and a real problem, is that all reasons about causes of the fires is seen as a political stance, when the factual causes of the fires should be not a political issue. All of these things are true. They're not political statements: 1. CA mismanaged its forests by not doing proper controlled burns 2. Climat…

What about all the federally owned land in California suffering from the same “mismanagement?”

It’s also not clear to me that - regardless of the party in question - it is fair to call it mismanagement unless credentialed people had pointed out the risk of not allowing controlled burns and the government insisted on doing them anyway because of different priorities, aka mismanagement.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#377

Post by pixl97 »

jschwartzi wrote: post #356
pixl97 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? There is such a thing as a multi domain fault. He never said this wasn't PG&E's fault, just that out of 100% they don't bear all the fault. I mean, California is in the middle of burning down from a lighting complex at this moment. Suing mother nature isn't going to do much good if you want to put the blame on her for that fire. As long as people live in the Wildland Urban Interface, and we live in a climate tha…

The fires are a direct result of human-caused climate change. I’ve lived in Washington all my life and 2015 was the first year we got smoked out during the summer. Since then it’s persisted year after year. We’ve completely screwed up our planet.

Eh, right, this is why the North American west has a 100,000 year fire record?

Climate change makes the problem worse, but the fact is fires are a natural part of the regional ecology.

If we keep looking at fires as one problem with one cause, we will keep dying in fires and losing houses.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#378

Post by rcpt »

rubidium wrote: post #288
rcpt wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually leaves quite a lot of places to live. Yes an asteroid could hit anywhere but the notion that suburban sprawl out into every corner of the wilderness is justified by that is ludicrous.

It would be a really fun map though, to determine where is "safest" based on an individuals risk profile.

Insurance rates map https://howmuch.net/articles/homeowners-insurance-rates-2020

But there’s got to be a higher resolution one out there.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#379

Post by macspoofing »

jartelt wrote: post #367
macspoofing wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I agree that the forests should be managed differently, but if this being "California's mismanagement" is an actual thing as opposed to political disinformation, I'd love to see a couple links to back it up. There are two narratives here. The Democrats want to blame Climate Change. Republicans want to blame California's mismanagement. Both are correct but there is no policy that any government could implement that w…

The vast majority of forest land in California is owned by the federal government and is National Forest land. California can't just go and run controlled burns in those federally controlled forests. That would need to be done in cooperation or under the direction of the US Forest Service and should be funded by the US Forest Service since they own the land. If the federal government wants better forest management in…

Sure - you can have that discussion. What the Democrats are doing is blaming climate change and Trump's climate change policy. Surely you agree that that is just dishonest.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#380

Post by resonantjacket5 »

machello13 wrote: post #271
resonantjacket5 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the root of the problem is that there's too much forest that hasn't burned. Blaming PG&E is missing the actual problem. For instance the Beirut explosion was the fault from the welders causing the explosion. Yes, but the larger and more important issue is why are there so many explosives in the first place? California's mismanagement with it's forest is the same issue. These forests should be periodically burned t…

It's possible for more than one cause to contribute to an event. California needs to manage its forests better, but PG&E is also clearly at fault.

Because the majority of fault lies at California/Federal government whoever is in charge of clearing the forests regularly not PG&E.

Again going back to the Beirut Explosion analogy -- yes the welders could have taken better precautions. Perhaps someone could have maintained the explosives better too. Maybe we could even hire firefighters on standby and install alarms next to the port.

But none of this removes the large pile of explosives that shouldn't be placed there.

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