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This electrical transmission tower has a problem

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Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#461

Post by blackflame7000 »

cogman10 wrote: post #440
dragonwriter wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California's mismanagement with it's forest is the same issue. The majority (57%) of forest land in California is managed by the federal government even before considering the part managed by tribal governments, which are also out of state control though subject to federal oversight. Only 3% is directly under state control. 47.7% of the total land in California is federally owned (not uncommon in the West, where mo…

Yeah, lots of issues came together for the perfect storm. Personally, I do think that PG&E should have seen a harsher punishment. If some pyro had went in and started the same fire, they'd have been in jail for life. PG&E does this shit and they got a slap on the wrist. But, your point is very valid. This place was a tinderbox. They were one lightning strike, on cigarette butt, one illegal bonfire away from going up…

>"Rather than spend money to fix things, we wait until everything blows up before asking questions."

Are you buying? It's really easy to justify spending other peoples money if you make everything about life and death.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#462

Post by blackflame7000 »

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…

If the feds were the problem, why aren't other states such as Texas or Colorado which have similar geographical features to California experiencing the same perpetual fire seasons over and over?

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#463

Post by eric-hu »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #437
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish this attitude towards planned and unplanned shutdowns was more common. I'm not an infrastructure professional, I'm in automation and manufacturing, but all too often I come across equipment that must never be shut down and must be functional 100% of the time, but which has been run long past its service life. Windows 98 or XP computers on their 9th resurrection due to parts from eBay, castings full of helicoil…

Incentivising companies to throw away equipment that still works sounds like a terrible environmental policy

That depends on how you look at it. In the case of this thread, is it better for the environment that PGE continues using 100 year old electricity towers and saves the resources (metals, fuel, labor) necessary to replace them? Or is it better that such massive fires are reduced in frequency?

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#464

Post by NamTaf »

tonymet wrote: post #456
NamTaf wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few failures in the real world tend to be a single-source problem. Hence the swiss-cheese model [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model

Wow this is great thanks ! How do they distribute liability to the various failure modes? I think it’s dishonest (and problematic) to put all liability on PGE

I don't think there's one way. This isn't a codified law, for exmaple, it's just a model of failure analysis.

In my experience, we use the 5 Whys [1] as a technique to drill down to 'root causes'. However, along the way you'll identify a whole heap of compounding factors, each of which may change the degree of severity or indeed completely avert the issue.

In this particular instance, in isolation you can say that the hook failed and caused a fire, but it took several additional factors to make it as bad as it was:

1) Lack of maintenance (which in itself has a whole tree of causal factors)

2) Excess buildup of flammable material

3) Particuarly dry/hot weather conditions

4) Lack of firefighting resources due to other mitigating circumstances

5) Encroachment of living premises into dangerous areas

etc. etc.

I don't really know how the US courts might handle allocating liability, because I'm not located there, but I don't think there's one particular way to do it. I do however think that trying to retroactively allocate liability to this specific incident is probably the wrong way to look at it.

Instead I think the better apporach is to say that PG&E were delinquent in their responsibility of ensuring safe equipment, and regardless of the actual consequence they should be judged on that. For example, there are established processes to assess risk, and those risks include both a likelihood and consequence. All of that is then taken in combination to understand the total risk of something. The then have a legal obligation to ensure things are safe, and they broke that so punishment should be based on that. This would hold, whether the dereliction of duty was realised through a disaster or only identified from a near miss.

Similarly, you could assess that the government was delinquent in its duties to perform backburning, etc.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#465

Post by michaelt »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #428
michaelt wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only meaningful failure here is repeated lack of maintenance The proximate cause of the fire was a broken hook. The other failures were: * Hook was not maintained * Tower was not adequately inspected * Record keeping was insufficient to recognise the need for maintenance * Power lines were built in hard-to-maintain, fire-prone places * Nobody within PG&E sounding the alarm about this the hook problem specifical…

1,2,3 are maintenance 4 is unavoidable 5 is maintenance 6,7,8,9 are not PG&E 10 is "bad management"? Sure, that's a root cause, though a massively vague one. 11 is not PG&E So yes if you're concerned about external problems then there are things you can mention. I'd never argue that housing location and fire management and climate aren't factors! But in a discussion of what PG&E did wrong it's basically all maintenan…

> But in a discussion of what PG&E did wrong it's basically all maintenance.

What I mean is: the first poster in this thread mentioned a broken hook causing $16 billion in damage, but the difference between a broken hook causing $1 million in damage and a broken hook causing $16 billion in damage was largely out of PG&E's hands.

> 10 is "bad management"? Sure, that's a root cause, though a massively vague one.

To be more specific: PG&E is a 'private company' but it has no competitors, regulations set the prices it can charge, regulations set the shareholder returns, regulations stop them refusing customers, regulations dictate what they can build and where, and regulations allow them to keep bouncing in and out of bankruptcy with minimal consequences.

If a company's already bankrupt and has been for decades, any new CEO is going to insist on a bankruptcy-proof pay package. And what's the difference between liabilities of a million dollars and a trillion dollars when the electricity's going to keep flowing, the prices are going to stay the same, and the CEO's going to take home the same pay?

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#466

Post by somesortofsystm »

zbrozek wrote: post #394
ComputerGuru wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not news. Fire management folks have been preaching controlled burns for decades. https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-...

Humans have known to regulate forest fuels for 1000's of years. This modern stubbornness is hubris based on ignorance of the real technology that has been developed, over tens of thousands of years, in forest management.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#467

Post by pnutjam »

scottlamb wrote: post #444
pnutjam wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rural people love their subsidies. We should encourage people to live in denser areas, not all cities, but towns. How many rural people do you think are involve in food production? It's only around 10%.

> Rural people love their subsidies. We should encourage people to live in denser areas, not all cities, but towns. How many rural people do you think are involve in food production? It's only around 10%. I have no idea. It's a hard question to answer. You are sure with no citation so I think you're wrong. How do you define "rural" and how do you define a "town"? The US Census—which probably was directly or indirectl…

I'm not saying we mess with these people, I'm saying we charge market rate, or closer to it, for electricity. Maybe setup a program they can apply for to get a subsidy. That will make the process much clearer and everyone can track how much is being subsidized.

We shouldn't just throw money at companies and hide the subsidies. The help should go to the people who ask for it and that way it's much clearer to everyone involved.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#468

Post by Retric »

cogman10 wrote: post #440
dragonwriter wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California's mismanagement with it's forest is the same issue. The majority (57%) of forest land in California is managed by the federal government even before considering the part managed by tribal governments, which are also out of state control though subject to federal oversight. Only 3% is directly under state control. 47.7% of the total land in California is federally owned (not uncommon in the West, where mo…

Yeah, lots of issues came together for the perfect storm. Personally, I do think that PG&E should have seen a harsher punishment. If some pyro had went in and started the same fire, they'd have been in jail for life. PG&E does this shit and they got a slap on the wrist. But, your point is very valid. This place was a tinderbox. They were one lightning strike, on cigarette butt, one illegal bonfire away from going up…

You get much larger fires when they go undetected for significant periods of time. Lightning strikes can happen anywhere, but most ignition sources are close enough to people for early responses. Power lines are therefore unusually bad as they regularly start fires in forests a significant distance from people making both detection and response more difficult.

If power companies what to run lines through these areas they need to take responsibility for what’s going to happen.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#469

Post by thatguy0900 »

eric-hu wrote: post #463
thatguy0900 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incentivising companies to throw away equipment that still works sounds like a terrible environmental policy

That depends on how you look at it. In the case of this thread, is it better for the environment that PGE continues using 100 year old electricity towers and saves the resources (metals, fuel, labor) necessary to replace them? Or is it better that such massive fires are reduced in frequency?

I think it's hard to take the example of a poorly maintained electric tower in the middle of a poorly managed forest and extend that to all electronics a company uses. The comment I was replying to talks about windows computers, castings, and standard electrical panels.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#470

Post by andi999 »

dcanelhas wrote: post #399
mannykannot wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a simple fact that lightning does start fires, especially in places like the American west, where lightning is not always accompanied with much, or any, rainfall at ground level. The severity of any fire is determined by how it develops in the hours and days that follow its ignition, long after the storm has moved on or dissipated.

That's not disputed. But starting a fire in completely dry conditions is worse than starting one that potentially coincides with rainfall, all other things being equal.

Falling from a height of 10.1m is also worse than falling from 10.0m all other things beeing equal
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