Oh, brother. This is so predictable, and stupid. Hillary Clinton said in a recent speech at UC Davis:
“It’s been a tough couple of weeks with hurricanes and earthquakes and now these terrible fires,” she said, according to KXTV in Sacramento.
“So in addition to expressing our sympathy, we need to really come together to try to work to prevent and mitigate, and that starts with acknowledging climate change and the role that it plays in exacerbating such events.”
“What Happened” ? Reality bites:
PG&E power lines linked to Wine Country fires
As the first reports came in Sunday night of numerous fires that would grow into one of the most destructive wildfire disasters in California history, emergency dispatchers in Sonoma County received multiple calls of power lines falling down and electrical transformers exploding.
But it could have been prevented, but thanks to the idiot governor of California, common sense legislation aimed at improving power line and wildfire safety was vetoed:
Wine Country fires: Gov. Brown vetoed 2016 bill aimed at power line, wildfire safety
A year ago, a bipartisan bill aimed at reducing the risk of wildfires from overhead electrical lines went to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk.
It was vetoed.
The author of the measure — passed unanimously by both houses of the Legislature — now says the governor missed out on a chance to tackle one of his state’s longstanding vulnerabilities: massive wildfires endangering residential communities. But the governor’s office and the California Public Utilities Commission say the bill duplicated efforts already underway among the CPUC, Cal Fire and utilities like PG&E.
Now, as a series of deadly fires rages in Wine Country, serious questions are once again being asked about the safety of overhead electrical wires in a state prone to drought and fierce winds.
…
In the first 90 minutes Sunday night, firefighters were sent to 10 different spots where problems had been reported with the area’s electrical infrastructure. The crews reported seeing sparking lines and transformers.
During that same time period, radio transmissions indicate 28 blazes — both vegetation and structure fires — breaking out, mostly in Sonoma County. Firefighters were sent to eight fallen tree calls, with many reports of blocked roadways.
I really need to think about getting out of this lunatic state.
Note: within 10 minutes of publication, a photograph and video of power line issues in Sonoma County, CA were added.
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It will be very interesting to see what reports ascribe any of the fires to the sub par electrical infrastructure. If so, then let the legal court cases fly. There is no excuse for any Gov’t or private electric utility to have any vegetation growing into their lines or electric infrastructure. Their right of way for the power line gives them the authority to remove any such brush or trees. PG&E have already been fined many millions of dollars for their failure to maintain their infrastructure, which have caused many fires in the past costing tens of millions in losses and several lost lives. And many more ruined lives.
Just looking at the video and pics of this nightmare of broken power poles and downed transformers shows that these power poles are much to busy too handle the weight and forces acting upon them in a major wind gust situation. The wooden poles look like 50 year old Cedar, and while they may hold up a normal span of wire, start adding transformers and all the additional hardware, and they fall like dominoes when conditions are right. That one tree branch in Ohio in 2003 that cascaded the second largest blackout in history that affected 55 million people cost USA and Canada billions. All because of a tree branch and a malfunctioning alarm! Sure could have done a lot of power line upgrades and tree pruning for that kind of coin.
Hopefully this will necessitate the need to need to classify the Transmission and Distribution electricity grids and networks as critically essential necessary infrastructure. Just looking at all the money that is spent in repairing these old power lines, including loss of power sales when the power is off, makes one think that it is time we invest in a much hardened electrical utility infrastructure. For all the money that has been spent on fixing old lines or wasted in negligence such as causing fire, we could have had some of these power lines already buried underground where they should be. Especially the old antiquated distribution power lines that serve a large population in a forest susceptible to burning.
And BTW, what does any of this have to do with global warming or climate change? Fire burns accumulated fuels when conditions are ripe, and having thousands of homes now in the forest is only going to add to the risk. Operating delinquent power line infrastructure in that environment is only going to exacerbate that situation. The only thing that additional CO2 might have to do with it now is making the underbrush and forest grow a bit more quicker as compared to when we had a CO2 drought the last 100,000 years.
When I was in California, there was also an issue with some greens objecting to vegetation clearance near power lines, or controlled burns due to air pollution.
Are there Eucalyptus trees in the area? If not, just ignore this comment.
Visiting Chile some years ago, we were alarmed at the spread of the Eucalyptus trees that had presumably been imported for vineyard windbreaks. We have since heard of devastating fires near Valparaiso. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Valpara%C3%ADso
Eucalyptus trees are a horrendous fire hazard. They drop vast quantities of bark and branch litter, covering the ground with fuel. When that burns, glowing embers can “jump” many miles, rapidly spreading the fire. Although such a fire does tend to run up tree-trunks and into the canopy for the benefit of TV crews, the real fire tends to be at ground level. Even isolated houses can be burned, thanks to ember attack.
http://library.csustan.edu/sites/default/files/Bob_Santos-The_Eucalyptus_of_California.pdf#%EB%B6%EA%AE%81%03H%A1%F0%23%03%E3%97%96rA%20Fire
“H.H. Biswell, Professor of Forestry and Conservation at the University of California, Berkeley made a prophetic statement too on March 1973: When eucalyptus waste catches fire, an updraft is created and strong winds may blow flaming bark for a great distance. I think the eucalyptus is the worst tree anywhere as far as fire hazard is concerned. If some of that flaming bark should be flown on to shake roofs in the hills we might have a fire storm that would literally suck the roofs off the houses. People might be trapped.
[..]In his book, Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia, published in 1991, Stephen Pyne told the story of an Australian firefighting expert who attended a conference in Berkeley. The expert visited the hills in and around Berkeley and saw how the eucalyptus forests in the area were allowed to grow. He was struck with terror by their volatile nature and fled back to Australia. This occurred just prior to the 1991 firestorm. “.
Heck yeah there are eucalyptus trees. And I can attest to their messiness. Not just shedding bark, but they can shed entire limbs and kill people on the ground.
http://www.ocregister.com/2011/09/25/eucalyptus-safety-in-spotlight-after-womans-death/
http://articles.latimes.com/1990-11-20/local/me-4807_1_eucalyptus-trees
Limbs, branches, twigs, leaves and the nasty gum seeds. And they rain flammable resin down onto the ground beneath them. About every week in the fall I need to hose the sticky resin off the patio or it feels like walking on fly-paper. Eucalyptus also burns very hot and energetically.
Also eucalypts produce an oily vapour in hot air (Why the Blue Mountains in Aust are blue). This vapour easily ignites and adds to the firestorm. Where I live in Australia, eucalyptus bushfires are a regular occurrence each summer and often produce huge firestorms. Anybody who surrounds their house with these trees must be mad.
Graeme#4,
Not insane, just incredibly ignorant. These are essentially invasive species here and to an ignorant tree- hugger all green trees are good trees. They are taking them down around school yards, not because of the fire hazard, but because of the limb shedding. The word needs to get spread regarding the fire danger imposed by these as well.
They also use a lot of water and can be used to dry up swamps.
Yea, but they smell good, especially bicycling thru a grove on an isolated road.
Yup. Both northern and southern CA are infested with the fire hazards, and have been for a century.
http://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/giant-eucalyptus-trees-removed-for-vine-trail/article_f9477ee6-fb4b-5572-8a2c-c3ca97a52f13.html
The never ending cycle:
The California “Perma-Drought” was caused by “climate change”.
Then the heavy precipitation that busted the “Perma-Drought” was caused by “climate change”
The heavy precip resulted in heavy growth of vegetation. Much of the vegetation has dried out making excellent conditions for wild fires.
So wild fires get started for what ever reason and are blown by fall winds. And this is the result of?
The sloped areas that have been burned will be more susceptible to mudslides in the event of heavy precipitation due to the fact that the vegetation was burned and their binding and supporting root structure will die. And, no doubt, some will say it’s all mans fault.
These fires ARE man’s fault. Absent exposed power lines these fires would not have occurred. The winds are not new. Some of the vegetation is (palm trees, eucalyptus, etc.) but the ignition source wasn’t available until people showed up.
The fires are initiated by man, or at least some of them, but the obvious point is that the conditions that resulted in them being what they are, are not. That is the result of the cycles that California has gone trough for millennium. Fires initiated by lightning are impossible in your world?
Now I have to go to work. See ya.
Winds like occurred there prior to the fire can create fires by several means. Two branches rubbing together rapidly by the wind creates friction enough to start fires. Dampened dead accumulations of leaves and twigs smolter from decomposing and the right amount of a breeze can set them ablaze. Just to give two examples.
When lightning cause fires in CA it is usually raining, and not blowing hot dry winds across the foothills and chaparral. Those fires will not grow into these wind whipped wildfires.
In CA we have 4 seasons: Spring, Summer, Fire and flood.
Currently it is fire season. It was even expected that this season would be worse because of the vegetation caused by last years flood season.
“It’s been a tough couple of weeks with hurricanes and earthquakes and now these terrible fires,” she said, according to KXTV in Sacramento.
“So in addition to expressing our sympathy, we need to really come together to try to work to prevent and mitigate, and that starts with acknowledging climate change and the role that it plays in exacerbating such events.”
It’s brilliant comments like this that lends credence to the crazy idea that our space-time reality was mixed with another parallel reality back in the 90s, and in that mix up Hillary et al. bumped their head so hard that it caused irreparable damage.
Hillary is the gift that keeps on giving. She just won’t shut up and go away and I like that.
The one unambiguously good thing to come from Obama’s 8 years– he blocked the Clintons getting back into the White House. Twice.
Even sycophants in the media have to understand that what she is saying makes no sense.
OK, we can argue whether “climate change” exacerbates hurricanes, but EARTHQUAKES…….?
Obama stopped Hillary 3 times (not just 2)…
Wasting valuable time doing this, but here are 2 problems:
1. Picture of downed power lines on Parker Hill Road are not at the northeast edge of the fire where it started near Calistoga. They are near the southern boundary of the fire, a few miles downwind of where it started. The winds were blowing from the northeast to the southwest. If it wasn’t the fire that brought the power lines down, it could have been the wind which brought them down as it did in other areas nearby, but these power lines in this picture weren’t the cause of the fire.
Fire map centered on Tubbs – Santa Rosa fire:
https://goo.gl/3ZGM7y
Google Maps location of photo on overlayed fire area map:
https://goo.gl/uWzK22
Street View from location of photo showing power lines on west side of road:
https://goo.gl/1u35YD
2. Location of downed power lines mentioned in video are not the power lines in the photo or shown in the video. The caller says “Mark West Station Road power lines down” which is a mile or so west of the fire zone. According to the fire map, there were no fires in that area.
Google Maps location of Mark West Station Road on overlayed fire area map. Zoom out to see fire area.
https://goo.gl/EB9P2e
QED
Outside of her self serving, psychopatic interests, she is campaigning for her daughter Chelsea for NY Senator Lowey’s seat, which I believe was promised to her. I’m willing to bet on it.
There is another individual from the Kennedy Clan who is eyeing the same but Hillary made a nice business deal with Lowey and hates the Kennedy ‘heiress’ with a passion for not supporting her in the previous presidential election where Obama got the nod…
Oh, about the deal…it involved real estate…
https://www.google.com/amp/www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/04/25/brooklyn-election-official-scored-big-profit-from-real-estate-deal-with-hillary-clinton-supporters/amp/
https://www.google.com/amp/www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/news/amp9557/clinton-kennedy-chelsea-clinton-senate-race/
Now that the beans have been spilled, I’m goin to confession as Al Gore has said it’s millions of degrees, 1 kilometer down and even if he us wrong, which I know is true, I cannot bear the thought of him being King of Hades and Hillary the Queen and me goin there….unless I get paid a lot to report on that ensuing fiasco, which will be hilarious and will ask for great HVAC in the contract.
Father, please forgive me but hey, even the devil himself has fled.
Oh, and as observed by the fella that discovered gravity…the apple never falls far from the tree.
PG&E does not do preventative maintenance on power poles. I’ve dealt with them for 40 years on another power pole issue. The company policy is “We’ll fix it when it breaks.” I know this is true.
IMO PG&E needs to have crews that do nothing but inspect poles, perform simple maintenance and write up poles in need of more extensive repairs. They need to touch every pole every 5 years. This would hugely reduce power outages and other lack of maintenance issues.
Poles or lines should not fall down whenever the wind blows 50 mph.
I have no illusions that they’ll pay any attention to me.
“PG&E needs to have crews that do nothing but inspect poles,”
Certainly happens in Australia. Basically constant inspect and repair.
And nobody can stop the electricity guys trimming or removing trees that might affect the power lines.
Often see trees below power lines with the whole centre cut out of them 🙂
And you watch them rebuild that electricity back onto poles. !
Mr. Watts – Please, California it is NOT a lunatic State. It is the Government of the State of California that is lunatic. Really, there IS a difference.
Elected there to by the lunatic population there of. So if the sandal fits……..
California outside the Cisco/Diego/LA zone is largely non-lunatic.
Just how do the lunatics get into government?
Lack of a voter ID law?
“Lack of voter ID law.” great answer.
Mine would be. The ignorance of the population.
The real wildfire is the mental illness epidemic sweeping through the state carrying all before it and reducing the population to some bizarre slobbering mutant state.
Because of global warming, power lines falling down and electrical transformers exploding are more likely to occur and be more serious in their consequences.
Or maybe it was the result of an American remake of Where Eagles Dare. (I tried to find a clip on YouTube of the telegraph posts being blown over but was not successful.)
Well in Michigan we have no hurricanes, no earthquakes, no sharks, no alligators, But we do get 6 months of cold lousy weather.
Over the lake in Waterloo, my wife loves the summer evenings and cold winters. Happy wife, happy life.
I’d rather deal with 0F in the winter than 100F in the summer. Especially if it’s combined with high humidity.
I’d rather have 100F in the summer than anything below 50F at any point in the year ;p. Given that I do live where we have 3 seasons: Wet, Summer and Dry, with dry being relative (4.5 feet of rain per year on average and a drought means that we got 4 or fewer feet in a water year). Plus, I grew up before central HVACs were common. In the old days, houses were built to keep you cool and since you adapt to it; when it gets ‘cold’ you put on more clothes to compensate. Thus the jackets seen on Southerners when it gets below 60F.
When I saw the news, I remarked the fires seemed to have a linear distribution and expressed the thought that they had been lit by some climate-crazed lunatic. Also, being a Canadian and having seen and experienced (run away from) really big forest fires, I had the impression that a couple of Canadian water bombers could have doused it in a day,if they were indeed linear.
Gary – makes you wonder if they take it seriously. They should buy a fleet of water bombers to deal with all those future impacts of whatever it is they are scaring people with these days.
You can’t fly tankers when the winds are high.
Re Eucalyptus trees & danger,
A great aunt was killed by a falling branch. That danger is real.
Fire danger is also real. In the early 1990s I visited far west China several times, drove through the southern extension of the Himalayas. Was shocked to see how large was the area under eucalypt plantation. Definitely a fire hazard, especially by now when they have grown larger. There were also many Silky Oaks (Grevillea robusta) that early Chinese diggers had taken home from the 1860-1900 gold rush era.
Here is Australia, too many fires are lit by sick people. Sadly, it is hard to police them and the areas they can hit. After that, poles and wires for electricity are a major cause of fire damage and death. It is a relatively bigger problem here because of sparse population – wires have a long way to go through land where there are few people to pay for them. Next to nothing is underground in the bush. Geoff.
Well, Clinton is a typical populist politician just like Trump and many others. They will do whatever gets them votes. That’s how they stay in power. It’s democracy. Nothing new here.
But still… earthquakes?
More power to the people. More power lines.
Solar and wind!
As a humble Limey, I have to say that we in the UK are bemused by the US electricity distribution grid comprising so much overhead cabling and transformers up poles…
Here, once we’ve distributed the power at 132000 volts, we go to ground-based substations and for all urban areas the cabling is UNDERGROUND.
Regarding eucalyptus trees – we had one at a previous house – not only could you watch the bloody thing growing (it finished up about 60 ft tall) but it damaged our neighbour’s garden wall and the roots started going under his house…
Needless to say we chopped it down – but even the stump tried to regrow..!
The distances are vastly different: One county here is 36 miles x 36 miles (50 x 50 kilometers north-south, east-west). The medium-sized states are larger than all countries in Europe save France, and France is merely equal to the larger states. You simply cannot dig-and-bury (economically) power, telephone, cable, and fiber-optic cables anywhere but the downtown regions of the largest cities. And the surrounding areas of every city are themselves too big to economically bury cables.
Yes, tree and fire damage occur. But not as often as publicized.
The climateers want to ameliorate a risk to our great greats in 2100 but veto a proposal to pre-empt a disaster certainty right now. When I saw the pictures on the news and saw the fires were in a straight line I suspected they were lit by a climatatic.
Are Californians so numb they don’t see there should be a class action lawsuit over this? What could be worse a danger than this kind of fire. Electrical lines running along a residential road in dry brush.
I say ‘disaster certainty’ because it was recognized by even by politicians! Also I live over 3000miles away in a different country and have heard about the regular Santa Ana winds. You know what they do, you know where they are and you know when they happen! For goodness sakes why isn’t there preparedness, water bombers on standby, patrols, brush cutting, maybe homeowners watering their houses down, neighborhood watch, some fire trucks handy on the streets…thats all a mining engineer/geologist can think of in one minute!
These negligent “wildfires” are more predictable than hurricanes, tornadoes and floods and we are more prepared for these than for a disaster you can set your clock by. And you have a serial liar and felon telling numbos in wrapt attention at UC Davis that it’s climate change. I think I’ll set up a “Santa Ana” “wildfires” prediction site in eastern Ontario to let you precautionary principle experts know when to get ready for the next one! Actually someone in California should do just that to shake the system into preparedness.
And they happen almost every October!
Does anyone know whether California does any “fire management” or are the environmental regulations and/ or fear such that you cannot do control burns to mitigate the build up of fuel on the ground? I have heard they don’t except on wildlife refuges and even there the land managers do not follow their own expensively developed land management plans. I know at one point both in Colorado and California people were not allowed to even mow certain areas around their houses and buildings because of threatened and endangered ground squirrels.
There are three types of people in this world.
Those that make things happen.
Those that watch things happen.
Those that wonder what happened.
Hillary reminds us, nearly daily, which camp she is in.
I’d add,
Those who exploit from what happened.
(exploit
[verb ik-sploit; noun eks-ploit, ik-sploit]
Spell Syllables
verb (used with object)
1.
to utilize, especially for profit; turn to practical account:
to exploit a business opportunity.
2.
to use selfishly for one’s own ends:
employers who exploit their workers.
3.
to advance or further through exploitation; promote:
He exploited his new movie through a series of guest appearances.)