On June 8th, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) made its first official announcement via press release that 12 big Northern California wildfires in October 2017 were caused by problems associated with electric utility power lines.
The October 2017 Fire Siege involved more than 170 fires and burned at least 245,000 acres in Northern California. About 11,000 firefighters from 17 states and Australia helped battle the blazes. They concluded that 12 Wildfires in Mendocino, Humboldt, Butte, Sonoma, Lake, and Napa Counties were caused by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) “power and distribution lines, conductors and the failure of power poles.”
The words “global warming” and “climate change” were conspicuously absent from the announcement even through screeching environmentalists and Governor Brown blamed the fires directly on that universal boogeyman based on nothing more than speculation.
CAL FIRE’s investigations have been referred to the appropriate county District Attorney’s offices for review in eight of the 12 fires – Sulphur, Blue, Norrbom, Partrick, Pythian, Adobe, Pocket and Atlas – due to evidence of alleged violations of state law.
Read it all here: http://calfire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/newsreleases/2018/2017_WildfireSiege_Cause.pdf
Told you so. It was a change in the Pacific Ocean patterns.
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A question about the numbers. The Cal Fire reports:
The October 2017 Fire Siege involved more than 170 fires and burned at least 245,000 acres in Northern California. About 11,000 firefighters from 17 states and Australia helped battle the blazes. They concluded that 12 Wildfires in Mendocino, Humboldt, Butte, Sonoma, Lake, and Napa Counties were caused by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) “power and distribution lines, conductors and the failure of power poles.”
So, what is the relationship between the 170 fires and the 12 wildfires? Did the 12 wildfires include 170 separate fires? Or has Cal Fire determined the cause of 12 wildfires out of a total of 170 fires?
The proximate causes of a fire –“What started this fire?” — is not the same as the question “Why was this fire so big and so hard to contain?” or “Why did this fire burn so hot and fast?”
Big, hot fires are caused by an abundance of fuel, usually in the ground, most of which has accumulated during the recent decades of a fire management regime which called for fast knock-down of all fires — as opposed to “Let it burn in a controlled manner”.
Every dry summer worsens fire risk and effect. Winds increase fire intensity and spread.
When you combine them all — abundant fuel, long hot dry summer, high winds — you get a bad fire season in the western United States.
Poor trees trimming by utilities results in trees on power lines and fires, as illustrated in the Cal Fire report.
What it amounts to is the simple fact that…
If the events are weather caused, then the injured parties can’t sue mother nature for throwing High Winds at them.
BUT
If it can be placed in the deep pockets of the local utility, then there is some entity that can be blamed and sued against.
Since the discussion has diverged into Australian fire conditions, I’ll simply note that EVERY major inquiry into fires in South-Eastern Australia has found that we are not adequately managing fuel.
Banging on about incremental changes in phenomena that have been observed in SE Australia since the earliest days of European settlement, is a red herring . We cannot stop droughts, but we can mitigate fuel build-up.
…… and yes, fuel depends on the environment. In grasslands, a high fuel year is a wet spring followed by a hot, dry summer. In forests, a high fuel year is one in which the previous autumn, winter and spring are dry (drought).
Global warming could never start fires in any case, it just isn’t hot enough. You need a source of ignition. Dodgy power lines would most likely do it.
The claim was never that the fires were ignited by global warming but that they spread rapidly and couldn’t be controlled due to the warmer climate. We need honesty, not the dishonesty of the alarmists.
Depends on how you use the term “cause”.
Ignition, fuel and weather are three legs of the tripod.
It’s not dishonest to point out that the alarmists blame whichever is most convenient to the their cause du jour.
I understand that EMF has a drying effect.
I also understand that one of the by-products of burning fossil fuels is water vapor.
If we ever get to the point that all our electricity is generated by non-water-vapor-producing methods, I can’t help but believe that things will be drier all over, and fires will be ever more frequent and widespread.
Imagine all the long, long high tension wires taking electricity from wind farms or solar farms to consumers several states away. Has anyone factored in the labor and tools to clear the trees and brush out from under those lines?
I would much rather have power plants that are local to each municipality, fired by coal or natural gas. It would be much harder to take down multiple states at once if we stayed with our “old faithful” set-up. It ought to be a national security issue!
If only we had a leader who actually loved his country. Oh, wait! We do!