From The Daily Caller
3:56 PM 12/31/2018 | Energy
Tim Pearce | Energy Reporter
California’s largest utility could face murder charges or manslaughter charges if found responsible for sparking recent, deadly wildfires around the state, according to the state attorney general.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, filed documents Friday with Northern California’s federal district court warning that the utility company Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) may face severe criminal charges if its operations or equipment are found to have sparked fatal wildfires, NBC News reported. (RELATED: ‘One Life Lost Is Too Many’: Trump Signs Bill To Help Prevent Catastrophic Wildfires)
The Camp Fire torched roughly 150,000 acres north of Sacramento in November. It killed at least 86 people and is California’s deadliest wildfire on record, according to California’s state fire agency. The fire destroyed nearly 19,000 structures. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but early reports suggest the disaster began with a broken PG&E transmission line.
PG&E has acknowledged that its equipment may have started the Camp Fire, and U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered the utility on Nov. 27 to investigate whether its equipment was responsible.
The financial pressure on the California utility has increased as more deadly wildfires caused by the company burn parts of the state. The costs of the fires are also being passed on to PG&E ratepayers after outgoing Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation allowing the utility to increase power costs to cover expenses from wildfires.
The insurance costs of damage done by the Camp and Woolsey Fires, which burned in California at roughly the same time, are estimated to range around $8.6 billion, according to the financial services company CoreLogic.
California investigators found that PG&E equipment caused 12 of 15 major wildfires that hit the state in 2017. Environmentalists blame increasing temperatures from climate change for the fires while President Donald Trump and Republicans call for better land management to reduce the risk of disaster.
In addition to PG&E, Brown has taken heat for vetoing a 2016 bill that aimed at mitigating risk from utilities sparking wildfires.
That’s how you do it:
https://youtu.be/rfmQlTwRkJs
Tree management around power lines by chopper.
The technology is actually American, various sources and contrctors, more powerful equipment, are available in the USA : https://youtu.be/Pla06PO6Odk
Not that effective and very dangerous. It’s what I’d call an expedient solution for the moment. I talked with the ground crew who were supervising that being done on my road. They said some guy crashed and died doing that. It wasn’t long after doing my road that they came back to do the job right with a 4WD machine that ground trees in the ROW into mulch. That was very effective.
Dear Icisil, a negative outcome is just, how to say, part of the job. There are other even more dangerous jobs for even less essential commodities such as crab fishing.
Which does not imply that the guys doing it are less passionate about.
That looks silly to me. The trees can still blow down onto the line and the branches will grow back out int the clearing within a year. A waste of time and money. The cut limbs still have to be cleaned up and chipped or burned by hand.
Better to cut down and remove all trees within 100 feet of high voltage lines. That is really necessary to prevent fires and outages from tree falls. Also, we need to prevent the lines being destroyed by forest fires.
Right Billy, nature will prevail. Understood.
However there are places where airborne operation is about the only viable option.
This besides, you have a very good point. Trees and power transmission lines do not and should not mix.
Because when this happens we enter a far more dangerous flying domain: -Aerial fire fighting and it’s carrousel of wild convection airstreams.
Wow. Very impressive tech. Need an excellent pilot since always flying in a dead man zone, but this would very applicable in impossible terrain to reach by human or machine. Always risks, and this very expensive, but looks like a solution for some terrains. Just like mowing the lawn…hugely impressed with this.
PG&E. Shut down, sell out to Kalifornistan PUC. Let ‘em lie in the bed they’ve made.
PG&E. Shut down, sell out to Kalifornistan PUC. Let ‘em lie in the bed they’ve made.
Sudbury fire 33 in Ontario this year was caused by irresponsible wind turbine installation. The workers were told to keep working through a dry spell and without adequate fire equipment. 25,000 acres. https://www.sudbury.com/local-news/wind-turbine-project-may-be-to-blame-for-parry-sound-33-fire-report-994296 The firestarter will pay nothing, as its a wind turbine project.
This area, unlike the area where the fire that had to happen in California is wet enough that fires are not part of the ecosystem.
From the link on the bill Gov Moonbeam vetoed:
“the 2016 bill, called SB 1463, which would have given local governments a bigger role in putting together fire risk maps with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency.”
(My bold)
Liberalism (aka Socialism) is all about centrally concentrating power in the hands of a few and the bureaucrats they control. IOW, The Libtards can’t allow the locals with too much say in their own affairs. That is the real reason The Browntard vetoed the bill.
Seems to me Smokey The Bear should bear some of the blame for policies that allowed for the excessive build-up of fuel. Lightening could just as well have set it all ablaze.
‘The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but early reports suggest the disaster began with a broken PG&E transmission line.’
‘California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, filed documents Friday with Northern California’s federal district court warning that the utility company Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) may face severe criminal charges if its operations or equipment are found to have sparked fatal wildfires, NBC News reported.’
The documents ‘warn?’ What does that mean? And why federal court? You don’t file criminal charges in a federal court, unless there is a violation of federal statute, and then a state AG wouldn’t be the one filing, anyway.
And where is the intent in a ‘broken transmission line?’ How are you going to get ‘severe criminal charges’ out of that?
I think Becerra is grand standing, trying to create a distraction. I’d love to see the federal judge reprimand him for trying to use his court for political purposes. Or even tell him he has no standing to file anything in his court.
“…I think Becerra is grand standing, trying to create a distraction. I’d love to see the federal judge reprimand him for trying to use his court for political purposes. Or even tell him he has no standing to file anything in his court…..” +1 but it will be the 9th Circuit Court and the outcome is already known given their record of siding with Progressive ideology. Am I wrong?
“I think Becerra is grand standing, trying to create a distraction. I’d love to see the federal judge reprimand him for trying to use his court for political purposes. Or even tell him he has no standing to file anything in his court.”
It’s nothing like that. In fact, Judge Alsup specifically asked the state AG to comment on whether state laws could have been broken. And the AG seems to have given a straightforward answer on the state of the law.
I commented on the post as given. Your link is not part of the post.
Nobody in their right mind invests in California public utilities.
They are too prone to expropriation by politicians and tort lawyers.
Some day (and I don’t know when), Californians are going to discover that their public utilities do not have a bottomless source of cash.
Can gov’t entities be charged for fatal accidents on interstates, state roads, county roads, and city roads, too?
Yes you can, for construction zones. You have 30 days to file. They are self insured and unfortunately, the insurance funds are bankrupt.
Then all CA utilities will go insolvent, declare bankruptcy and cease operations immediately. All power services will have to be taken over by the state.
“Environmentalists blame increasing temperatures from climate change for the fires…”
Idiot liars. High winds blew in the Camp fire area for a week before the fire started. One day would have been enough to dry everything out regardless of the temp.
So everyone who gets their power from GP&E are accessories to murder. Turn your selves in California.
Who owns the trees that blew down onto the power lines? That is where the responsibility lies.
Utility companies shouldn’t be penalized when they are forced by political mandates to contend with “off spec” poor quality power from a dozen wind farms with a dozen turbines all operating at different times and producing different quantities and qualities of electricity. With this junk power being dumped on the grid is it any surprise that a transformer overheats?
“Wind power causes problems with:
Voltage regulation (magnitude and frequency)
Voltage sags and swells
Harmonics and inter harmonics
Real and reactive power
Sub synchronous resonance issues due to interaction of the electric network
and the complex shaft/gear system of the wind turbine”.
Simples. Don’t anymore use the power grid to transport power. Switch it off and you cannot possibly be liable.
Then watch in awe at what happens.
Wind turbines themselves are setting more wildfires these days. Send windfarm investors to prison, else off with their heads!
The AG is deflecting blame away from the State, because the State is to blame. If they had properly managed the accumulation of fuel, the fire would have been manageable. The harm was incurred because the fire was out of control, not because it was ignited.
The area that burned has a long history of burning. The State failed to anticipate that it would burn again, and take preemptive measures to prevent it. They are the NEGLIGENT party.
If, (it has yet to be proved) PG&E’s actions sparked the Paradise fire, government policies provided the tinder. I we put PG&E on trial for murder, we must also put those responsible for the relevant public government policies on trial for murder as well.
I would love to see PG&E respond to this nonsense with the proverbial ‘flip of the switch’ and just turn California off. That would be awesome. Don’t like our electricity, fine don’t use it and we’ll help by turning it off for you.
Would California’s state officials not be equally liable – since they refuse to maintain the forests in order to mitigate the outcome of fires
There were photos taken by a news helicopter showing that the Malibu Woolsey fire started at an electric substation next to the Santa Susanna Rocketdyne/Boeing nuclear laboratory facility.
ANY such legal action should start in Paradise.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/01/heres-how-paradise-ignored-warnings-and-became-a-deathtrap/
Much of the entire population doesn’t seem to understand these fires. They are a phenomena of nature, like hurricanes or tornadoes. We on the Pacific Coast do not blame those in Florida for hurricanes. We do not blame people in Nebraska for tornadoes. We understand that they are the result of climatic conditions in these areas. People back East have no experience with these wildfires. They are much like tornadoes, rising quickly and of such force, that no human agency can prevent or withstand them…One day, my friends and I were sitting on a ridge in Marin, looking across SF Bay,on a warm clear day with strong winds. We saw a small wisp of smoke across the waters in Oakland. In a few minutes, the skies above us turned black with smoke. It was like a roaring black river, dumping ashes, burnt paper, roofing felt, cookbook pages, embers, so hot that there were silver flashes of solder, evaporated from computers, dropping down on us, carried over the Bay from fifteen miles away. This was the start of the great Oakland firestorm, which killed many and burnt about 3000 homes. This was one of our Western raging fires, and it was totally in an urban area, a city, not out in the country,and the flames were fed by burning homes. It is time for all to grasp that these fires will not be controlled (as some think) by even severe preventative measures. They are the West Coast Hurricanes. This should now be understood by people back East, and certainly, by all of us here in the West…