by Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/25/2019 – 19:00
Earlier this week we joked that with PG&E now scrambling to enforce intentional blackouts every time there are powerful winds for fears the bankrupt company’s aged infrastructure could cause a new fire, “every time the wind blows California will become Venezuela.”
https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1186440507217588224
Turns out it wasn’t a joke.
On Friday, with its stock crashing to a new all time low amid speculation it may have been responsible for the latest California inferno, the Kincade Fire…
… PG&E warned it will shut off power again on Saturday to as many as 2.5 million people as violent winds batter the state, in what according to Bloomberg will be “California’s largest intentional blackout ever.”
According to a Friday statement, approximately 850,000 homes and businesses in Northern California, including much of the San Francisco Bay Area, may be impacted beginning Saturday evening. And with data models indicating the weather event could be the most powerful in California in decades, with widespread dry Northeast winds between 45-60 miles per hour (mph) and peak gusts of 60-70 mph in the higher elevations through Monday, large swaths of the region could be without power for days.
California Fire-Threat Maps, source: CPUC
“The upcoming wind event has the potential to be one of the strongest in the last several years. It’s also likely to be longer than recent wind events, which have lasted about 12 hours or less,” said Scott Strenfel, Principal Meteorologist with PG&E.
The potentially record outage will impact parts of Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose and Marin County. As usual, the city of San Francisco will not be affected, in order to make it easier for pedestrians to avoid stepping into the human faces covering the city’s sidewalks. The full list of affected counties can be found at the following page.
The hot and windy weather event is expected to begin impacting the service area Saturday between 6 and 10 p.m. and lasting until midday Monday, although as of late Friday, PG&E said it has not yet made a definite decision whether it will cut power.
As Bloomberg notes, this would be the third time this month alone that bankrupt PG&E – terrified of potentially sparking another multi-billion dollar blaze – has resorted to massive outages to prevent its power lines from sparking fires in high winds. The company’s aged equipment sparked blazes in 2017 and 2018, saddling the company with an estimated $30 billion in liabilities and forcing it into bankruptcy at the start of 2019. However, leaving millions in the dark has led to debate over how far California must go to prevent fires during windstorms. And despite the shutoffs, fires continue to burn.
Despite recent intentional outages, earlier on Friday California governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency as wildfires are now raging at both ends of California. Near Los Angeles, blazes have prompted authorities to order 40,000 evacuations. And north of San Francisco, a blaze is raging amid the vineyards of Sonoma County.
HT/Yooper
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I know this is all Trump’s fault, but how?
“wws October 26, 2019 at 6:07 am
I know this is all Trump’s fault, but how?”
As a rule of thumb, all things bad are the result of climate change that Trump could have stopped with the paris accord but didn’t; but in this case, the other 50%, at the least, derives from the Jerry Brown principle that in the age of climate change, governments don’t really have to govern as long as they take the high road, the planet saving road, to preach climate action and villify Trump
As a rule of thumb, always check the data.
PG&E’s outage map is updated every 30 minutes.
http://critweb-outage.pgealerts.com/?WT.mc_id=Vanity_pge-outages
California Energy Service Area Map
https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/maps/serviceareas/electric_service_areas.html
The Fire-threat area includes other energy providers.
Perhaps forest management such as controlled burn offs of debris and fire breaks etc. such as was done until some years, ago is the answer.
Your comment deserves a thousand “likes”
“But if you do that you might disturb a rat burrow, kill a tortoise, disturb birds nesting….., oh, the humanity!”
any liberal nutjob
The USA has been cutting emissions under trump (nat gas for coal) while Europe’s have been increasing, despite destroying their economy to please the green gods. They are in the patis accord, the USA is not.
So I would say you critic is flawed .Inconvenient facts, I know, but facts never the less.
Never let facts get in the way of the climate catastrophe narrative.
This really does boil down to who gets the blame. If the blame can be shifted to the government, my guess is that the government will fall.
The power blackouts and the third world conditions on the streets of LA and SF are hard to ignore. When push comes to shove, people will switch their opinions and allegiances.
We desperately need conservatives who don’t think it’s a good idea to sound like meat heads. IHMO, Jordan Peterson and a few others are providing us with the vocabulary to create a conservative position that will appeal to previously left leaning voters.
You might enjoy this tale of conversion from a credentialed former Democrat.
https://youtu.be/5KFcAPsAXRI
Commie- I can only assume you don’t actually live IN CA? I do. And I assure you there is NOTHING … NOTHING … that can turn this blue state red. The vast majority of the population of this State are completely mindless leftists with the very BEST education you can get … from a “women’s studies” degree. I am surrounded by highly paid, highly “educated” simpleton leftists who are giving advice on the Nextdoor app for how to “prepare” for this latest power outage. These power outages are like a summer camp game for the woke Global warmist eco-rubes surrounding me. This State is doomed. Not worth the good weather anymore … BTW it’s been beautiful, sunny, and warm all week. Ideal conditions for a PG&E sparked fire.
No, I sure don’t live in California.
Surprisingly, the majority of Californians don’t have a four year degree.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes the Intellectual Yet Idiot (IYI).
I live in an upper, upper, upper, middle class community where (literally) 95% of our high school graduates go to college. My community is flooded with young people, with high paying jobs, starting families with young children and who are fleeing the multi-culti urban wasteland they thought was so kewl. Not for their kids though … they won’t dare put their kids in the multi-culti public schools.
So, yeah, with the massive illegal invasion from the south … the overall state isn’t too well-educated. But no matter. “Educated” (by leftist propaganda factories) or not … this State is populated by a supermajority of numbskulls who “believe” that a “high speed” train will magically “transform” CA into a Euro-wonderland where nobody needs single occupant motor vehicles. FAIL! Voting $B’s on a unicorn and rainbow pipe dream, err nightmare … solidifies the fact that the vast majority of voters in CA are dumb. Really dumb. Really woke. And really dangerous leftist automatons.
Nothing will change here … except for the WORSE.
“The state is doomed”, Kenji.
Go East. There will be an exodus soon.
Which is why Trump needs to extend the wall right around California first.
Those who destroy their states need to stay there, not move on to destroy other peoples’ states.
I recon it won’t be long before there are more Mexicans than Americans in CA. Then CA can be given back to Mexico.
Go East, but leave your politics BEHIND.
Go East only if you can leave your leftist politics behind (or if you are one of the few in Cali who don’t subscribe to leftist politics). Otherwise stay in the hellhole you created and deserve.
Kenji, people don’t revolt on an full stomach.
But if the government forces the food in the freezer to go bad and stomachs are rumbling while they sit there in the dark with hopes that they can solar charge their iPhones in the daylight only to realize that there is no WiFi then things will get very dicey for the leftist loons in la la land.
So far their have not been wide spread ramifications for the hard charging leftists. Let’s us see what tomorrow brings. My only fear is that the leftist will leave first and move east like a locust plague voting the rest of the country into oblivion.
California used to be a republican stronghold , just as Texas used to be a Democrat one.
And yes California had wildfires when the republicans were in charge. Is the weather and the vegetation that are responsible , not Trump , Democrats , not PG&E
its the regulations barring PG&E from keeping the ground underneath their high voltage lines BARREN that causes most of the fires
These HV fires simply wouldn’t happen at all if they were allowed to blacken the soil beneath the lines. But they aren’t… they have to maintain native vegetation etc.
The best thing to do is to LEAVE, leave the politics behind. I pity these people’s kids. They’re going to be brainwashed, deluded fools grafted into place in upper “middle” income careers after trashing actual free speech in college. Irony. Meritocracy is a myth. Take the endowments.
I don’t care about “appealing” to Leftist voters. They are lost as far as I’m concerned. This happened when they abandoned logic and reason. The only option left is total war and conquest. We are done talking.
Commie,
Also remember Cal’s high electricity rates and high gas prices. Those are clearly by-design outcomes of Cal Democrat’s governance. People there will understand that next November. And as an Arizonan right next door, I remind my neighbors and friends that can happen here if AZ goes blue like the Democrats are trying to do.
All Politics Are Local. And many Californians are now realizing that as the rich don’t care about $5/gal gas, high electric bills and blackouts as they have $30,000 – $50,000 generators installed on their mansions.
Correct — the meatheaded remark about feces in San Francisco streets makes this informative article unsharable.
I haven’t been to CA in half a century so I have to rely on the media for what’s going on there.
I think the majority of Americans would be appalled at the pictures of the conditions in parts of SF and LA.
What’s “meatheat” about the truth? There is feces in San Francisco streets. Your denying it doesn’t make it any less real.
Here’s an article about it from that well know “meathead” organ npr:
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/01/634626538/san-francisco-squalor-city-streets-strewn-with-trash-needles-and-human-feces
No democrat government will ever accept blame or
be accused by the media of failing to protect the public.
Easy. Trump won’t demand reductions in CO2. More CO2 results in faster and greater plant growth. That leads to more branches and foliage close to power lines. Wind, sparks, fuel = fires.
Call it Six Degrees of Donald Trump. We could also call it Six Degrees of Climate (warming, change, choas, atastrophe, weirding – I’m not sure what’s in vogue).
Every ill in the world is linked to one or both of them (by IQ-challenged people).
I’m not sure what’s in vogue
Climate Collusion? Climate Obstruction?
In the UK the new degrees are of ” Climate Breakdown ” courtesy of the Extinction Rebellion team
Does it matter? The reality is as China gets ever better the United States continues to sink. California is just a harbinger of what is coming to every state. Why, wIl this be the case? The reason should be obvious. Meritocracy has taken a back seat to placating the ever growing numbers of dumb – the core weakness of a true democracy. Sadly, China will continue becoming stronger as the Congress, military, academics and government ranks swelled with dumb continue to guy the nation from the inside out. The US is like a turtle with its head cut off. It’s dead, but hasn’t figured it out yet.
Forest management has a lot to do with it:
The Federalist
Image from the article:
Yosemite then and now
And the left’s screeching about the Spotted Owl:
For decades, up until the 1970s, California would harvest and replant about as much wood as could be grown through an abundance of sunshine, snow, and rain. But in the 1990s, concern over logging’s effect on the spotted owl (largely misplaced, as time would tell) led to a massive slowdown in the timber harvest, especially on the federal lands that make up about 60 percent of California’s forests.
Then there’s the various bans on gathering fire wood: DuckDuckGo Search
The left has been at their brand of environmentalism for years, and when the fires burn out of control they blame everything and everybody but themselves
Spot on!
It’s Bush’s fault.
California wild fires would be history if they simply buried underground their high tension lines.
Unfortunately this causes weeks and month long outages for rural areas cause you cant tell where breaks in lines form during earthquakes.
Spitfu,
“you cant tell where breaks in lines form during earthquakes.”
What’s not to like with safety switches.
____________________________________
Anyway, UK government banned fracking in behalf of “earthquakes”.
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&sxsrf=ACYBGNRvmuUOHheyvAVkKucSWOJTQhOlTg:1572750847364&q=UK+environmentalists+stop+fracking+causing+earthquakes&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwie3868ic3lAhWRlosKHdosCj4QBSgAegQIChAC&biw=360&bih=518&dpr=3
That’s kinda reversal, shift in the burden of proof.
The, whoever accused has to proof his lack of guilt.
Better preemptive show concern about possible guilt and await mercy.
The consequences of bad thinking can be so hilarious.
The consequences of bad political choices are tragic.
The consequences of affirmative-action hiring practices for decades at PG&E are tragic. The best and the brightest are working elsewhere. And I’m talking about in the office buildings, not in the trucks. The executives have mismanaged this behemoth … resulting in this tragic regression of our society.
And let me emphasize that my comment above is NOT racist”. It is “meritist”. PG&E should be operated by the best and the brightest … not by someone who checks a particular box on some “equity” form. If PG&E becomes 90% Asian … that would be fine with me … if those were the most qualified people.
However, when PG&E is sooooooo woke and soooooo proud of the “FIRST latinix CEO” … who proceeds to crash the company into utter FAILURE and bankruptcy … I’ve had ENOUGH of affirmative-action “woke” hiring practices. Oh … and that latinix CEO? She grabbed her multi-million dollar golden parachute and quit the company before her affirmative-action label could be sullied by a humiliating FIRING. She grabbed about $4M to voluntarily go-away … right BEFORE PG&E announced their bankruptcy. Again, so her affirmative-action “cred” wouldn’t be sullied. Fact is … the “FIRST latinix CEO of PG&E” completely DESTROYED the company and monopolistic Public Utility.
she grabbed her
The winds are just blowing like winds do. It’s the nut jobs who are battering the state.
Truth, in a nut shell.
Welcome to Soviet Climate Crookland.
Wonder how our friend Willis Eschenbach is doing out there in Sonoma County.
Postscript: maybe it was not such a smart idea to sue PGE for the 30 billions in fire damage after all.
But the “won!”
There is an excellent column in today’s WSJ about the folly of forcing PG & E to divert resources from grid maintenance to green projects at the direction of the legislature. But according to the Governor it is all the fault of these greedy capitalists.
The power that I am not getting is 40% renewables.
Wind mills ….. when there is no wind, there is no power. When there *is* wind, the lines get shut down.
Solar panels…. when it is cloudy, there is no power. When there *is* sunlight …. Walmart catches fire.
I heard in the news something like “witnesses think they saw a power line fall, but it was unclear if this caused the fire.” So as long as el pueblo can sue PG&E for any fire in the woods this won’t end. It’s interesting because it requires groups of people to blame different groups of people for different problems. Perhaps these people should look in the mirror and decide to work together on fixing this.
There’s a video on ice age farmer that shows a bright arc-type explosion off in the distance right after the lights went out. That was supposedly where the fire started.
The state admits no culpability. Both state and press blame PGE dirty money capitalists. The villain is years of poor micromanagement of PGE and poor forest management by the government. The dopes that continue to put the incompetents in power get what they wished for
Yup. They reap what they sow.
People often say it has to get worse before it can better and, for an outsider, this is beginning to look like a textbook case.
I find myself almost like the onlookers on the Death Star when Darth Vader found someone’s “lack of faith disturbing”. I know I shouldn’t enjoy the spectacle, but it makes for fascinating watching.
It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.
Discuss. 🙂
Could we please see a night time satellite photo of California (like those we see of N Korea and S Korea)?
How about eliminate long-distance power lines in that region of California by siting power plants closer to power consumption? The answer, of course, “California”.
Transmission lines typically are strung far higher and have very large setbacks.
I would think, but am not certain, that the problem is with distribution lines.
I just saw on the news what looked like a 500 Kv line high voltage transmission line, a jumper broke at the tower and a single conductor may have fell to the ground hot (live) and sparked the fire. Or it just shorted sending down to ground a bunch of sparks for a millisecond. The video was being shot from a helicopter and the fire was shown directly below the tower in the middle of nowhere.
The ironic thing is that with all the power outage and revenue loss, a lot of those lost monies from the sale of electricity could be going into maintenance. Presumably, a lot of the wind/solar production being shut down in addition to PG&E assets. So everyone loses now. Yes, just like Venezuela.
I was going to send it in but figured someone would beat me to it;-)
I just laughed as I saw the headers
they were just talking reconnecting…oops.
reckon PGE need to come to Aus for a looksee on how to manage it.
From earlier reports, I believe that the fundamental reason for this is a change in environmental legislation which stopped people doing controlled burns and cutting trees back in order to make fires less likely.
I wonder:
a) if this is true, and
b( if it is, why no one seems to be talking about it….
THIMK, ah 1
WE, US, have got to save the planet, ( diesel, Gasoline , coal; etc ) RENEWABLES Harrah,
Ops Thimking !
Yes it is mainly true. But most fires in CA are human caused, and it seems a lot now by PG&E. What needs to happen is having small controlled burns, especially around cities and towns when the weather is conducive to not having a major conflagration erupting. And equipment and manpower can be mustered in advance. But that probably won’t happen cause the Gov’t has gone stupid. It is probably the best form of fuel management since trying to do it manually isn’t going to happen and still doesn’t get rid of all the dead grass and brush that causes fast, hot flash fires. Another thing that should happen, if it isn’t already, is limiting access to the back country so that careless people can’t even start a fire. Of course, none of this will stop straight up arson when the conditions are ripe, but much more effort should go into clamping down on stupid people, as well as somehow stoping the deranged criminal from starting any fires. So much damage can be caused by someone with a 1 cent book of matches. I don’t think there is much hope…California may be lost already and this is the proof.
‘And with data models indicating the weather event could be the most powerful in California in decades, with widespread dry Northeast winds between 45-60 miles per hour (mph) and peak gusts of 60-70 mph in the higher elevations through Monday, large swaths of the region could be without power for days…’
Those sorts of wind speeds are what we are currently experiencing in SW England. They don’t seem unusual. Does California normally have a much calmer climate?
tonyb
Short answer: no. Beauty is matched by weather & geological challenges.
No Tony, the problem is the extreme dryness and extensive woodlands neither of which occur in the UK. PG&E have a problem in that they get sued for huge amounts if someone says that the damage caused to one of their power lines caused a fire, consequently they shut down the lines to prevent that.
Actually they do. Extreme dryness every two decades or so, the last really prolongued one in 1990. Wildfires on the pennine moors. Most started by people many deliberately. But the usual suspect is being blamed whatever.
It’s not just soil moisture, it’s the very low dew-points of these winds that dry out the brush. I doubt UK ever has strong winds of those low dew-points.
To amend, it’s really the relative humidity. I’d say UK could get strong winds w/low dew-points, but not the extremely low RH (the Santa Ana winds are usually warm to hot).
Legit question here: if money and asinine regulations and poor management weren’t a problem for PG&E, how could they solve this? In other parts of the US, and in many cities and towns, the lines are simply buried. Is that not feasible in California?
These are very high voltage, long distance power lines (DC?), not distribution lines. They can cost up to about $5 million per mile to bury, depending on the type ground. Average for that area is about $1.16 million per mile, more than twice as much as their average overhead cost of $448,800 per mile.
That would mean higher electric prices to the consumer. Doubt if the state regulators in the past would approve that expenditure.
‘in order to make it easier for pedestrians to avoid stepping into the human faces covering the city’s sidewalks’
did you mean ‘faces’ or another rather unpleasant word?
Actually, …… either one or both is correct..
So we should refer to SF as “Socialism with human faces?” How about the reality: “Socialism with human feces?”
Oh, that is why they have scheduled black-outs in Frisco, feces are flammable.
This is what they get for not building a border wall to the north, to prevent illegal Canadian high pressure crossings.
You’re right. Wind speeds over 45 mph should be illegal, and the law strictly enforced. Think of the damages caused by this, hurricanes, and tornadoes. Some governments claim they can control the climate, so they should be held responsible for the weather it brings.
If there was a law against it, California would probably declare itself a sanctuary state for high winds and let them in anyway.
Yes, those pesky cold blooded Canucks and all their cold air. Not only high pressure crossing the border illegally but also responsible for all those tornadoes too, cause of the same cold air aloft. Send the bill to Canada and if they don’t pay, then we will just take their oil for half price until the bill is paid.
Earthling2 October 26, 2019 at 9:43 am
Ah we haven’t had the best of luck with invading Canada.
michael
Yes. CA cop, pulling over & getting out of patrol car in a strong Santa Ana wind:
“Wind, does you know how fast you been a-blowin’? And where ‘xactly you from?
— where ‘xactly you from?—
Love this curiosity! I’ve been asking this since I started to be aware of the world.
And my second Unanswerable Question is: .. where you going?…
.-
Hey, don’t blame us for your low pressure existence.
Wow so this is really the prelim of state owned utilities.
The chickens are coming home to roost. This is all self inflicted and will only get worse until the people finally have had enough and will get smart. Or with the typical Californian, maybe not.
In a related matter, the amount of petroleum distillates in the Northeast US is seriously low going into winter and the amount of natural gas that can be supplied is woefully inadequate. With the lack of pipelines and storage, if we have a brutal 3-4 weeks this winter there are going to be people freezing to death in their own homes.
But then if it happens, as in California it will not be the politician’s fault but the utilities’ fault. Windmills and Solar Farms aren’t going to be much help in the depths of the Polar Vortex.
This the result of decades of bad governance resulting from voters’ poor choices, voting for good intentions versus principled outcomes. The governance can change quickly, but the repairs to infrastructure can take a decade. Which is why PG&E says these blackouts will continue for 10 years.
“people freezing to death in their own homes”
OK, do you know of anyone that this has happened to?!?
I’m a “senior citizen” on a “fixed income” with enough sense to have a real wood stove and have been known to buy “bio-mass” from the local stores to keep me warm thru the winter months. I’d sure like to see some actual real anecdotal evidence of someone “freezing to death in their home”
I have in my younger days worked with senior citizens to make sure that their furnace systems were in good condition before the winter storms came raging.
I don’t think you are going to be seeing a Polar Vortex devastating California anytime soon.
I live in the Pacific Northwest, btw…
One should always avoid stepping on human faces. Especially the pretty ones.
The same unaccountable appointees to the CPUC overseeing PG&E and the same “experts” who run CARB and brought us the CARB-approved gas can designed by “experts” to prevent spills of gasoline, yet in real life dump more fuel on the ground than they ever prevent, if you can figure out how to open the spout.
In the past 30 years, the CPUC has had a green agenda diverting the $$ needed to beef up, maintain and modernize the grid to pie-in-the-sky green-approved and democrat funding “non-carbon” energy at 2-3-10x the price and 1/2 to 1/10th the energy and reliability, also pulling out dams and shutting down California’s major load-bering plants, first San Onofre and soon Diablo Canon. Diablo Canon shutters in a couple of years and with it nearly 10% of California’s caseload.
It will only get worse in the next couple of decades, especially if the Demos and Greens keep dictating the way! The CPUC thought they could make money in their sleep since power line fires have been happing since the 1980s. Simply fine PG&E and force them and the taxpayer-customers to go green. It will be a bright future, the “experts” told us. Now Black is the new “Green” of the 21st century. Green for the taxes. Blackouts and blacked earth for the rest of us. It’s the GND in practice now. What a wonderful world they’ve created for us!
When I lived in southern California four decades ago, the major contributors to these fires was arson, and kids with fireworks. Now it is climate change and capitalism. The boogeyman changes to fit the times.
This mess is a result of aggressive environmental interference in prudent forest management.
My daughter has to go in early this morning to have her dialysis session before the lights go off today. Will the lights go on before her next session? I also have a dear friend who is under hospice supervision in Piedmont. He is hooked up to various machines. They will lose their electricty today as well.
And Gavin Newsome blames climate change.
I predict a run on home generators – diesel, propane or natural gas powered (maybe all 3) in the very near future. So much for keeping emissions down. Cheers –
Its been happening for months. Generac sales are off the charts. And they have a huge backlog of local licensed electricians waiting for training so they can sell and install the generators for 10,000’s of affluent Californians on waiting lists.
The affluent take the financial hit, while the middle class whocan’t afford or live in rental homes just sit in the dark. They can’t even go to Starbucks since the local Starbucks is also dark.
Of course these are fossil fueled generators with 2 or 3 times the emissions per Kwhr of grid power. The irony.
My wife and I retired to a fairly remote area in northwest Montana in 2014. We are at the end of the line, with power suppled (intermittently…) by a rural electric cooperative. Power outages are frequent, and often lengthy. Knowing that, we budgeted into our home build a whole house generator, powered by propane. When the power goes off, ours barely blips, and we go on our merry way.
While not trivial in cost, I would recommend EVERYONE budget and save for such a system. Let’s see, giving up a stupidly expensive Starbucks habit, and maybe forgoing the next generation of a “smart” phone and before you know it, you’re there.
We all have priorities, and choices to make, and having regular power is one of ours.
As usual, the poor are bearing the brunt. How unfair! Home generators should be outlawed immediately.
As usual. A mass transit system BART was designed to allow commuters from San Francisco to reach Livermore. There was a space provided in the middle of Highway 580 for trains. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission decided to build “express lanes” for the rich instead.
This is the result of aggressive environmental interference in responsible forest management.
My daughter has an early dialysis today to get it done before the electricity is cut off. Will there be electricity for her next session?