Tuesday, October 29, 2019

PACIFIC GAS & ELECTRIC - FEINSTEIN'S PAYMASTERS BURN CALIFORNIA DOWN AND THEN LOOT THE PEOPLE.... as always! - "PG&E executives were found to have enjoyed handsome compensation packages while the state of California burned. Its former CEO, Geisha Williams, was awarded $9.8 million in direct pay in 2018, the same year as the Camp Fire."

ONE MORE REASON BIG UTILITIES SHOULD BE NATIONALIZED!


Meanwhile, Governor Newsom called on Warren Buffet to purchase the utility. Buffet specializes in cost cutting, layoffs, and “restructuring,” to make wayward companies profitable at the expense of workers and consumers.

Hundreds of thousands evacuated, more than two million without power as fires continue in California

Over fifteen fires burned throughout California Monday, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate. The fires prompted the third electrical power cut in the month of October and the largest in the state’s history.
Record dryness combined with fierce northerly winds have created ideal conditions for wildfires throughout the state. Large sections of Northern California are on a “red flag” alert, while the entirety of costal Southern California has been placed on a “fire watch.”
A raging fire, Credit: tradersanramon (Instagram)
The largest fire continues to be the Kincade Fire in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, which grew and lost containment as winds picked up Sunday night. The fire has burned over 66,000 acres and led to the evacuation of over two hundred thousand people. At the time of this writing, the fire is headed south towards more populous towns north of Santa Rosa and is only five percent contained.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, a rapid-spreading wildfire broke out in the Santa Monica Mountains next to the 405 freeway, one of the city’s major transit corridors. The “Getty” fire threatens the Getty Center, the wealthiest art institution in the world, housing priceless paintings such as van Gogh’s “Irises” and portraits by Rembrandt.
At this point, at least six homes have been destroyed with many more in danger. “They were literally overwhelmed,” said Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Ralph Terrazas of the responding firefighters. “They had to make some tough decisions on which houses they were able to protect.”
On Tuesday, firefighters were able to finally make some progress in fighting the Tick Fire, in the Santa Clarita region north of Los Angeles, after it destroyed 29 structures and damaged another 44. The fire is now 78 percent contained. However, firefighters are bracing for further “Santa Ana” wind events that could heighten the danger once again.
Just south of the US-Mexican border, Santa Ana winds also caused deadly fires in the areas of Tecate and Ensenada in Baja California. At least eight fires caused major building damage and destruction and led to the deaths of at least three people. “This is the strongest Santa Ana wind-related fires ever to strike Baja California in its history,” said Baja California’s director of civil protection Antonio Rosquillas.
Due to the effects of climate change, fires have now become a regular occurrence. With only one exception, the ten deadliest fires in California state history have all taken place within the past 20 years.
The smoke from the fires is a serious health hazard to millions of residents across the state. The particulate matter dispersed in the air can cause long-term damage to the lungs and increases cancer risk.
Over two million people have already had their power shutoff by PG&E, the private company that holds a monopoly on Northern California’s energy. On Monday evening, the company announced that high wind events on Tuesday may lead to up to an additional 3.8 million losing power.
In spite of their power-cuts, it seems that the company is nonetheless still responsible for the Kincade fire. A malfunction on the electrical lines at their Burned Mountain transmission tower likely sparked the fire.
November 8 will be the one-year anniversary of the Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in state history, which killed 85 civilians and completely obliterated the town of Paradise, California, population 26,218. The fire was started by a faulty PG&E transmission line. The company declared bankruptcy two months later to escape more than $30 billion in fire-related liabilities.S 
The bankruptcy—which was actively implemented not only by PG&E but also by state officials such as Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom—was specifically designed to avoid the cost of making wildfire victims whole and make sure that obligations to private bondholders, who are owed nearly $17.5 billion by the company, were met.
PG&E executives were found to have enjoyed handsome compensation packages while the state of California burned. Its former CEO, Geisha Williams, was awarded $9.8 million in direct pay in 2018, the same year as the Camp Fire. Chief Financial Officer Jason Wells received a total compensation of $3.2 million during the same period.
The company has done nothing to maintain or upgrade its equipment. This week, it issued 20 preliminary reports of wind damage to its system despite the fact that none of the wind speeds approached anything on the order of gale force or hurricane winds. It warned that 32,000 miles of power lines must be inspected, meaning that those without power may be in the dark for several more days at the least.
In the case of the Camp Fire in Paradise, California last year, the New York Times reported that a live line broke free of a tower that was 25 years past what PG&E considered its “useful life.” The tower was erected 99 years earlier.
The value of the company’s stock has fallen by half since Thursday, and over 90 percent since the Camp Fire.
The irony is that the tanking of PG&E’s stock will only make it less able to complete the infrastructural renewal required to protect against these increasingly regular fire events. Meanwhile, Governor Newsom called on Warren Buffet to purchase the utility. Buffet specializes in cost cutting, layoffs, and “restructuring,” to make wayward companies profitable at the expense of workers and consumers.
Destruction caused by fires, Credit: pressdemo (Instagram)
Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area are two of the richest regions of the country. And yet, supposedly no money can be found to protect against increasingly regular fire events. It is not that the technology does not exist to place powerlines underground or build electrical towers out of steel instead of wood. Rather, the ultra-wealthy cannot bother to pay.
Newsom held a press conference over the 

weekend blaming PG&E for years of “greed” 

and “mismanagement.” While no doubt true, 

the reality is that the Democrats are just as 

culpable. This past decade, California has been run by Democratic governors, Democratic legislatures, and Democratic mayors. During this same time, the state has seen a sharp decline of its public schools, an alarming increase in inequality, homelessness and poverty, while infrastructure—such as power, water, and public transit—languishes, unable to safely and affordably address residents’ needs.
Insurance companies, also wanting to keep profits elevated at the expense of the working class, are either increasing premiums or dropping coverage altogether for residents in areas at risk of fire. “We are seeing an increasing trend across California where people at risk of wildfires are being non-renewed by their insurer,” said state Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara. At least 350,000 residents had their policies deliberately not renewed by the insurance companies during 2019 alone.
The California Department of Insurance noted other cases of homeowner insurance premiums doubling or even quintupling from $800 - $1,000 to $2,500 - $5,000 per year, even in cases where homeowners performed extensive fire mitigating measures such as cutting back brush or investing in fire resistant roofing.


Democrats turning California into a third-world hellhole: Going without electricity edition

Democrats are turning California into a third-world hellhole without electricity, water, and freedom.
Due to Democrats' love for trees, at least 800,000 Californians will be without power for several days.  Instead of properly managing California forests to reduce the chances of big fires, Democrats are saying Californians have to go without lights, refrigerators, and air-conditioning.  Democrats could also avoid this by not making the power company financially liable for all forest fire damages, but since PG&E is a company, not an illegal alien, the Democrats couldn't care less about doing what's best for California.
While they try to blame climate change and the infrastructure, the reality is that neither of those has caused any significant changes in the last ten years — but now, suddenly, due to Democrat policies, Californians have to start living in the 18th century.
The Democrats who run California also refuse to build more water storage capacity even though the state's population has dramatically increased, ensuring that water has to be rationed during droughts.
Democrats are turning California into a third-world country economically.  The income inequality between the über-rich Silicon Valley workers and the rest of Californians is huge, just like in third-world countries, while the elites live in luxury and the rest live in squalor. 
Democrats are doing a great job manufacturing poverty and homelessness even as they fail to instill hope in Californians.
California has four times more homeless per capita and three times more poor per capita than the rest of America.  Half the homeless in America are in California, even though California has only 12% of the U.S. population.  Also, blacks are six times more prevalent in the San Francisco homeless population than they are in California in general.
The homeless explosion has brought the return of third-world diseases like typhus to California — not to mention streets littered with human feces.
Democrats are trying to keep people from having cars, just like the people of the Third World.  After all, a car gives people the freedom to move, and freedom is a bad thing in the minds of Democrats since it limits the power the government has over citizens.
Recently, Gavin Newsom, the Democrat governor, transferred millions of dollars that the voters had been ensured would go to improve the state's failing road infrastructure to a fund designed to convince Californians to give up their cars.
Democrats are also working to make cars unaffordable for any but the richest Californians.
Californians pay $1.53 more for a gallon for gasoline than the rest of America.  That's $21 more for a tank of gasoline.  Facebook employees won't notice it, but the poor in California who can't afford to live near their jobs are paying through the teeth.
Like all third-world tyrants, Democrats are doing everything they can to eliminate democracy in California.
The jungle primary, where the top two candidates in the primaries go against each other, has resulted in many races where two Democrats are running against each other, giving voters who don't agree with the Democrats' failed policies no one to vote for.
California is doing nothing to ensure that people who shouldn't vote don't vote.  Instead, the people running the state are doing everything possible to let illegal aliens vote.  When illegal aliens go pick up their driver's licenses, they're automatically enrolled to vote unless they say they're not citizens.
California is also trying to end democracy by keeping the Republican presidential candidate off the ballot.  Democrats passed an unconstitutional law to keep any candidate who didn't release his tax returns off the ballot solely to keep Californians from voting for Trump.
Finally, the Democrats are going after freedom of the press.  An undercover journalist revealed that Planned Parenthood was selling aborted baby parts.  Instead of investigating that illegal practice, Democrat Kamala Harris decided to put the journalist on trial.
Democrats keep telling us California is the future if they get elected.  That means that poverty, homelessness, the end of democracy, and a press that reports only what Democrats want heard are what Democrats are promising us.

If you're an immensely wealthy Google employee, California is Heaven.  If you're not, it's becoming more and more like Hell.
You can read more of Tom's rants at his blog, Conversations about the obvious, and feel free to follow him on Twitter.


California Declares State of Emergency over Wildfires

The Associated Press

SANTA ROSA, California (AP) — California’s governor declared a statewide emergency with nearly 200,000 people ordered to flee their homes because of wildfires fueled by historic winds, while millions were without electricity after the largest utility cut power in some areas as a precaution to prevent other fires.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement that officials are deploying “every resource available” to respond to the wildfires, including a large blaze in Northern California’s wine country driven by powerful winds.
Smoke from a second wildfire in the San Francisco Bay Area briefly halted traffic on a bridge. The flames came dangerously close to homes in Vallejo. In the south, a wildfire in the Santa Clarita area near Los Angeles has destroyed 18 structures, threatened homes and critical infrastructure.
The biggest evacuation was in Sonoma County where 180,000 people were told to pack up and leave.
The fear that the winds could blow embers and spread fire across a major highway prompted authorities to expand evacuation orders that covered parts of Santa Rosa, a city of 175,000 that was devastated by a wildfire two years ago. The latest evacuation orders came after Pacific Gas & Electric shut off power to 2.3 million people across 36 counties starting Saturday evening.
“This is the largest evacuation that any of us … can remember,” the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office tweeted Sunday morning. “Take care of each other.”
Hundreds of people arrived at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa throughout the night and into Sunday morning. Some came from senior care facilities. More than 300 people slept inside an auditorium filled with cots and wheeled beds. Scores of others stayed in a separate building with their pets.
Among them was Maribel Cruz, 19, who packed up her dog, four cats and fish as soon as she was told to flee from her trailer in the town of Windsor, which is about 60 miles (97 kilometers) north of San Francisco. She also grabbed a neighbor’s cat.
“I’m just nervous since I grew up in Windsor,” she said. “I’m hoping the wind cooperates.”
Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick pleaded with residents in the evacuation zone that stretched from the wine country to Bodega Bay on the coast to get out immediately, citing the 24 lives lost when fire swept through the region in October 2017.
“Although I’ve heard people express concerns that we are evacuating too many people, I think those concerns are not valid at this point,” Essick said at a news conference Sunday, noting that the winds pushed fire toward the towns of Healdsburg and Windsor overnight.
The Healdsburg area lost one of its historic attractions to the flames Sunday when embers carried by the winds sparked a blaze that engulfed the Soda Rock Winery whose buildings included a general store and post office founded in 1869. The winery was about 10 miles (16 kilometers) outside the town of Healdsburg.
The Kincade Fire began Wednesday night and is only 10% contained, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said Sunday. It has burned 47 square miles (122 sq. kilometers) and has destroyed 79 structures.
Fire officials said about 30,000 firefighters took an aggressive stance overnight to keep the fire from spreading.
The fire was expected to be especially unwieldly Sunday due to powerful winds gusting at up to 80 mph (129 kph) on hillsides. The wind event was expected to last until Monday, the National Weather Service said.
Fire officials said the winds could potentially spark spot fires up to a mile away and quickly explode. They feared that if it crosses U.S. 101, the fire could spread westward to an area that hasn’t had a fire in 80 years.
“The fuel in that area is extremely dense, they’re extremely old and dry,” said Steve Volmer, a fire behavior analyst with CalFire.
Meanwhile, another blaze erupted Sunday on both sides of a San Francisco Bay Area freeway and quickly spread, coming dangerously close to homes in Vallejo, which is 55 miles (88.5 kilometers) south of Geyserville where the massive Kincade Fire is burning.
A live broadcast on KGO-TV showed the fire on both sides of Interstate 80 near Vallejo and homeowners using hoses on a hillside to try and fight it. Smoke from the wildfire forced a freeway to close and the evacuation of California State University Maritime Academy.
Evacuations also hit inmates at the North County Detention Facility in Santa Rosa and about 100 Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital patients.
To the south, a wildfire dubbed the Tick Fire destroyed 18 structures Thursday in the Santa Clarita area north of Los Angeles. Nearly all the 50,000 residents ordered to evacuate were allowed back home after Santa Ana winds began to ease.
Marcos Briano found destroyed homes on his street.
“I’m thankful that nothing happened to my house, but I feel bad for my neighbors,” Briano, 71, said Saturday.
As of Sunday, the Tick Fire was 65% contained.
What sparked the current fires is unknown, but PG&E said a 230,000-volt transmission line near Geyserville malfunctioned minutes before that blaze erupted Wednesday night.
The utility acknowledged a tower malfunction prompted a strategy change for determining when to kill high-voltage transmission lines, Andrew Vesey, CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., said Friday.
The possible link between the wine country fire and a PG&E transmission line contained grim parallels to last year when most of the town of Paradise burned, killing 85 people in the deadliest U.S. blaze in a century.
State officials concluded a PG&E 

transmission line sparked that fire.
PG&E said this weekend’s shut-off was affecting about 940,000 homes and businesses. The city of San Francisco was not in line for a blackout amid shut-offs for most of the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area, the wine country to the north and the Sierra foothills.
Many residents facing blackouts had barely recovered from a previous shut-off that cost some businesses tens of thousands of dollars in losses.


“PG&E should be nationalized”: Berkeley students and residents denounce forced blackout in California

On Monday, members of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) at UC Berkeley spoke to students and Berkeley residents about the mass blackout imposed by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) across Northern California last week. The power outage, which affected over two million people and businesses, lasted up to four days in some places and likely caused many premature deaths.
Jazmín, a senior studying Political Science, spoke at length about the shutoffs and PG&E’s history of corporate negligence. Having grown up in Santa Rosa, an hour north of the Bay Area, and experiencing firsthand the devastating 2017 Tubbs Fire, she had been profoundly impacted by the utility monopoly’s criminality.
Jazmín
Given her close personal connection to the events, Jazmín was compelled to research the history of PG&E and its lobbying efforts. The results of this effort were published in an article last spring in the University of Southern California’s Journal of Law and Society .
“For a long time, PG&E has been accused, charged, and convicted of not fulfilling their responsibility to the public of maintaining their utility lines,” Jazmín noted. “As a privately owned utility that serves the public, that’s their obligation. They’ve been fined, they’ve been criminalized, and they’re still allowed to continue in operation, and it’s wrong.”
Jazmín read a quote from her article, which explains: “In 1997, PG&E was convicted of 739 counts of criminal negligence for failing to trim trees near its power lines after the corporation diverted $80 million from maintenance programs into shareholder profits.” Commenting on this conviction over 20 years ago, Jazmín noted, “they’ve been doing this for a long time, and causing disaster after disaster, catastrophe after catastrophe. Destruction, deaths, people losing their homes, their jobs.”
“I was in Santa Rosa and was in a neighborhood that was evacuated. We could hear the breakers popping everywhere. We evacuated and saw my former partner’s house burn down. I was evacuated for about a week, our power was turned off, and my case was best case scenario. It was terrible,” Jazmín explained, relaying her experience during the Tubbs Fire.
“My cousin lost her home. A lot of people lost their jobs because several hotels burned down, senior homes burned down, fast food restaurants, a K-Mart. People lost so much in the fires, family heirlooms and things that can’t be replaced.
“People who lost their jobs, including a lot of undocumented folks, had nowhere to turn. So our community had to start fundraising. We started Undocufund, which basically was a direct financial help for families that were undocumented that needed financial assistance. But this had to come from our community. PG&E gave no support to us whatsoever, they just went on their advertising campaign.
“Our entire community suffered major trauma, half the town burned down. So now, when the shutoffs happened, people were going crazy, people were panicking. They were going to get gas in lines around the block. It was very chaotic, very traumatic for the entire community. And the utility company doesn’t care. They’ll do whatever it takes to reduce their own liability, promoting it as a way to keep people safe, but really, it’s disrupting operations, it’s disrupting people’s jobs. Because those same people that didn’t have the money or resources to get help after the fires, they still don’t. So, when the power lines get cut, people that work in restaurants or at hotels will not be protected and won’t get paid for those days of missed work.
“The people that suffer the most are working class families that are living paycheck to paycheck. In Santa Rosa, the fires created a huge housing crisis. People that are renters were affected so much because rates increased dramatically as we lost 15 percent of our housing. It continues to have these massive effects, and with these shutoffs it’s just continuing.”
Commenting on the party that PG&E hosted at a Sonoma County winery on the day of the shutoff announcement and exactly two years after the Tubbs Fire, Jazmín stated, “It’s disgusting. I got messages from local PG&E employees in Sonoma County asking whether I’m okay after the blackouts. They do these campaigns to make themselves look good, meanwhile they’re over here fundraising at expensive parties at wineries. It’s absolutely disgusting and insulting. The sad part too is that people who are winery owners are part of the same network and group as the PG&E executives, and they support each other, and don’t care about anyone else’s well-being.”
She also denounced the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the ostensible “regulatory” agency that oversees the utility monopolies in California. She noted, “the last time that PG&E got convicted for criminal behavior, federal officials actually criticized the close relationship between CPUC and PG&E. They don’t do their job and are a huge waste of resources, so the judge actually had to appoint someone else to oversee the company. They ended up not doing anything either.”
“These shutoffs are what they’re going to keep doing. It’s just our government facilitating business as usual for these companies. I think that our declining climate conditions and the increased frequency of extreme weather conditions, it’s bringing these issues to light more and causing greater consequences, when these utilities are mismanaged. They’ve been mismanaged for decades, and now it’s coming to light.”
When asked for her thoughts on the way forward, Jazmín immediately replied, “I think PG&E should be nationalized. I think that their efforts to make a profit are continuing to hurt people, massive amounts of people. They don’t have a functioning, fair or just business model, and I think the service is something that needs to be taken over.”
She elaborated, “It’s not profitable to keep people safe, and so long as that’s true people will keep suffering. It’s causing us untold harm. Once under public control, we need to start with the basics by maintaining the power lines that have decades and decades of backlogs on maintenance. We start with education, and making sure that operations are safe. We can’t cut corners on these things, and keep extracting from this kind of service. This shouldn’t be meant for profit.
“When we follow industry under capitalism, each industry completely extracts as much profit as possible until it crashes and dies. We’re at wit’s end with this. We cannot continue to extract profit from energy, especially utilities, and keep putting people at risk. We have to evolve as a country, as a world, in terms of how we provide for people’s needs.”
Misa
Misa, a resident of Berkeley, was also disturbed by the mass power shutoffs. She commented, “It doesn’t seem like a good plan going forward. It was not very well planned out at all, and a lot of people think PG&E was only worried about their own liability over what happens to the community.”
“I think what bothers me most is when you hear that there are executives getting bonuses instead of investing in their infrastructure. That doesn’t make any sense. It’s just like the banks after the 2008 financial crisis. It makes no sense, they already have their salaries which are pretty high. Use that money to reinvest in the business and infrastructure.”
Harman
Harman, a South Asian Studies major, commented on the forced blackout, “It’s disgusting. The reason they decided to do this was because it’s cheaper to just pay the fines and not upgrade their infrastructure like they’re supposed to. That’s absolutely disgusting.”
“One person died within 15 minutes because his breathing machine was turned off, I heard that on the news. PG&E did that on purpose and no one’s going to jail for that. They literally killed people and they’re not going to go to jail for that, just because they can afford to pay the fines? They burned down the whole town of Paradise! It’s insane.”

Democrats turning California into a third-


world hellhole: Going without electricity 


edition



Democrats are turning California into a third-world hellhole without electricity, water, and freedom.
Due to Democrats' love for trees, at least 800,000 Californians will be without power for several days.  Instead of properly managing California forests to reduce the chances of big fires, Democrats are saying Californians have to go without lights, refrigerators, and air-conditioning.  Democrats could also avoid this by not making the power company financially liable for all forest fire damages, but since PG&E is a company, not an illegal alien, the Democrats couldn't care less about doing what's best for California.
While they try to blame climate change and the infrastructure, the reality is that neither of those has caused any significant changes in the last ten years — but now, suddenly, due to Democrat policies, Californians have to start living in the 18th century.
The Democrats who run California also refuse to build more water storage capacity even though the state's population has dramatically increased, ensuring that water has to be rationed during droughts.
Democrats are turning California into a third-world country economically.  The income inequality between the über-rich Silicon Valley workers and the rest of Californians is huge, just like in third-world countries, while the elites live in luxury and the rest live in squalor. 
Democrats are doing a great job manufacturing poverty and homelessness even as they fail to instill hope in Californians.
California has four times more homeless per capita and three times more poor per capita than the rest of America.  Half the homeless in America are in California, even though California has only 12% of the U.S. population.  Also, blacks are six times more prevalent in the San Francisco homeless population than they are in California in general.
The homeless explosion has brought the return of third-world diseases like typhus to California — not to mention streets littered with human feces.
Democrats are trying to keep people from having cars, just like the people of the Third World.  After all, a car gives people the freedom to move, and freedom is a bad thing in the minds of Democrats since it limits the power the government has over citizens.
Recently, Gavin Newsom, the Democrat governor, transferred millions of dollars that the voters had been ensured would go to improve the state's failing road infrastructure to a fund designed to convince Californians to give up their cars.
Democrats are also working to make cars unaffordable for any but the richest Californians.
Californians pay $1.53 more for a gallon for gasoline than the rest of America.  That's $21 more for a tank of gasoline.  Facebook employees won't notice it, but the poor in California who can't afford to live near their jobs are paying through the teeth.
Like all third-world tyrants, Democrats are doing everything they can to eliminate democracy in California.
The jungle primary, where the top two candidates in the primaries go against each other, has resulted in many races where two Democrats are running against each other, giving voters who don't agree with the Democrats' failed policies no one to vote for.
California is doing nothing to ensure that people who shouldn't vote don't vote.  Instead, the people running the state are doing everything possible to let illegal aliens vote.  When illegal aliens go pick up their driver's licenses, they're automatically enrolled to vote unless they say they're not citizens.
California is also trying to end democracy by keeping the Republican presidential candidate off the ballot.  Democrats passed an unconstitutional law to keep any candidate who didn't release his tax returns off the ballot solely to keep Californians from voting for Trump.
Finally, the Democrats are going after freedom of the press.  An undercover journalist revealed that Planned Parenthood was selling aborted baby parts.  Instead of investigating that illegal practice, Democrat Kamala Harris decided to put the journalist on trial.
Democrats keep telling us California is the future if they get elected.  That means that poverty, homelessness, the end of democracy, and a press that reports only what Democrats want heard are what Democrats are promising us.
If you're an immensely wealthy Google employee, California is Heaven.  If you're not, it's becoming more and more like Hell.
You can read more of Tom's rants at his blog, Conversations about the obvious, and feel free to follow him on Twitter.
Millions Of Californians Are De-Powered As Utility Safeguards Bottom Line
10/12/2019
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California’s mass electricity shut-down has not gone well. Millions of state residents got little warning that their power would be switched off for up to a week while Pacific Gas & Electric checked its lines for any technical problems.
But as I wrote a couple days ago, it’s likely PG&E’s biggest concern was losing another pile of money if it was seen to be irresponsible: California Power Company Unplugs Customers to Protect Its Profits. The utility recently paid out $11 billion to resolve most of the insurance claims from two major wildfires in the state.
Naturally there was a great deal of anger about the shutdown, as Thursday’s Los Angeles Times described:
And there were millions of persons affected. Some of the reports use the term “customers” which means households, not individuals.
For some people, the outage was more than a huge inconvenience: A front page article in Friday’s New York Times titled “Frailest in Peril As Power Cuts Dim California” pointed out that many medical devices require electricity to run. (Reprinted in MSN.) So wildfires are not the only danger to public safety — PG&E endangered some Californians by its power shutoff.
I was lucky that the unplugged zone in my town was a few blocks away, but I still carried a flashlight around the house after dark just in case. It was unsettling that PG&E has sounded unmotivated to get the lights back on ASAP.
Here’s the LA Times article mentioned above:
Classes were canceled. Frozen foods melted. Hospitals switched to emergency generators. Blooms withered in florists’ coolers. Unused food was jettisoned at shuttered restaurants. Lines formed at gas stations. Cellphones faded out.
That’s what happened Wednesday when the state’s largest utility shut off power to millions of Californians in a drastic attempt to avoid the killer wildfires that have charred hundreds of thousands of acres, caused billions of dollars in damage and spurred cries for widespread change in how electricity is delivered over the state’s aging grid.
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. began cutting power to customers shortly after midnight in counties around Sacramento. By the end of the day, the outages had radiated out to encompass 34 counties, with all but seven counties north of Merced at least partly in the dark.
The move by PG&E marks the largest power shut-off to date as California utilities attempt to reduce wildfire risks. Equipment malfunctions have been tied to some of the state’s most destructive and deadliest fires, including the 2017 wine country blazes and last year’s Camp fire, which devastated the town of Paradise and killed 85 people.
In January, PG&E filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, anticipating multibillion-dollar legal claims stemming from the Camp fire, which also destroyed nearly 14,000 homes. A month later, officials at the utility acknowledged that its equipment probably sparked that blaze.
“The safety of our customers and the communities we serve is our most important responsibility, which is why PG&E has decided to turn power off to customers during this widespread, severe wind event, ” Michael Lewis, PG&E’s senior vice president of electric operations, said Wednesday. “We understand the effects this event will have on our customers and appreciate the public’s patience as we do what is necessary to keep our communities safe and reduce the risk of wildfire.”
But tempers flared against the utility everyone loves to hate—enough so that a cautious PG&E erected barriers around its San Francisco headquarters Wednesday. At the same time, the California Highway Patrol was investigating whether someone shot at a PG&E truck Tuesday night.
[. . .]
In the Sierra foothills town of Placerville, the power went out about 3 a.m., leaving many residents angry and scrambling for supplies. Customers roamed the aisles of Placerville Hardware in darkness at midmorning, loading up on flashlights, oil lamps and batteries. Cash registers ran on a generator.
“There isn’t a tree moving right now because of the wind, ” said Tod Pickett, who was buying battery-powered lamps. “And they are telling us there’s a hurricane. There are 12 billion reasons why PG&E is sticking it to us, ” he continued, referring to the monetary settlements paid after past fires. (Continues)

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