
PG&E Says Its Equipment Was Probable ‘Ignition Point’ of Camp Fire - gdubs
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-records-10-5-billion-charge-related-to-camp-fire-11551363969
======
eigenvector
From my perspective as a power utility engineer, this turns on whether PG&E
made reasonable and diligent effort to maintain and operate its system in a
way that mitigated potential fire hazards. Quoting from Ars Technica's
coverage of this:

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2019/02/pge-i...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2019/02/pge-its-likely-our-equipment-was-ignition-point-for-deadly-
camp-fire/)

>The utility goes on to state that its Caribou-Palermo 115 kilovolt (kV)
transmission line deenergized approximately 15 minutes before a PG&E employee
observed a fire in the vicinity of a tower on the line. In addition, "a
suspension insulator supporting a transposition jumper had separated from an
arm" on the tower in question."

Mechanical failure of a suspension insulator in the absence of something
physically falling on it is a very rare occurrence, and would only plausibly
occur if the insulator is well outside its normal service life. To me this
points to inadequate maintenance. We're talking about equipment that already
has a 30-year service life and a miniscule failure rate. Obviously, there will
be more detailed investigation to come. But PG&E doesn't look good here, and
unless they can show they were inspecting and maintaining that line in
accordance with normal industry practices, they are going to get nailed for
this.

~~~
turtlegrids
>Mechanical failure of a suspension insulator in the absence of something
physically falling on it is a very rare occurrence, and would only plausibly
occur if the insulator is well outside its normal service life.

What about one or more bullets being shot at it, as numerous locals have
stated happened?

~~~
eigenvector
That will certainly cause insulator failure. And if PG&E can show that's what
happened it would certainly help their case that the ignition was not
preventable (by the utility).

~~~
turtlegrids
will it really help their case, though? I thought the whole issue here is that
even if not negligent, if a California utility's infrastructure is a cause
(not THE cause) and even if not negligent, the utility can and will be held
liable for the damages.

One random source (Thanks Duckduckgo!):
[https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-approves-bill-
to...](https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-approves-bill-to-limit-
utility-liability-for-wildfires-but-not/531483/)

> California courts use a "strict liability" interpretation of the doctrine
> that holds utilities accountable for wildfires caused by their equipment,
> even if a company is not found negligent.

~~~
eigenvector
Good point. I was only looking at it from an engineering point of view, not
legal. Although the strict liability doctrine is common for environmental
offenses because it makes prosecution a lot easier * , it might not make sense
to bankrupt PG&E for something they couldn't have actually prevented while
still fulfilling their service mandate.

* Imagine a company spills 50,000 litres of oil into a river. You don't have to prove what happened or anyone's motivation for doing it, just that the oil was in the river and it came from their facility.

------
pdx_flyer
I would say PG&E's biggest fault is their maintenance and inspection practices
being subpar. Regular line and pole inspections would work wonders to prevent
these types of things.

It's hard for PG&E to argue against this when they are willing to spend
millions on lobbyists after the fire knowing full well the event may mean
regulations that closely resemble what the natural gas utilities have to
follow.

Deferred maintenance is typical in the utility world. You look at the item
being maintained and the criticality and safety of it and determine if it can
be deferred. In something like a transmission line, maintenance should not be
deferred as the knock on effects are far greater than say a small transformer
on a city block.

In the utility world there are a lot of software options to help you manage
your assets and do preventative maintenance of those assets. I am sure a
deeper investigation will look to see if those tools were being used and if
they were properly being audited.

~~~
JPKab
I'm not a California resident, so I'm actually curious and definitely not
trying to have an opinion:

I've heard from co-workers in California that PG&E has routinely been
regulated to keep prices at a certain level, and this has hampered their
ability to perform proper maintenance. Is this a remotely fair assessment, or
grossly incorrect?

~~~
thaumaturgy
PG&E's retail rates have been regulated by the state for a long, long time,
since they provide a utility which is vital to the public interest and past
deregulatory efforts have immediately resulted in market manipulation and
energy crises [1].

However, this doesn't prevent PG&E from performing the appropriate maintenance
on their equipment. That fault lies with the policies of upper management.
CPUC is well aware of PG&E's obligations to maintain their equipment and
regularly audits them and has made hay in the past about PG&E's reactive
approach to maintenance [2].

The people who bring up the regulation of retail prices tend to be the ones
who have an ideological love for deregulating everything. That's the wrong
hammer for this particular screw and hasn't worked out so well in the past.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis)

[2]: [https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/PG-E-cited-
for-...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/PG-E-cited-for-late-
maintenance-work-more-often-12303697.php)

~~~
edmundsauto
Insufficient budgets force managers to prioritize urgent maintenance at the
expense of proactive maintenance. I'm confused, if they can't raise their
rates, and they don't have enough money to do the proactive maintenance, how
do we reach a solution?

FWLIW, I definitely haven't dug into their books, so maybe they're cutting fat
checks to execs in lieu of this stuff.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Why do you think they can't raise their rates?

They just have to justify their rate increases. All PG&E had to do, years ago,
was tell the CPUC, "we've identified a massive maintenance backlog and we need
to raise our residential rates __% to clear it."

You can see this in action now, at [https://www.pge.com/en_US/about-
pge/company-information/regu...](https://www.pge.com/en_US/about-pge/company-
information/regulation/general-rate-case/grc.page), where PG&E has filed a new
publicly-available 2020-2022 rate increase request:

> _This GRC proposal will help bolster wildfire prevention, risk monitoring
> and emergency response. It will also add new and enhanced safety measures,
> increase vegetation management, and harden our electric system to increase
> resilience and help further reduce wildfire risk._

> _Every three years, PG &E submits the GRC, a proposal for funding its core
> gas and electric operations. The CPUC conducts an open and transparent
> review of PG&E's proposal._

The CPUC, in turn, has to deal with angry residents and lobbyists from
multiple industries.

You can find reporting from a rate substantial rate increase four years ago,
at
[https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93303&page=1](https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93303&page=1)

I think the quote from PG&E spokesman Keith Stephens in the SF Chronicle
article I linked two comments up pretty well sums up where fault lies here:

"As we moved from more of a 'monitor only and fix when we can' process, we
were much more focused on getting work done,"

PG&E's maintenance strategy for years -- set by management, not by a lack of
funds or prohibition against rate increases -- was, "wait until it becomes a
problem." CPUC regulators started investigating it around 2008, found a
_huuuuuuuge_ maintenance backlog, and then PG&E said, "oh, yeah, our new
strategy now is to try to catch up on some of this stuff."

~~~
edmundsauto
It seems like an obviously poor decision to just be lazy, when they could
theoretically raise rates to cover these maintenance costs. What information
are we missing that could make sense of the decision?

I know that rate hikes are heavily protested by citizens, so maybe there's
some sort of political infeasibility? That would certainly be a mark against a
gov't run critical service -- maybe it's really hard (near impossible) to
raise rates to cover required maintenance.

------
packet_nerd
When the conditions are right its extremely easy for a wildfire to start.
Lightning strikes, a glass bottle in the sun, a camp fire, there's so many
different ways it could get started. Does it really matter that it happened to
be PG&E's equipment in this case? If not them, it would have happened anyway
from another cause. It seems unfair to hold them liable, or at least, the
extremely hostile tone in these comments seems a bit overboard.

In my early teens my family moved to rural northern Idaho and my dad decided
one day to burn some of the brush on our land to clean it up. Well, being from
a much more suburban setting we didn't know that that's a real no-no that time
of year. The fire got out of control and started burning into the trees and my
mom, brothers, and I frantically fought it with hoes and buckets of water
while dad tried to plow over it with the bulldozer (we didn't have a phone and
this was an hour drive from a fire department). Anyway, we finally got it put
out before it got into the national forest bordering our property on the east.
Very very scary.

A week later there was a lightning strike fire in the national forest which
ended up burning several hundred acres.

~~~
thaumaturgy
> _Does it really matter that it happened to be PG &E's equipment in this
> case? If not them, it would have happened anyway from another cause. It
> seems unfair to hold them liable..._

Okay, so an arsonist sets off a massive wildfire. Should they not be found at
fault? Surely the fire would've barely burned at all if it weren't for the
conditions.

Nobody disputes that conditions were a contributing factor. On the contrary,
that's why it was more important than usual to prevent sources of ignition as
much as possible. It wasn't a lightning strike, it wasn't a hot muffler, it
wasn't arson, it was PG&E's equipment that ignited the fire that destroyed an
entire community, and that equipment failure was the direct result of their
chronic poor maintenance.

I think the comments here are quite civilized all things considered. PG&E has
a long history of poor equipment maintenance and has been the proximate cause
for numerous environmental disasters. They are responsible for the deaths of
over a hundred people over the last few years, the endangerment of thousands
more, the displacement of tens of thousands more, and the destruction of
multiple communities.

No action currently being taken against them is inappropriate under the
circumstances.

~~~
packet_nerd
The fire could just as easily have been started by anyone. Heck, I'm pretty
sure you can find similar lapses in maintenance at pretty much any company in
California or the country. Any one of them could have caused the fire. Or it
could just as easily started from something totally different.

I just feel like the punishment should fit the crime (failing to maintain
equipment) and should be fair (apply to all companies who fail to maintain
their equipment). Turning them into a scapegoat just because we're out for
blood doesn't sit right with me.

Arson implies mal-intent and is a totally different thing. Not understanding
the connection?

------
mistrial9
Based on recent reports, PG&E filed for, and received money for, maintenance
of this exact location, in the 2010 time frame, then submitted in writing a
justification to postpone those exact repairs in 2013, then again at least
once after that.. A speculation is, that if specific uses of those funds for
other purposes are found, it could be the basis of criminal charges against
individuals in the company.

------
ct0
There are thousands of buildings in NYC that need fire inspections, but only a
few inspectors to handle them. How to they prioritize the buildings that need
the inspections most? The answer could have prevented this tragic event for
PG&E.

~~~
godzillabrennus
Require buildings to pay for a fire inspection. Use that money to hire more
fire inspectors.

These solutions are not difficult. Lives are on the line.

There was a big fire on my street last night in New York. The city has a ton
of old dumpy buildings.

~~~
jcims
Aren't most building owners already paying property/city taxes of some form?

~~~
smileysteve
This is to say, either the tax is not high enough for services (note that
fire, sprinkler inspection, etc are typically additional fees) or the property
taxes are not properly earmarked for the direct costs that they entail.

It's also easy to suggest that these costs and inspections could be "free
market" attributed to the insurer.

------
onetimemanytime
Could it be that no company can bring power to Californians if they were to be
held liable for such events? One fire can cost you $10 Billion and to repair
/replace /maintain correctly the lines they probably need 100 billion. I guess
they could bring power, but at 50 cent a KWh...

~~~
crushcrashcrush
Hence, it should be a publicly owned utility like water.

~~~
gscott
The roads of San Diego are full of potholes. Leaking water lines are causing
sinkholes. School fountains had high level of lead for years until a dog
wouldn't drink water put into a bowl and an interested teacher started looking
into why. Government has too many funding priorities not to mention Government
contracts do not come in under time and budget.

~~~
enraged_camel
Well yes, it turns out you can’t burden a local government with something
unless you increase taxes sufficiently to pay for that thing.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Even if there's still sufficient taxes government organizations can behave
badly. There's no incentive to fear the government making you accountable if
you are also the government so you can be sure that a) is highly unlikely to
happen and b) the taxpayers are the ones ultimatly on the hook.

Making your utility state run risks the the same "not our money" and "what are
they gonna do, fire the whole department" issues that cause police department
to hire trigger-happy jerks who kill people and leave the town with the bill.

~~~
dragonwriter
> There's no incentive to fear the government making you accountable if you
> are also the government

True for the US federal government, less true for US state governments, and
pretty much not at all true for governments subordinate to US state
governments, for reasons which should be intuitively obvious to the most
casual observer.

> Making your utility state run risks the the same "not our money" and "what
> are they gonna do, fire the whole department" issues that cause police
> department to hire trigger-happy jerks who kill people and leave the town
> with the bill.

I think you have misattributed the cause; the cause of that (where it is
endemic rather than an error that the department really is trying to avoid but
sometimes failing) is that the voting citizens actually want trigger-happy
jerks in the police department (because they largely see the police department
as a weapon aimed at oeople they dislike) and the bills that they get stuck
with as a result are insufficient to dissuade them from that preference (this
is helped because local taxes that pay for those bills tend to be weighted
away from the local voting population, whether by being regressive—leveraging
the income/political participation correlation—or by sweeping local-activity
by non-locsl residents into its base.)

But even privileged political elites probably want their electric utility to
function VB reliably and not burn down wide swathes of the state.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>True for the US federal government, less true for US state governments,

Disagree fully, especially in one party states. In the federal government if
you department is perpetually crap there's always a risk some senator will
make cleaning you up their shtick. In state government unacceptable
performance seems to be tolerated and allowed to continue indefinitely.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Disagree fully, especially in one party states.

The risk for state governments (particularly after the passage of—or, more
precisely, after the courts started giving effect to the due process clause
of—the 14th Amendment, though this wasn't entirely absent previously) is that
they will be held accountable by the _federal_ government.

> In the federal government if you department is perpetually crap there's
> always a risk some senator will make cleaning you up their shtick.

That's also true in state government.

> In state government unacceptable performance seems to be tolerated and
> allowed to continue indefinitely.

I think that what you are really saying is that there are states whw ere the
participating electorate has different standards for what is acceptable, or at
least important, than you do, no different from a commercial market where the
mass of actively participating customers don't share your priorities.

------
cft
Longed them in January- stock's up 200% since. They are in the too big to fail
category.

------
kolbe
[https://outline.com/gnTpbH](https://outline.com/gnTpbH)

------
glass-droid
Is this the fault of PG&E or is this the reality of climate change - systems
that were once safe are now fire hazards in an increasingly dry climate.

~~~
waynecochran
You can actually blame the "Smokey the Bear" policies of the last century
instead of climate change. The complete prevention of forest fires have lead
to heavy fuel loads on the forest floor. Before this, fires were lower in
intensity and actually cleaned out ll the debris.

Also, many species of trees require fire to split open their cones (e.g.,
Lodge Pole Pines) and other species of plants need fire for germination (e.g.
Manzanita). Ponderosa Pines have thick bark for the purpose of surviving fires
-- now the fires are too hot. Look at forest pictures in Central Oregon from
120 years ago -- you could drive a car thru since there was not a lot of
debris on the forest floor. Fires used to be a good thing. Native Americans
would even manage fires with controlled burns.

Now all fires are completely destructive!

Source: Dad was a research scientist for US Forest Service.

~~~
creato
Where I've lived (several places in the west), this is well understood and
controlled burns/fuel reduction incentives have been long standing policies. I
can't say that's the case everywhere, but it definitely is everywhere I've
lived.

My family used to go and collect wood from such an area: the policy was to
pull all the downed trees and scrub into piles. The forest service allowed
people to take wood for free from these piles. What was left was burned, after
people took the good logs and it dried out. I still visit this place
regularly, and the policy is still the same.

It's become harder to do controlled burns, because in drought conditions, the
season where it is safe to do so has become short to non-existent.

I think this argument is popular because it is a way to blame "liberal"
environmental policy for the fires.

~~~
someguydave
Why should the federal government be holding on to so much forestland? Private
owners would be greatly incentivized to keep the forest productive.

~~~
op00to
Uh, because it’s owned by all of us, and cutting it down to make toilet paper
is a fucking shame and a waste.

------
crushcrashcrush
How many more utter disasters need to happen before the State of California
starts garnishing corporate profits from PG&E for punishment? Why is no one on
trial?

Let's just turn this into a completely publicly owned utility, focus on
modernization, and be done with it.

Remember the neighborhood that quite literally exploded?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>Let's just turn this into a completely publicly owned utility,

That's a bad idea if you want accountability in the event of a disaster
because then the taxpayers are still ultimately on the hook. Making it a
government organization all but guarantees government bailout in the event of
a disaster. Better to just make PG&E pay (if it does turn out to be their
fault) and then roll with whatever happens.

