Perhaps you recall this April 24 post detailing the carnage and finger-pointing that ensued after a California power company and four cell-phone service providers apparently failed to track the weight they were assembling atop three wooden utility poles. The poles snapped in moderately high winds, gear crashed to the ground, and the resulting fire charred 3,800 acres, 10 houses, a church, two schoolrooms and a landmark castle, while prompting a three-day evacuation of central Malibu.
Now the California Public Utilities Commission is trying to avert a repeat of the disaster, according to this story in today’s Los Angeles Times. There’s talk of increasing pole maintenance, pruning more overhanging trees, and even burying cables (dismissed by Malibu’s mayor because it would “take forever and be prohibitive”).
What else then? This else: When the winds kick up, how about we simply turn off the electricity?
Some utilities are acting before any new rules and regulations are devised.
San Diego Gas & Electric has floated a plan to turn off power to some of its 60,000 back-country customers when Santa Ana winds threaten to knock down power lines. The proposal would allow the utility to turn off power when winds hit 35 mph.
The plan faces strong opposition from a coalition of consumer groups, schools, water and fire districts and telecommunications companies. Last week, that coalition asked the utilities commission to reject the company’s “pro-active de-energization” plan. An administrative law judge is expected to issue a proposed ruling by July, with the full commission taking up the matter before the fall fire season.
Did I say turn off their electricity? I meant pro-active de-energization.
Back up the coast, this story in the Malibu Surfside News gives you an indication of the enormity of the negligence being discussed, as well as the vigor of the blame-shifting:
Two power poles that snapped in Malibu Canyon and sparked the disastrous October 2007 fire were originally installed in 1957, and had last been “intrusively inspected” by Southern California Edison in 1990, according to documents obtained by the Malibu Surfside News.
It just so happens that I was installed in 1957, too, and trust me when I say you don’t want my 51-year-old frame holding up your telecommunications gear.
Although Edison electric officials maintain that wireless phone companies were responsible for calculating safe wind and weight loads on the poles as they installed heavy new cables and antennas, the phone companies counter that Edison not only takes responsibility for the inspections of electric poles but bills the firms for them.
The lawyers are going to grow older than those poles litigating this one.
On a much less serious matter, San Diego Gas & Electric’s “just turn off the juice” remedy reminds me of Verizon’s answer when its run-amok robo-caller spewed a 24-hour stream of messages at 1,400 customers, including my house: “We’re suggesting that people just unplug their phones.”
We’ve got to learn to pro-actively de-energize these problems, people.
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