Supervisors Urge CPUC to Pull Plug on SDG&E Plan to Shut Off Power During High Fire Risk Days

[Liberty Belle]

Source: East County Magazine

"There is no evidence that the shut-off plan will prevent fires. But...in a matter of hours, we will be left without electricity and our customers will be left without water...SDG&E will create actual emergencies," - Jennifer Healy, Padre Dam Municipal Water District

By Miriam Raftery

ECU Intern Kyle Sezian also contributed to this story

June 23, 2009 (San Diego)—“The risks to life and property are higher with the power shut off than without it,” Supervisor Dianne Jacob said at a hearing today on whether or not SDG&E should be allowed to shut off power to up to 60,000 area residents during dry, windy, fire-prone conditions. By a 4-0 vote, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors passed a motion asking the California Public Utilities Commission to reject SDG&E’s proposal.

SDG&E claims shutting off power during hot, dry, windy days is necessary to prevent firestorms. The utility faces litigation and has admitted in CPUC documents that its lines have been implicated in 167 fires over the past five and a half years.

Jacob opened the hearing by asking fellow Supervisors to imagine a fire starting in the middle of the night from a cause other than power lines. “Reverse 911 would not work,” she said, noting that emergency regional communications, TV, radio and the Internet would all be cut-off. Electric garage doors would not work, leaving some people trapped. Police would have to direct traffic and electronically controlled fuel pumps wouldn’t work, leaving people unable to fill tanks with gas to evacuate. Key stakeholders including the County Office of Education, water and public safety authorities, and major telecommunications companies all oppose SDG&E's plan, she noted--and many testified to dangers that the plan would pose to the public.

Jennifer Healy of the Padre Dam Municipal Water District, which serves much of East County, said bluntly, “If SDG&E assumes the privileges of a monopoly, it must also assume the responsibilities. There is no evidence that the shut-off plan will prevent any fires.” But if power is shut-off, she warned, “In a matter of hours,we will run out of power and our customers will be left without water during the hottest part of the year.” She added, “SDG&E will create actual emergencies." Then she revealed, "SDG&E is seeking a Rule 14 change so it will not be liable for any injuries or deaths that result,” she revealed. “They have no plan for the devastating impacts on water districts, school districts, and telecommunication networks.”

Read more: http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/?q=node/1514

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I am the author of this piece and give permission to post this extended excerpt.

If you believe SDG&E should not be able to endanger lives of millions of people in Southern California, please contact the California Public Utilities Commission. If SDG&E gets away with turning off power anytime there's a risk of wildfire (rather than properly maintain its lines after already causing 167 fires in 5 years) and if SDG&E convinces the CPUC to absolve it of all responsibility for deaths/injuries resulting from such a shutoff (which is unprecedented in America), then you, too, could be looking at a reckless utility companies deciding to gamble with lives in YOUR community!

[drm604]

1. This is insane.

They want to cut off power in Southern California in the hottest part of the year? :crazy:

[Liberty Belle]

2. Yes, where the worst wildfires in CA history have occurred-twice!

FOlks, please kick this up so others can see. Half a million evacuated here in 2007 - more even than from New Orleans after Katrina. How can we get the word out about evacuations without power?

I operate a nonprofit's free wildfire alert service via email. No power, no alerts. No reverse 911 either. Nada. We will have a lot of dead people trapped without warning, mark my words.

[MindPilot]

10. Yes I think people who don't live here don't get how fast this happens

You can literally be running out the front door while fire is coming in the back when five minutes earlier you just saw some smoke off in the distance.

[Liberty Belle]

14. True. Our publisher argued with a 911 operator who insisted fire was 3 miles away....

He lost patience and retorted, "Ma'am, while we've been talking the fire just jumped a mile across a lake in front of my house. Now it's less than 2 miles. Do you think you can start calling to wake people up and tell them to evacuate now?

911 never did send help. My pubilsher and his wife fled for their lives, calling their cell phones at 3 a.m. to warn neighbors until lines went dead. They knocked on doors and got some people out, but 14 people in their valley (Wildcat Canyon) died. The flames were several hundred feet high and the temperatures were several thousand degrees - nearly as hot as Hiroshima. They melted the steel framing in his house. They melted tires off cars and trucks. They melted flesh off bones from thousands of feet away.

I have personally witnessed fire explode over a mountaintop at Barrett Junction during the Harris Fire, when winds of over 100 mph whipped the flames. Emergency authorities issued orders over a loudspeaker for people to run for their lives--and believe me, we did. I was a reporter then for another paper. That was at 9 a.m. By nighttime the SD papers still weren't reporting what was happening in the backcountry-they were all too busy obsessing over another fire (Witch) that had burned into the City of SD (Rancho Bernardo). After midnight the fire doubled back and trapped some people I knew in a small town. I got emails at midnight from people whose phone lines had burned, pleading for emergency info. The county "emergency" site was crashed adn they couldn't call in or out. That's when I knew I had to start an emergency wildfire alert service via email. Our magazine provides that free: anyone in SD County can sign up at www.eastcountymagazine.org.

And if you can possibly spare a donation to help our struggling nonprofit publication, please click that"donate" button and choose the East County Magazine option from our publisher's list of causes. Every penny could save a life!

[Seldona]

3. K&R

I have to agree, this is insane. Is there no way to make the lines safe? Sounds like the company doesn't want to spend the money to provide their product safely. The wholesale cutting of people's power is such a stupid proposition, I can't believe they made it.

[Liberty Belle]

5. Of course they can make them safer.

Undergrounding power lines costs too much money, though. So SDG&E has another nifty plan - cut all trees within 25 feet of power lines! (It used to be 18 feet). Yep, just lay bare whole streets so they won't have to actually (gasp) fix an allegedly dangerous condition on their lines that we've exposed in the past. A whistleblower, Ed Clark, used to head up transmission line installation for So. Cal Edison. He says SDG&E is criminally negligent for having 2 down-guy wires connected by a single bolt without insulators. Two other experts agree. You can search our site for Clark's name to find those stories.

[truedelphi]

7. It's standard operating procedure for newspapers to announce that

A power outage was caused by a squirrel or a crow who jimmied around on power lines and caused an outage.

When newspapers report this, they are in effect saying, "The utility company in our area is so irresponsible that it does not maintain its lines properly, thus allowing normal activity by wildlife to cause poutages."

Almost every locale I have ever lived in has those stories. So I suspect that most utilities do not bother (as much as they should) with installing the insulators.

[Seldona]

12. Unbelievable.

This company is a public menace.

[kimmylavin]

4. So let me get this straight...

So that they may protect themselves from lawsuits that they have been slapped with after their power transmission lines went so bad that they were implicated in 167 fires, they want 60,000 people to go without power?
And not only go without power, but specifically during fire-prone days?

Who the hell are the geniuses who keep coming up with the stuff, and WHERE can I get what they are smoking???

Not to mention, I'm wondering where the people are who have the power to fine and regulate these bastards - implicated in 167 fires in the past 5 1/2 years?

[Liberty Belle]

6. The PUC has a bunch of Schwarzenegger appointees who bend over frontwards to accommodate SDG&E.

At least with regard to rubber-stamping Sunrise Powerlink, a high-voltage transmission line the CPUC just approved SDG&E to build -- never mind that the EIR says it poses a very high fire threat--and that the fire danger can't be mitigated. Or that the state's own 2 administrative law judges both say it's not needed to meet our power demands.

Yep, you read that right. A company that's started 167 fires and thinks it can't prevent more fires unless it turns off the power just got state approval to build a high-voltage "Deathlink" as Congressman Filner calls the Powerlink.

There is one glimmer of hope to stop it. Our local Cleveland National Forest Director, William Metz, could block approval over federal land if he chooses.

Oh....except Obama just appointed David Hayes, a former SDG&E lobbyist, as deputy Interior Secretary.

Do you think the fix is in?

I fear we are all toast...literally.

[LiberalFighter]

8. Who came up with this brilliant plan? And thought it would pass muster?

[jmowreader]

9. Miriam, who the hell is Patsy Fritz?

Who the hell could SUPPORT such a lame-ass idea? Oh, maybe Caterpillar would, but with California's budget crisis I don't think there's enough money out there to install generators on all the cell phone towers, water pumping stations and other facilities that would need them.

[Liberty Belle]

13. I've met Patsy; she is a fairly conservative columnist for another local paper.

She' taken heat from her colleagues and friends on this one; I think her belief is genuine; I just think she's on the wrong side of the fence and her view is colored by having lost two friends in a fire caused by power lines.

[MindPilot]

11. Here's a link to the UT fishwrap article

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jun/23/bn23shutoff-sdge-plan/?metro&zIndex=121493

[mrdmk]

15. If power lines are not properly maintained as stated in CPUC report

then there will be problems, high winds or no high winds. Putting all utilities underground has its advantages and disadvantages.

As a resident in Fallbrook, CA, I would like to see a better program of maintenance and also a program of putting the utilities underground. Why, because having utilities underground out weighs the disadvantages.

[Liberty Belle]

16. I agree but undergrounding is very expensive, so the utlity fights it.

[mrdmk]

17. Of course, being practical about this is a priority

Turning off people's electricity is not practical in this day of age. Sempra Energy will get plenty of tax breaks for upgrading system little by little. If they fell behind their maintenance schedule so they can show more profits on their Profit/Loss statement, then they need responsible for their in-action. If somebody needs to hold their feet to the fire, so be it.

[Liberty Belle]

18. We're definitely giving them hot feet!