California is Burning (Again)

[gnarbro365]

[Kenny Satch]

Watched Frontline's Fire in Paradise and it had me wondering how anyone that experienced that inferno could consider living there again or any similar area prone to such fires. Don't think I could

Vibes to all those now dealing with loss of life and their homes and in the past.

[MultiVerse]

It seems like many of the fires start from downed power lines. When you factor in all the costs of fighting fires, destroyed buildings, etc, does that not justify the expense of putting many of the lines underground? What am I missing here?

I don't know if anyone has done the math but burying high voltage power lines is crazy expensive. Underground high voltage power lines require conduits inside concrete tunnels with access rooms for every junction/splice. It starts at $1 million per mile for 230 kV and goes up from there with increasing voltage.


https://www.xcelenergy.com/staticfil..._FactSheet.pdf

[old goat]

Watched Frontline's Fire in Paradise and it had me wondering how anyone that experienced that inferno could consider living there again or any similar area prone to such fires. Don't think I could

Vibes to all those now dealing with loss of life and their homes and in the past.

Scary. Seems like this year the authorities are being much more cautious with evacuation orders--not waiting for the fires to get close. Seems especially reasonable when you're talking about a populous area like Sonoma County where a too-late evacuation would mean a lot of people burning to death in their cars.
And that bulldozer operator is one bad ass.

[old goat]

I don't know if anyone has done the math but burying high voltage power lines is crazy expensive. Underground high voltage power lines require conduits inside concrete tunnels with access rooms for every junction/splice. It starts at $1 million per mile for 230 kV and goes up from there with increasing voltage.


https://www.xcelenergy.com/staticfil..._FactSheet.pdf

Seems like maintaining and replacing the lines (the liine that sparked the Camp fire was 100 years old) and maintaining fire-break quality clearing under the lines with no trees tall and close enough to fall on the lines would be faster and more cost effective. Even if there was the money to bury transmission lines, by the time the job was done the state would have burned up with nothing left to save. Whichever path is chosen rate payers had better be prepared to pay more to fund it--even if govt. entities take over PGE.

[neufox47]

I don't know if anyone has done the math but burying high voltage power lines is crazy expensive. Underground high voltage power lines require conduits inside concrete tunnels with access rooms for every junction/splice. It starts at $1 million per mile for 230 kV and goes up from there with increasing voltage.


https://www.xcelenergy.com/staticfil..._FactSheet.pdf

Well total costs from just 2017 and 2018 are roughly $550,000,000,000. So that would pay for 550,000 miles of underground cable at $1m / mile.

[MultiVerse]

Well total costs from just 2017 and 2018 are roughly $550,000,000,000. So that would pay for 550,000 miles of underground cable at $1m / mile.

The xcelenergy source says $1m / mile but I guess in California it's more like $3m / mile for transmission lines that have half the lifespan of overhead lines.

I suspect more transmission lines will be buried in the future but it's a slow process because of funding, easement & land purchase requirements, environmental issues, construction time, and finding enough skilled workers. Even if burying lines is the solution, the problem still takes decades to solve.

[hutash]

Raymond Chandler wrote about the winds:

Yeah, he sums it up perfectly. Fortunately my wife is out of town or I would be hiding the knives.

Winds are quite as bad as they were for the Thomas fire, but NWS issued their first extreme red flag warning...wouldn't that be an infrared flag?

[old goat]

^^ In a lot of ways solving state and local issues before they become/became untenable lost ground to everyone's national ideological obsessions and now that the bill is due, nobody knows what to do.



Video of San Francisco Firefighters 798 driving in the terrifying Kincade wildfire:

https://twitter.com/SFFFLocal798/sta...104128/video/1

I'm not sure ideology has much to do with the PGE situation, if that's what you're referring to. Combination of corporate greed and incompetence and the PUC asleep at the wheel have been the problem. PGE and the PUC have been mismanaging the Norcal power grid for many decades through administrations of both political parties. That, and the ratepayers don't want to pay for what safe reliable energy costs.

Truckee is scary. There's minimal if any enforcement of defensible space, even when complaints are made and building codes are either inadequate or not enforced (although CA building code mandates fire resistant decks permitted construction of wooden decks is still going on). There is no community fire break, except for the Tahoe Donner subdivision, realizing that firebreaks do nothing about wind-driven embers, which is how the big fires spread.

Watching PBS news tonight, one problem is a lack of linemen to maintain and replace transmission lines.

[bodywhomper]

The xcelenergy source says $1m / mile but I guess in California it's more like $3m / mile for transmission lines that have half the lifespan of overhead lines.

I suspect more transmission lines will be buried in the future but it's a slow process because of funding, easement & land purchase requirements, environmental issues, construction time, and finding enough skilled workers. Even if burying lines is the solution, the problem still takes decades to solve.

One of my theories is that PGE is hedging that the state streamlines and/or suspends a lot of the regulatory environment that PGE claims has been holding it back from undergrounding distribution and transmission lines.

The Nation just released a long form article about PGE, including apparent info about unused budget $200+M for putting lines underground.

remember that two of the currently burning fires likely resulted from nonPGE southern CA transmission lines during high wind conditions.

[TahoeJ]

Well, SoCal Edison isn’t exactly considered a good example either.

The infrastructure costs are minimal when compared to the economic impact of these power outages, nevermind the actual fires.

[The Tortoise]

Watched Frontline's Fire in Paradise and it had me wondering how anyone that experienced that inferno could consider living there again or any similar area prone to such fires. Don't think I could

Nor I. Holy shit that was intense. Frontline is such a great series and that film is no exception.

"Nobody expected the Camp Fire to travel 7 1/2 miles in an hour and a half"

I had no idea it spread that quickly. It's remarkable there wasn't more loss of life.

[54-46]

Check out this piece from The Atlantic about “technical debt”:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...c-debt/600979/

[bodywhomper]

Well, SoCal Edison isn’t exactly considered a good example either.

The infrastructure costs are minimal when compared to the economic impact of these power outages, nevermind the actual fires.

Agree.

I thought that I read or heard that LADWP owned the transmission line that likely started the fire by the Getty.

[hercule33]

Check out this piece from The Atlantic about “technical debt”:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...c-debt/600979/

Good article showing the difficulties of fixing the power problem, among infrastructure issues. It will be interesting to see when we will be able to get consensus to fix these issues.

[skaredshtles]

Good article showing the difficulties of fixing the power problem, among infrastructure issues. It will be interesting to see when we will be able to get consensus to fix these issues.

Here in Colorado we have TABOR, which will ENSURE that the infrastructure issues of our fair state NEVER get addressed. Oh sure - we'll fix an occasional bridge when it falls down... but not until it falls down.

[LightRanger]

I thought that I read or heard that LADWP owned the transmission line that likely started the fire by the Getty.

You did indeed.

[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

Why are we so fixated on the power lines causing fires all of the sudden?

The landscape in these areas is designed to burn. It has to burn to stay healthy and it will burn and man will cause it to burn no matter what we do to prevent it. It's how the ecosystem has evolved over thousands of years. If the power lines don't cause it, something else will by man's hand.

We need to look at how we develop in the interface, and "shelter in place" design and construction when we do. These mass evacuations are ridiculous and dangerous. The money we're looking at spending to underground lines would be much better spent on community planning and re-configuring.

[Sullywhacker]

Why are we so fixated on the power lines causing fires all of the sudden?

The landscape in these areas is designed to burn. It has to burn to stay healthy and it will burn and man will cause it to burn no matter what we do to prevent it. It's how the ecosystem has evolved over thousands of years. If the power lines don't cause it, something else will by man's hand.

We need to look at how we develop in the interface, and "shelter in place" design and construction when we do. These mass evacuations are ridiculous and dangerous. The money we're looking at spending to underground lines would be much better spent on community planning and re-configuring.

http://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/op...core-ios-share

[LightRanger]

The Manjoo article is fair.

But David Roberts's four-part series of articles are a lot better, IMO.

[BigDaddy]

Nor I. Holy shit that was intense. Frontline is such a great series and that film is no exception.

"Nobody expected the Camp Fire to travel 7 1/2 miles in an hour and a half"

I had no idea it spread that quickly. It's remarkable there wasn't more loss of life.

Crazy and so intense... these fires are so scary.

Love Frontline, too. Funny thing is, I took film making in high school with Frontline Senior Director of Production. You could tell back then that he was talented. His brother is also in films and won an Academy Award 2015 for the sound editing in Mad Max. And yet another brother, the most wealthy now, used to deal the best weed in high school...

Quite the accomplished family.

[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

Behind a pay wall there..

This is a piece written in 1995 by Mark Davis, author of City of Quartz, in response to the 1993 fires in Malibu. A lot of people including me dug it back up after the fires last year.

https://la.indymedia.org/news/2007/10/208946.php

In 1993 during those fires I was out in a parking lot in L.A. charring 4x douglas fir beams to be installed in a distressed french country style kitchen in some actor's home up in the hills. The sky was orange and It was raining ash. Irony bordering hard on the surreal. Later that afternoon when I got home to Hermosa beach, my wife and I joined the hundreds down on the sand watching Malibu burn across the bay.

15 years later we almost got burned over in Nor Cal. And let me tell you, an Aero Union P3 Orion blowing the shingles off your home has got to be the most beautiful sight in the world.

[Game Over]

Thanks for the frontline link.

Our new next door neighbors lost everything in Paradise.

[Jumper Bones]

I work ATC in a Tower in SoCal. It's been an interesting past few days. Mad props to LA Co Fire, those guys have been working their asses off all week, jumping all over fires. Helicopters in an out of our field constantly. We had one that spiked up in Brea Canyon off the 57 Wednesday, they were all over that immediately, suppressed the shit out of it ASAP.

[TahoeJ]

http://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/op...core-ios-share

A bit hyperbolic for my taste...