PG&E officials listen to Ridge residents
PARADISE » Representatives of Pacific Gas and Electric Company met with Ridge residents on Thursday night at the Paradise Alliance Church for almost two hours. The purpose of the meeting organized by Vice Mayor Steve Crowder was to give residents an idea of how and why the public safety shut- offs were occurring in Paradise.
PG& E vice president Aaron Johnson, announced in May 2019 the company’s decision to underground all of the electricity in Paradise from the same location. He was back in town on Thursday night to give Paradise residents an idea of how the power safety shut- offs are decided.
Johnson said that he not is overseeing the company’s part of the Paradise rebuild but was part of the early design of the public safety shut- off program.
He also addressed the status of the undergrounding of the electric grid that is now in year two. He noted that has had nine public safety shut- off days, which means it’s been impacted more than some other areas and as much as Sonoma and Napa Counties.
“The impact has always been challenging with this program,” he said. “It’s particularly challenging here.”
Johnson admitted several times that his company has to get better at that process, saying they want to get to a point where the shut- offs are less widespread and for shorter durations. One of the things they’d like to is to break the grid up into smaller pieces.
“We can eliminate the risk that utility infrastructure is a possible ignition to a fire,” he said. “It’s not small fires that we worry about, but it’s very large fires that we’re trying to eliminate with this program.”
He added that large fires have a very large coincidence with the wind so big winds are ones that trigger power shut- offs. He said that the slogan for employees this year for shutoff events was “Be smarter, smaller and quicker about PSPS.”
“This program needs to get significantly better,” he said as they look to get into the offseason to get ready for next year, saying they may be able to shrink the fire map. He noted that there may be areas of Paradise that they may come out of the program.
The other thing they hope to get in place for 2021 is weather forecasting that becomes more granular. That will help improve their work in reducing the size of the shut- offs. He said this year they’ve seen shut- offs in 2020, that if they had been in 2019, would have been 40- 60 percent smaller.
In Butte County, he said that PG& E has been able to reduce the number of affected customers from 18,000 to 12,000, though he added that progress is not enough. He also said the company is going to break Paradise away from the Feather River Canyon so that the wind models don’t impact Paradise.
One of the ways to do is get more weather stations on the Ridge to isolate those areas in order to better determine turn on and off times. He also added as that as they underground lines in Paradise they can get more areas out of the programs — as long as they can safely get power into them.
He also said that the company has doubled the helicopter fleet to check lines to make sure they can safely turn the power up. Nearly every resident who
questioned Johnson said that they were pleased that he was in town and willing to listen to their concerns.
Not only did Johnson have to hear the concerns of the residents, Paradise Unified School District superintendent Tom Taylor told PG& E about the impacts that missing school can have on a child’s education down the road. He noted absenteeism is the main driver in high school dropout rates.
He told the representatives and the residents there in attendance that Paradise Unified School District children have missed 11 days of the 63 instructional days they’ve had all year. Nine of those were due to the power shut- offs.
Those missed days due to public safety shut- offs are equal to the number needed to be considered chronically absent by the state. He noted that the state doesn’t really care why a student missed school. If they are absent more than 10 percent of the time, it is determined to be a chronic absence.
“Every one of our students this year are defined as to be chronically absent,” Taylor said, adding that is almost entirely due to the fire. He also told the crowd that only 17 percent of chronically absent students can read proficiently by the third grade.
He added that Chico, in particular, hasn’t had those impacts and that gives those students an advantage over Paradise students.
Also there in attendance at the meeting were state Assemblyman James Gallagher, Congressman Doug LaMalfa, representatives of state Sen. Jim Neilsen’s staff, along with Councilor Jody Jones, incoming Councilor- elect Steve “Woody” Culleton, Councilor Michael Zuccolillo and Mayor Greg Bolin.