Coordination issues may be factor in fires

hearing.

The substation fire illustrated a problem that has recurred for years in San Francisco. One or two fires break out every year at one of the PG&E substations — there are 46 of them spread across the city — and additional flareups in the underground vaults that serve neighborhoods or individual buildings, Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said Wednesday.

In the past couple of years, she said, her department has tried to familiarize itself with substations by attending workshops and tours led by PG&E.

“I’d say in the last two years, we’ve done substation tours more formally,” HayesWhite said, adding that it’s the job mainly of the neighborhood fire station to understand complicated infrastructure. Peskin, who had to leave the hearing early, wasn’t satisfied. “This is the classic thing that always happens,” he said after the hearing. “It’s not until you have a fire in a substation that it comes out that our fire department doesn’t do exercises or trainings in substations. Then all of a sudden, everybody announces that they’re starting to train.”

Questions are building at City Hall about the aging infrastructure at PG&E substations and the lack of oversight of these facilities, which aren’t inspected regularly by the Fire Department.

State regulators have largely allowed PG&E and other utilities to police themselves and create their own inspection processes for substations — a practice that has long troubled City Attorney Dennis Herrera.