SoCal Edison prepares for fire season

Officials say they expect it to be worse than last year

Southern California Edison officials said Thursday they are preparing for a fire season expected to be worse than last year, but said they’ve improved their safety strategies.

Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared the week of May 3-9 to be “Wildfire Preparedness Week.”

Over the past three years, California has experienced five of the deadliest wildfires in state history, saw 3.7 million acres burned and more than 34,000 structures destroyed, Newsom said.

Despite COVID-19, he, along with other professionals who deal with fire preparedness, said they took the measures and the buildup to this year seriously.

“Our fuels are drying up and support enough for fire activity to develop,” said Tom Rolinski, a fire scientist expert with SoCal Edison. “This is the time of year you start seeing fires pretty much every day.”

Rolinski said it wouldn’t necessarily be large fires every day, but that there would be a noticeable increase in fires every day.

“Last year was a very quiet year, firewise, across the region and the state,” Rolinski said. “This year, it looks like it’s going to be a more active season.”

The fields, Rolinski said, are expected to be much drier this year in both the summer and the fall, and therefore would lead to more potential wildfires.

Since 2017, a weapon in Edison’s arsenal to battle fires has been Public Safety Power Shutoffs, or PSPS, said Don Daingler, director of business resiliency for SoCal Edison. He said that, each year, SoCal Edison has strived to get better at implementing the shutoffs.

Last year, the Tick Fire burned 4,615 acres, destroyed 22 buildings and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of Santa Clarita residents. That October fire, along with a number of instances during the year, was preceded by power safety shutoffs.

The shutoffs drew the ire of residents and gained attention from legislators, but Daingler said SoCal Edison is improving the ways in which it determines use of these shutoffs year after year.

From creating better models for understanding high-risk areas, to improved sensors in certain areas, to having a staff of meteorologists predicting hazardous wind conditions, Daingler says they’re becoming more and more accurate with shutoff events.

“If we’re trying to make a decision about shutting power off, we want to be as surgical as we possibly can, literally down not just to the circuit, but now to the sub-circuit level,” said Daingler.

“Just because we’re anticipating more fire activity this year doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll have more public safety power shutoff events than we did last year.”

This is the first story in a series looking at how local agencies are preparing the Santa Clarita Valley for the 2020 fire season.