Was it right call? Unclear if lines damaged by wind would have sparked blaze
As Pacific Gas and Electric Co. nears the end of a heavily critiqued mass outage, crews inspecting thousands of miles of powereddown electrical lines had found more than 30 instances of weatherrelated damage to its system as of Friday evening, the utility reported.
Any of the pieces of broken infrastructure could in theory have sparked a deadly conflagration. And the damage underscores the stark choice the utility said it faced: darkness or fire.
While PG&E has not released details of the windrelated damage, it’s exactly these incidents — branches striking lines, lines snapping in the wind, pieces of towers falling off — during hot, dry and blustery weather that led to last year’s deadly Camp Fire, the Wine Country fires two years ago and scores of other massive blazes up and down the state.
The utility said it had to cut power to 738,000 customers — households and busi
nesses, together representing millions of Californians — to forestall fires, despite the obvious downsides of outages.
Asked if he felt vindicated by the damage his crews found, PG&E CEO Bill Johnson demurred.
“Vindication is not the right word,” Johnson said Friday at a press conference at PG&E headquarters in San Francisco. “If you looked at what was in front of us, the decision we had to make, even if there had been no damage, I think it was warranted.”
PG&E has more than 6,300 field personnel and 44 helicopters scanning for damage. If equipment is found broken, crews will isolate the area from the rest of the grid, allowing the power to go on while workers fix the damage, Sarkissian said.
Once poles, towers and lines are deemed safe, a call is made to the PG&E control center, which flips the switch on for that area. As of Friday at noon, nearly threequarters of customers affected by the shutoff, 543,000 housholds and businesses, had their power restored, PG&E said.
Jan Null, a meteorologist who has closely followed PG&E power shutdowns and weatherrelated fires in the area, said this week’s wind paled in comparison to what created the deadly Tubbs Fire and other North Bay blazes two years ago.
In 2017, on the night the North Bay fires were ignited, a Coffey Park weather station at an altitude of 576 feet recorded 68 mph gusts, compared to only 21 mph gusts this week at the same spot. On Hawkeye Ridge, at a 2,000foot elevation and 4 miles northeast of Geyserville, wind gusts reached 33 mph this week, but topped out at 79 mph two years ago.
“As far as meteorology, it was not a biblical 100year event,” Null said. “It’s something that happens every two to five years.”
Still, Null said, more information about what equipment failed would be needed to draw conclusions.
“We don’t know if the damage could have caused a spark or fire,” Null said. “So without knowing that, the number ... doesn’t mean that much.”
Duncan Callaway, a UC Berkeley associate professor of energy and resources, said to fully grasp what the almost two dozen electronic failures mean, you’d need to know how much damage normally happens and how much leads to fires.
“I don’t think it indicates absolutely that they did the right thing, but if there were no incidents it would be harder to argue,” Callaway said.
PG&E has shut down power before dangerous weather just a handful of times since it started the program. It’s impossible to tell with certainty if it dodged major wildfires with those decisions, but in required reports sent to the California Public Utilities Commission after the events, the utility detailed significant damage.
In a previous shutdown on Sept. 25, PG&E cut power to more than 75,000 customers in the North Bay, Butte County and elsewhere during a highwind episode.
Upon inspecting the lines, crews found four instances of windrelated breakdowns, including three incidents where vegetation was found on an overhead transformer and conductors and one where a conductor was found damaged, according to the report. The utility included photos of incidents in Oroville, Butte County and Nevada City.
In June, the utility clipped electricity in the North Bay and Sierra foothills where about 22,000 customers lost power. No damage was found in the North Bay, however, in the foothills PG&E found five areas of windrelated damage. Falling trees damaged service drops into homes in two cases, and three other hazards were found, such as branches lying across conductors, according to that report.
In October 2018, PG&E’s first preventive shutdown, the utility cut power to about 60,000 customers in the North Bay and Sierra foothills.
Crews inspecting the lines found 23 instances of windrelated damage in the shutdown area, according to the report to the commission. PG&E equipment suffered damage in 18 incidents, 15 of which appeared to be from falling vegetation. In addition, crews found five cases of hazards that almost damaged equipment, such as branches lying across conductors.
The broken equipment included 18 damaged spans of conductor, five crossarms, three insulators, two fuses, one transformer and one pole, according to the report.
In that report, PG&E concluded: “Although we were able to leverage and successfully execute the (public safety power shutoff ) process with zero safety incidents and no ignitions related to PG&E facilities in the affected areas after the (shutoff ) was initiated, we continue to view (shutoffs) as a tool of last resort.”
Southern California shutdowns have also provided data about possible nearmisses.
In November, San Diego Gas & Electric cut power ahead of a violent Santa Ana wind event for more than 20,000 customers.
Patrolling workers found damage in five spots, including broken wire strands, a crossarm, a tree into a secondary wire, a tree branch into conductors and a severely leaning pole.
In its report, the utility argued that the damage showed why its shutoff was reasonable.
“A damaging wind event occurred as evidenced by the amount of tree damage observed in some areas of the SDG&E service territory,” the San Diego utility wrote.
It included dozens of photos of fallen trees and branches, and downed or endangered electrical infrastructure.
Assemblyman Marc Levine, DSan Rafael, said PG&E does not deserve the benefit of the doubt in declaring it made the right call. It’s unclear if the damaged equipment had been inspected or maintained properly.
“PG&E has a credibility problem, the CEO admitted it,” Levine said, referring to PG&E’s Bill Johnson’s comments Thursday that his company “was not adequately prepared.” “I don’t know why we should trust PG&E now.”
Levine said PG&E’s equipment should not need to be dormant during high winds, particularly after the weather winds up below forecasted troubles.
“This weather event was not as severe as predicted, but they have left the system in such disrepair that a lowerlevel event left them so damaged,” Levine said.
Levine plans to introduce legislation next year requiring PG&E to compensate ratepayers affected by shutdowns. PG&E doesn’t charge customers for power they don’t receive, but it also does not automatically reimburse them for losses during planned outages, forcing them to file claims or take the utility to small claims court if they want to seek compensation.
“If it’s going to be part of PG&E’s business,” Levine said, “we need to set up a system to compensate customers and ratepayers inconvenienced by this.”
Berkeley’s Callaway said critics can’t simply assert that PG&E equipment should not fail in severe winds, because it takes time and money to strengthen such infrastructure. At present, shutting down might be a necessary evil.
“You can be angry with PG&E for not having that now,” Callway said. “But you have to expect it to take them a little bit of time to harden their infrastructure.” Chronicle staff writer Rachel Swan
contributed to this report.