Reflections from the Fire Danger Zones
In California about 12 million Californians live in high fire danger zones – i.e. when the Santa Ana and Diablo winds blow in the fall, a man made spark can set off the dry brush, and people can lose their homes, their entire communities, their loved ones, their lives.
For many years, we lived in Venice and watched from the safety of Venice Beach, as fires tore over and down the Santa Monica Mountains above Malibu destroying all in their path. Now we live close to a state park where thousands and thousands hike and enjoy themselves in the mountains on the weekends and during the week. It certainly changes one’s perspective.
Fire is a real and present danger for us, especially during the fall. And 90% of those fires are human caused – careless campers or partiers, cigarette smokers flicking their butts or ashes, power lines arcing in the high winds, sparks from a welder, sparks from someone clearing brush, from a car crash. Most people are very careful at this time of year; only a few are not.
The Santa Ana winds come like clockwork every fall; they are hot or cold, dry, north to northeast winds off the desert. They pick up sparks and turn them into fast moving brush fires or forest fires, depending on whether you live south or north.
Our rains end in spring (March or April) and do not return ‘til late fall. The prevailing marine winds during much of the year are moist and nourishing to native plants, but, not so in the fall.
The natural cycles of our year mean that during the late summer and early fall, the vegetation is drying out and then dying in preparation for their winter rebirth. So the environment is already bone dry, when the fall winds arrive.
Climate change is only making matters worse – intensifying the fires, lengthening the fire season. Repeated, severe droughts have killed too many magnificent trees up in the mountains, creating conditions for immense conflagrations throughout the Sierras.
We all run our homes and businesses on electric power, and the utilities’ transmission lines girdle our state. Many outside of the state’s major urban areas have lost power for substantial periods of time due to high winds and the mitigation of fire risk. Try to imagine the elderly and disabled using oxygen or ventilators or other electrically powered medical equipment to survive. Imagine the small business, especially your local restaurant, without power to keep its foods refrigerated. Imagine gas stations with no power to operate their pumps, and local banks with no access to your cash. Do we want to see a state where each home and every business must have its own back up generator to survive?
Utilities have responded unevenly to the increasing threats of fire. After the San Diego fires of 2007, San Diego Gas and Electric invested in upgrading its systems so they could carefully target their shut offs in high wind events to those homes and communities at high risk. At the moment, 24,000 customers have their power shut off due to high winds and high risk of fire. https://www.sdge.com/residential/customer-service/outage-center/outage-map Pacific Gas and Electric serves much of the northern part of the state; they did not invest in the comparable equipment upgrades, they did not do adequate maintenance, but rather used their cash to boost executive salaries and ensure shareholder dividends. As a result 2 million customers’ power was turned off during the recent windstorms and the fires in Sonoma County. About 700,000 residences and businesses are currently without power. https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/emergency-preparedness/natural-disaster/wildfires/public-safety-event.page Last week, the company estimated that it would take 10 years to make the necessary upgrades, part of the difficulty they project that they will encounter is the shortage of sufficiently skilled electrical technicians. Likewise, Southern California Edison was less aggressive than San Diego in upgrading their systems; about 62,000 are currently without power, and another 300,000 may lose power later today. https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2019/10/30/socal-edison-shutting-power-off-santa-ana-wind-event/ At Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, a city owned utility, only 900 customers lost power during the recent windstorms and fires due to the densely populated urbanized landscape it serves, and the upgraded electrical infrastructure it operates. In the case of the Getty fire, they have concluded that a branch broke in the high winds and fell across the electrical wires, causing them to arc and set the nearby brush ablaze. In the case of the Palisades fire, a motorist passing by took footage of its very earliest stages right by the side of the road; my guess is that a careless cigarette butt or spark from a passing motorist will turn out to be the cause.
The California PUC is responsible for regulating the safety, rates and effectiveness of the state’s utility companies, almost all of whom enjoy natural monopoly status. It is certainly complicit in the failures to prod some of the state’s utilities to make the necessary investments and needed upgrades in the state’s electrical grid.
At the other end of the spectrum are the city, state and local fire departments that pool resources throughout California and the entire Western region to fight overwhelming fires in Northern and Southern California. Firefighters are coming from Oregon, Washington and Montana. This is known as mutual aid – a concept we should all embrace and not just in disaster response. https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/wildfires/why-californias-wildfire-mutual-aid-system-may-be-the-best-in-the-world/103-613856495 Imagine if we applied that concept to educating all California children, insuring all Californians, and assuring adequate clean water and reliable, affordable power, or even just to clearing neighborhood brush.
Prepared by: Lucien Wulsin
Dated: 10/30/19