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Satanica

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SONOMA, Calif. (AP) — More than 1.5 million people in Northern California were in the dark Thursday, most for a second day, after the state’s biggest utility shut off electricity to many areas to prevent its equipment from sparking wildfires as strong winds sweep through.

Unprecedented in scope, the deliberate outages by Pacific Gas & Electric forced schools and businesses to close and otherwise disrupted life for many people, bringing criticism down on the company from the governor and ordinary customers alike.

PG&E cast the blackouts as a matter of public safety, aimed at preventing the kind of blazes that have killed scores of people over the past couple of years, destroyed thousands of homes, and run up tens of billions of dollars in claims that drove the utility into bankruptcy.
[....]
On Wednesday, PG&E cut power to an estimated 600,000 customers in the San Francisco Bay Area — where wind gusts reached 70 mph (110 kph) early Thursday — as well as wine country north of San Francisco, the agricultural Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada foothills, where a November wildfire blamed on PG&E transmission lines killed 85 people and all but incinerated the town of Paradise. The city of San Francisco itself was not in the shut-off zone.

PG&E warned that customers might have to do without power for days after the winds subside because “every inch” of the system must be inspected by helicopters and thousands of workers on the ground and declared safe before the grid is reactivated.

Ahead of the outages, announced earlier this week, Californians rushed to stock up on flashlights, batteries, bottled water, ice and coolers, took money out of ATMs and filled their gas tanks.

The University of California, Berkeley canceled classes for a second day because the campus had no electricity. Oakland closed several schools.

One of the areas where the power was shut off was the suburban town of Moraga, where about 100 homes were ordered evacuated as a wildfire spread in the hills early Thursday.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said PG&E should have been working on making its power system sturdier and more weatherproof.

“They’re in bankruptcy due to their terrible management going back decades,” he said. “They’ve created these conditions. It was unnecessary.”

Faced with customer anger, PG&E put up barricades around its San Francisco headquarters. A customer threw eggs at a PG&E office in Oroville. A PG&E truck was hit by a bullet, but authorities could not immediately say whether it was targeted.

“We realize and understand the impact and the hardship,” said Sumeet Singh, head of PG&E’s Community Wildfire Safety Program. But he urged people not to take it out on PG&E employees.

In the El Dorado Hills east of Sacramento, Ruth Self and her son took the outage there in stride while leaving a Safeway supermarket that had been stripped nearly bare of bottled water and ice. Self said she wasn’t upset, given the lives lost in Paradise, where people were burned in their cars trying to escape.

“I just can’t imagine,” she said. “Hopefully (the outages) are only for a couple days. I think it’s more of a positive than a negative. Ask me again on Friday night when I haven’t had a shower in two days, when I’ve had to spend two days playing card games.”

Meanwhile, Southern California Edison warned that it might cut power to nearly 174,000 customers in nine counties, including Los Angeles. San Diego Gas & Electric notified about 30,000 customers they could lose electricity in backcountry areas.

 
I have a friend affected by this who is hopping mad. There was no warning and she just stocked her freezer. PG&E won't give a time for restoration of power and they have already said they will not reimburse customers for damage or loss sustained during the outage. It's bullshit.
Where does she live that there was no warning? I had warnings for 3 days. Also received a letter a month ago stating it might happen when the weather got bad. In the lead up local TV and radio talked about it, the county and sheriff dept issued alerts.

Also, screw the government. The governor wants everyone to be mad at PG&E, but the state and counties make it difficult to obtain permits for controlled burns and build/replace infrastructure. Plenty of blame to go around, not just the utility.

in July a helicopter bristling with hi tech cameras flew over every power line in my area looking for problems. Flew around my valley for almost an hour. PG&E doing this everywhere. Imagine the cost for that work.


OOH! Let's not forget the San Bruno Pipeline explosion. PGE just can't stay out of trouble.
 
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[…]
For years the utility skimped on safety upgrades and repairs while pumping billions into green energy and electric-car subsidies to please its overlords in Sacramento. Credit Suisse has estimated that long-term contracts with renewable developers cost the utility $2.2 billion annually more than current market power rates.
PG&E customers pay among the highest rates in America. But the utility says inspecting all of its 100,000 or so miles of power lines and clearing dangerous trees would require rates to increase by more than 400%. California’s litigation-friendly environment has also increased insurance rates for tree trimmers and made it hard to find workers.
Meantime, opposition to logging and prescribed burns in California’s forests compounded by a seven-year drought has yielded 147 million dead trees that make for combustible fuel. Rural communities are at especially high fire risk when winds kick up as they have this week.
To avoid more damage, PG&E announced this week that it would cut power across 34 counties in Central and Northern California as long as there are sustained winds of 25 miles an hour and gusts of 45 miles an hour. After winds subside, the utility says it may take several days to inspect equipment before power returns, and there could be more blackouts this fall.
Suddenly, Californians are learning to love fossil fuels. Stores have experienced runs on oil lamps—yes, those still exist—and emergency generators fueled by gasoline, propane or diesel. Napa County wineries and even the tunnel connecting San Francisco with the East Bay are operating on generators.
[…]
 
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Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Californians have a history of passing measures into law To Put Them Into Their Place, then winding up as Them when the winds of change alter their relationship with those laws.

I was TDY to California when the state trial in the Rodney King beating case ended with acquittals for the police officers involved. And the whole state exploded. The guard shacks on the installation had machine guns on the roofs, and the folks manning the guard shacks were in full combat gear and carrying M16 rifles. In the taxi, headed to the airport, I heard the dispatcher telling his drivers, "Reports of gunfire here; avoid it. People lighting fires there; avoid it. Bands roaming the streets challenging motorists over there; avoid it." And the taxi driver, upon observing one lone guy standing on a street corner, remarked that if he didn't get back to where he belonged he'd be dead by nightfall.

Later, reports of people being denied the purchase of firearms because the mandatory waiting period had not yet expired started coming out of California. People were lined up in gunshops seeking to buy guns because they wanted to be able to defend themselves if the utter chaos came to their door, but because there was a law stating Californians seeking to buy firearms had to wait 15 days before they could take possession. If you expect to hear, "Well, we voted for the politicians that enacted this law, so I guess we'll bide our time until the 15 days has passed", you will be disappointed. The people lined up in the gun shops threw iridescent purple fits. Paraphrased, the standard argument was, "But that law is designed to keep guns out of the hands of Undesirables. I am not an Undesirable; I am edjumacated and smrt and I vote the correct way in every election so let me have the gun." The shopkeeper literally had no other response than, "The law says I can't."

Washington is reputed to have said, "Government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master." Maybe some day Californians will learn that lesson.

--Al
 
Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Washington is reputed to have said, "Government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master." Maybe some day Californians will learn that lesson.

--Al

Not likely they shit all over their bed, are sick of sleeping in it and have began to move to Oregon in droves, bringing their garbage politics & driving skills with them
 
California is a cancer, the coastal idiots screwed up the state, then priced themselves out, now they are moving to other states to spread their cancer.

Oddly they move because they don't like what they did to Cali, but continue to do the same shit where they go. *cough* WA, ID, CO *cough*
 
California is a cancer, the coastal idiots screwed up the state, then priced themselves out, now they are moving to other states to spread their cancer.

Oddly they move because they don't like what they did to Cali, but continue to do the same shit where they go. *cough* WA, ID, CO *cough*
Sounds like a liberal sickness, seems to be happening all over the country
 
and have began to move to Oregon in droves,

The Californication of Oregon started 40 years ago. That's how Portland got the way it is.
Back in the 80's when I was vactioning in Oregon, there were bumper stickers "Don't Californicate Oregon". Then it spread to the Puget Sound. Pod people.
But it was a coastal californication because home prices were going up way out of proportion to the rest of the state.
 
Sorry politics in Oregon have always sucked just like California, it’s just cheaper to buy/live there that’s why they move, same politics less expensive
Depending upon your region, The county we are in is/was extremely conservative blue collar laid back low traffic, low cost of housing, low crime etc. As for Eugene & Portland that's an entirely different story. Though like roaches they have began to infest our county, they are showing up at the town hall meetings, getting city jobs and participating in the politics and the left is rearing it's ugly irrational head, all the while over the past few years we are getting used to hearing "so yeah, we just spent all that money, and we really don't want to talk about mismanagement. The bottom line is the money is gone and we need more, so are you going to give it to us willingly or are we going to have to impose more taxes an take it from you? Great! Thanks! We will talk to you again next year! It's always a pleasure!" As a native of Oregon, with 9 lines tracing back to mid 1800's, I can promise you much of Oregon "was" not like California.
 
Depending on wind, there will be another "public safety event" a.k.a. shutting off power.

I just whip out my solar chargers, and fill some water buckets. After the last event my next door neighbor bought a sweeeeeet generator.
 
$750.00 generator
Where is one for that price?
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I'm using a borrowed generator right now.
I'm wondering if it's really worth it.
It runs for 10.5 hours on 5 gallons of gas.
Roughly $4.00 per gallon =$40 every 21 hours. Maybe better to throw away the bulk of my food and buy some ice for the ice chest.
 
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[....]
PG&E incident reports obtained by 2 Investigates shows PG&E equipment may have ignited more than 400 fires in California last year.

This is according to data obtained by 2 Investigates through a public records request to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). The regulator requires PG&E and other large investor-owned utilities to submit information on these "reportable events" to improve regulations and prevent future fires.

Looking at Sonoma County, which is currently affected by the Kincade Fire, the data shows PG&E reported its possible involvement in more than 20 fires in the area in 2018.

All of those incidents were relatively small vegetation fires in rural areas. All but one caused a power outage, and most of them involved a PG&E conductor making contact with another object. There were five instances where equipment or facility failure may have sparked the ignition.

On Thursday, PG&E filed its latest incident report with the CPUC in regards to the Kincade Fire. In the report, PG&E revealed a broken jumper wire was found on a transmission tower in the area of the wildfire.

Soon after the report's release PG&E's CEO Bill Johnson provided context and said the preliminary information in the incident report does not show what caused the fire or where it started.

"We filed the report with the regulator and are sharing it with you out of a sense of transparency," Johnson said on Thursday.

PG&E did not respond to 2 Investigates' request for comment on this story. In a past statement, a utility spokesman said PG&E recognizes it needs to take a leading role in reducing wildfire risk.

 
Watching the current fire this morning, a co-worker made a good point. For years the California government has been trying to get people to drive electric cars, now with the fires burning the power companies have turned off the electricity, right after the power was turned off, the CA government has told a bunch of people to evacuate.

We were wondering many electric car owners couldn't drive, because their car's batteries were either dead or low. Even if they did have enough juice to drive to a charging station it takes at least 20 minutes (normally a lot more) to charge up and think about the line that would be there for the same reason. Btw, this is contingent if the charging station is outside the power blackout area. At least with a gasoline car you rarely have an empty tank at home and you can always put your lawn mower gas in your car's tank, in a pinch.
 
Two issues, first old wires and equipment
Second, after years of battling environmentalist won and put a stop to controlled burns, because of air quality issues that kept uncontrollable fires from starting, as usual they fucked up. Because of their great victory we now have the worse air quality ever and billions in fire damage. Environmentalists usually fuckup, due to tunnel vision, guess they no longer teach cause and effect in schools
Ask me how I feel about progressive liberals :finger:
As far as electric environmentally safe cars


A separate study from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that, depending on the type of plug-in being built, manufacturing a battery-powered cargenerates anywhere from 15% to 68% moreCO2 emissions than a conventional gas-powered car.
Between producing the battery and electricity the good environmentalist are producing more carbon than burning gasoline, kind of like flying around the world in private jets and MAGA yachts to tell people to decrease their carbon footprint :finger: :finger:
 
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Depending upon your region, The county we are in is/was extremely conservative blue collar laid back low traffic, low cost of housing, low crime etc. As for Eugene & Portland that's an entirely different story. Though like roaches they have began to infest our county, they are showing up at the town hall meetings, getting city jobs and participating in the politics and the left is rearing it's ugly irrational head, all the while over the past few years we are getting used to hearing "so yeah, we just spent all that money, and we really don't want to talk about mismanagement. The bottom line is the money is gone and we need more, so are you going to give it to us willingly or are we going to have to impose more taxes an take it from you? Great! Thanks! We will talk to you again next year! It's always a pleasure!" As a native of Oregon, with 9 lines tracing back to mid 1800's, I can promise you much of Oregon "was" not like California.
Most of California is not like Commifornica, as soon as you leave the major cities along the coast the population becomes normal
 
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