Unplugging is not a solution
Pacific Gas & Electric’s problems will not disappear in the dark
Eric Boose / Opinion Editor / The USD Vista
On Oct. 9, around 800,000 Californians lost power for as long as four days, according to The Sacramento Bee. The cause of the blackout was not some power surge or natural disaster, it was a conscious decision by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) to turn out the lights on a couple million customers in Northern and Central California. The power shutdown is PG&E’s plan to reduce the risk of wildfires while the affected regions experience dry and windy weather — peak fire conditions.
Power limitations are not a new strategy for fire limitation, but The Los Angeles Times reports that California has never seen a planned blackout as widespread as this one. San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has deployed power cuts on multiple occasions, and deployed a much smaller one — affecting only around 30,000 people according to The San Diego Union-Tribune — at the same time as PG&E’s massive blackout. The power cut is not inherently a problem, but PG&E has done almost nothing right in their handling of it.
The blackout is not only leaving homeowners in the dark, but also left businesses without power through the end of the week and into the weekend. Such a prolonged blackout can also spoil food, restrict or deny access to water, shut down highway tunnels, and threaten the lives of people who require powered devices like respirators to survive.
Of course, PG&E has been preparing for such problems, especially the last two. The utility has set up emergency power stations — generators for powerless customers to access — and they have been working with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to address possible tunnel closures. However, PG&E has set up only one emergency power station per county, aside from Butte and Napa counties, which each have two. Also, that work with Caltrans to deal with tunnel closures was hasty. Caltrans was notified that Caldecott Tunnel, one of the busiest tunnels in the Bay Area, would be affected only 36 hours before the blackout began. To say that PG&E has been careless in their handling of a problem they knew was coming might be an understatement. It certainly raises the question of whether a massive power cut is really the best way to prevent wildfires.
PG&E would certainly say that it is. And for them, this is the best solution. PG&E is a corporation. Their prerogative is to maximize profit. PG&E is also bankrupt, and a convicted felon. The company declared bankruptcy in January, having paid out billions in damages related to multiple devastating wildfires caused by the company’s negligence in maintaining its infrastructure, according to The Los Angeles Times. One of those fires was last year’s Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history, killing 86 people according to The Los Angeles Times. In 2010, PG&E was convicted of six felonies after a pipeline exploded in San Bruno, California, killing eight people.
With dry conditions and high winds, the best — and by that I mean cheapest — way for PG&E to protect itself from even more liability is to simply cut power for over two million people. Notice that this does not inherently protect people, or even necessarily prevent fires. As Brian Edwards-Tiekert of KPFA Radio in Berkeley points out, people without power will light candles, use gas-powered generators, and cook on grills. Of course, PG&E is not liable for any of that.
PG&E’s choice to blackout millions of customers is reprehensible. Their motive is not safety, it is laziness. The best way for PG&E to prevent wildfires is for them to update their infrastructure, conduct strict and frequent inspections, and to keep up with necessary maintenance. They have not done any of those things.
Instead, in April, the utility paid $4.5 billion in dividends to stockholders, according to KQED, Northern California’s National Public Radio affiliate. Later in April, PG&E spent $235 million, not on new infrastructure or maintenance, but on employee bonuses, according to CBS News. Along with refusing to update their infrastructure, the company has not changed its “shabby, corner-cutting, shareholder-favoring ways,” since 2010, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. In December 2018, a California Public Utilities Commission Report stated that PG&E pressured employees to falsify safety data between 2012 and 2017.
Along with spending money on shareholders instead of new equipment and continuing to lie about the safety of that equipment, PG&E has spent much of 2019 failing to conduct routine maintenance. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that as of Oct. 1, the company had completed only one-third of the tree trimming they needed to for the entire year. Three-quarters of the way through 2019, PG&E had done one-third of one of its most basic duties.
So, cutting power to 2.2 million customers might be one of the more responsible things PG&E has done recently. Even then, that choice only shows how little they care about the safety of their customers, let alone Californians in general. PG&E, in its current state, has consistently put shareholders over safety. Ten months ago, regulators were considering breaking up PG&E, or at the very least, converting it into a public utility. Now, it is clearly time for some sort of transformative change.
As The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Editorial Board puts it, “this week, PG&E may have dug its grave.” If that is the case, someone ought to push them into it. Their negligence has not just left Californians in the dark, it has left them in danger.