PG&E Responds to Latest CAL FIRE Announcement
June 08 2018 - 7:23PM
Business Wire
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) today issued the
following statement in response to the latest release of
information by the California Department of Forestry and Fire
Protection (CAL FIRE) regarding some of the October 2017 Northern
California wildfires:
The safety of our customers, their families and the communities
we serve is our most important job. The loss of life, homes and
businesses in these extraordinary wildfires is simply
heartbreaking, and we remain focused on helping communities recover
and rebuild.
Programs Overall Met State’s High
Standards
We look forward to the opportunity to carefully review the CAL
FIRE reports to understand the agency’s perspectives.
Based on the information we have so far, we continue to believe
our overall programs met our state’s high standards.
For example, PG&E meets or exceeds regulatory requirements
for pole integrity management, using a comprehensive database to
manage multiple patrol and inspection schedules of our more than
two million poles.
Similarly, under PG&E’s industry-leading Vegetation
Management Program, we inspect and monitor every PG&E overhead
electric transmission and distribution line each year, with some
locations patrolled multiple times. We also prune or remove
approximately 1.4 million trees annually.
Following Governor Brown’s January 2014 Drought State of
Emergency Proclamation and the California Public Utilities
Commission’s Resolution ESRB-4, PG&E added enhanced measures to
address areas particularly affected by drought and bark beetles
including increased foot and aerial patrols along power lines in
high fire-risk areas, removal of hundreds of thousands of dead or
dying trees, and daily aerial fire detection patrols during high
fire season to improve fire spotting and speed of fire
response.
‘New Normal’ Requires New Solutions
With that said, years of drought, extreme heat and 129 million
dead trees have created a “new normal” for our state that requires
comprehensive new solutions.
Extreme weather is increasing the number of large wildfires and
the length of the wildfire season in California. According to CAL
FIRE, in 2017 alone, CAL FIRE confronted 7,117 wildfires, compared
to an average of 4,835 during the preceding five years. Five of the
20 most destructive wildfires in the state’s history burned between
October and December 2017.
In the case of these Northern California wildfires, we saw an
unprecedented confluence of weather-related conditions, including:
years of drought resulting in millions of dead trees, a
record-setting wet winter that spurred the growth of vegetation
that then became abundant fuel after record-setting heat during the
summer months, very low humidity and very high winds.
To address the growing threats posed by wildfires and extreme
weather, and in light of the wildfires throughout our state last
year, PG&E has launched the Community Wildfire Safety Program
to help keep our customers and communities safe. Among the key
components of the new program are:
- Wildfire Safety Operations Center: A
state of the art operations center that will monitor extreme
weather and fire threats in real time and in coordination with our
safety partners.
- Weather Stations Network: A network of
weather stations throughout high fire-risk areas to better monitor
growing extreme weather conditions and predict where wildfires may
occur.
- Fire Defense Zones: Augmenting our
already rigorous vegetation management program to create new fire
defense zones near power lines in high fire threat areas.
- Public Safety Power Shutoff: As a last
resort, a program to proactively turn off electric power for safety
when extreme fire danger conditions occur, while helping customers
prepare and providing early warning notification, when and where
possible.
We Must Work Together to Address This
Challenge
The state, first responders and California’s utilities are all
in agreement that we must work together to prevent and respond to
wildfires and enhance infrastructure resiliency.
This includes solutions that go beyond utility practices such as
improvements in forestry management and in building codes. In
addition, we must address the availability and affordability of
insurance coverage, and we believe it is imperative to reform
California’s unsustainable policies regarding wildfire
liability.
California is one of the only states in the country where the
courts have applied inverse condemnation liability to events
associated with investor-owned utility equipment. This means
PG&E could be liable for property damages and attorneys’ fees
even if we followed established inspection and safety rules.
Liability regardless of negligence undermines the financial
health of the state’s utilities, discourages investment in
California and has the potential to materially impact the ability
of utilities to access the capital markets to fund utility
operations and California’s bold clean energy vision.
Reforming inverse condemnation would not absolve utilities from
responsibility. Anyone harmed by these tragic wildfires has the
ability to pursue a negligence claim in court. Furthermore, the
CPUC, which regulates utilities, has the authority to investigate
and evaluate a company’s conduct and performance and deny the
recovery of costs if such conduct did not meet the state’s high
standards.
We are committed to advocating with legislative leaders and
policymakers across the state on comprehensive legislative
solutions for all Californians, as we collectively seek to meet the
challenge of climate change, and position the California economy
for success.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E
Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas
and electric energy companies in the United States. Based in San
Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers
some of the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in
Northern and Central California. For more information, visit
www.pge.com/ and pge.com/news.
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