Posted on 10/13/2019 6:59:58 AM PDT by janetjanet998
AN FRANCISCO — It was a problem that California had come to dread. Weather models were signaling extreme winds and dry conditions from one end of the state to the other. The risk of wildfires was high.
Pacific Gas & Electric, the giant utility whose power lines and transformers have been blamed for a series of disastrous wildfires in recent years, was determined to prevent another one. Just before last weekend, the company informed state officials that it might shut off power to a large area of Northern California, potentially leaving millions of people in the dark — something no United States utility had done in recent memory. It made that news public on Monday.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
IIRC, that's what killed GTE.
I did, well before I posted. Years before.
Not nonsense. There was zero calls until my neighbors started getting them around 1930. Maybe you got it earlier. We didn’t.
It’s a slippery slope, more cost effective to appease but eventually the weight of taking the easy road pulls the whole sleigh to a halt. Maybe there will be a winnowing of those woke executives now that fingers are being pointed.
No one wants to fight the crazies but the people of California are paying the price of empowering them. Hopefully President Trump will apply some common sense not only in California but across the Nation. There is a tremendous lose of productivity & a brake on our economic engine due solely to political correctness and pseudo grievances, not to mention the climate change fallacy.
I don’t understand why they turned off the power,” she said. “No winds at all. And because of that, my father is gone. Blaming them is not going to bring my father back, unfortunately.”
Mardis, who had severe coronary artery atherosclerosis, breathed with the help of a nasal tube. His family, who had been told by power utility PG&E to expect the planned outage, had battery-operated backup machines ready for him to use — but the timing of the sudden shutoff, at 3:30 a.m., caught them unawares.
Or, for $190, an ISOCKET 3G with a built-in cell phone modem would have sent them a text message when the power goes out.
See A Power Outage Alarm is an Emergency Essential for other ideas.
If anybody here has a loved one who requires 100% reliable power, look into these solutions.
I'm tired of people playing the victim when they are either too lazy, unconcerned or stupid to take proper care and precautions and refuse to accept responsibility.
There are numerous battery back ups, UPS's of all different sizes that only kick in and emit an alarm when power is out and and they are reasonably priced.
My 88 year old mother is in poor health and wears First Alert device since being hospitalized due to a fall, the device requires a active phone line and hers requires power to a cable modem. SCE has frequent outages in her senior community so I purchased a UPS so that there is ALWAYS power to the modem and her phone line for the device and mind you this is a First Alert not a oxygen generator required to keep her alive.
No I have no sympathy for these people because to my mind they............just.........didn't......really care about daddy!
Californians who voted for LIB asshats: Enjoy the suck.
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Cool.
What about those who didn’t?
Don’t see any problem. Doesn’t every CA’ian homeowner have solar panels on the roof, and monster batteries in the basement, with backup windmill in the backyard?
No they don’t...
Apparently you don’t personally know a lot of “Ca’ian” (???) Californian homeowners —I have family there, and they don’t have solar panels and “monster batteries” in the basement nor a backup windmill in the backyard.
While you’re probably right, in the situation the family found themselves in what you posted is entirely meaningless.
Please don’t take this personally. It was tongue-in-cheek.
Thank you for your response. Not quite sure what you mean.
It is a complex situation.
I think the Government interfered with the proper management of the utility company, the grid & the forest. As a result the utility company is between a rock and a hard place and the citizens of California are bearing the brunt.
It is unconscionable that the grid is turned off arbitrarily and without a specific timed warning in a non-emergent situation. Ordinary people can take precautions but cannot be assumed to have redundant fail safe methods and alarms on short notice. There are many people who are dependent on power to survive. California is becoming a third world country while taxing it’s citizens like a cradle to grave European country. Worshiping at the alter of green energy. PC and climate change by the elected leaders, is bringing Cali to the precipice.
I was trying too hard to be diplomatic about the family.
They were warned that the power could go off at night, they presumably knew the man couldn’t go long without supplemental oxygen, and would be deprived of that oxygen if the power went off.
They should have, but did not, prepare.
While we can rightly, ultimately, blame the environmentalists, the more direct cause of this mans death belongs to those who were there that night.
OK. I think having a battery backup oxygen source on hand was being prepared. If the Utility had notified people about the date & time then I would agree with you. He should have gone to sleep with the battery powered O2 working.
Thank you for your courtesy. Freegards
Next time just call it Electric Power Appreciation Day.
Maybe sitting in the dark will help their focus.
I totally agree with your line of thinking, but I think they need to do a lot more planning to use this avenue of prevention. And now the Governor is demanding they pay for turning the juice off!
I agree. It just seems the whole episode was too chaotic and there wasn’t a clear plan that everyone knew about.
I think you are making the point I was trying to make, who’s in charge here? It didn’t seem there was advanced notice, a change of command for spreading information. Chaos in all caps!
Oh, without a doubt, but these guys are pretty hamstrung. Yesterday Newsome was darn near ordering PG&E to give every customer $100 and every business $250 for the outage. PG&E CEO said no way and they would not consider paying on ANY lawsuit.
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