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reenorap parent
PG&E instead of constantly upgrading and maintaining their distribution system, decided to pay out dividends and buy back stock, as well as pay their CEO $50 million per year. That's why their outdated equipment kept starting fires.

They took a risk by underspending on upgrading, and we as Californians are paying for them paying out their shareholders.

AnthonyMouse
Power transmission is not a technology with a high rate of change. It's basically a wire on a stick. If a tree falls on it the tree catches fire because it carries high voltage and the tree creates a path to ground. What is "upgrading their equipment" supposed to do?
reenorap OP
They were supposed to bury them underground but they didn't. This is a well known issue that they ignored because they didn't want to spend the money and instead paid dividends and did massive stock buybacks. Now, 20 years later, the costs have skyrocketed because of inflation.
AnthonyMouse
Burying power lines is extremely expensive and does nothing to actually prevent wildfires, which existed in California before the advent of electric utilities. You're complaining about a $50M salary while insisting that they do something ineffective that costs $20B. Then you'd get to pay the cost of burying the power lines and the cost of the fires. Is that actually better than just moving the cost of the fires back to the insurance companies to begin with?
reenorap OP
You are literally uttering nonsense.

No one is blaming PG&E for all wildfires. We are blaming PG&E for the wildfires THAT THEY CAUSED. These fires could have been prevented if THEY BURIED THEIR POWERLINES back in the early 2000s when it was far cheaper and like they promised. They instead decided to ditch that and instead buyback stock and pay lucrative dividends.

Burying powerlines would 100% prevent wildfires which were caused by sparking or broken power equipment, which has been the documented reason why several extremely large and fatal wild fires were caused by.

AnthonyMouse
And what I'm saying is that "caused" is a weasel word when things have more than one cause.

To have a fire you need a spark, air and fuel. The air is there all the time. The fuel is there whenever there hasn't been a spark recently. And power lines aren't the only source of sparks.

Once the fuel is there and accumulating, you're playing roulette to see if you're going to have a smaller fire now or a bigger fire later. There is no option for "never have a fire again" in those areas, and the second option isn't inherently better than the first one.

czl
If every line were buried, California's huge problem with fires would stop? The real cause is not the lack of prescribed burns and better forest management?

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