PG&E Shutting off power.

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Oilpan4 said:
Mines a 24kwh.
12 bars?
So you can idle for about 25 hours. Without worrying about carbon monoxide.
And you could drive over 100 miles at 35 MPH or less.
Or split that and drive over 50 miles taking 12 hours to do so.
Best speed for range, with no climate control, is 12 MPH.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wczgxhs5e91i7og/LEAFrangeChartVersion7G93.pdf
 
cwerdna said:
LTLFTcomposite said:
cwerdna said:
I won't even be in town. I get on a plane to Japan on Sunday morning.
So you're the one causing all this climate change :-D
...
LOL on the first part. So, power went out Saturday at ~8:20 pm. Unfortunately, Comcrap didn't stay up long this time. It went out before the 30 minute mark. (My cable modem and access point are on UPSes.) During the last PSPS, Comcrap stayed up for over 45 minutes.
...
I'm waiting at the airport now w/a 2 hour delayed flight. It sounds like the all clear for my area is Monday at 8 am but it sounds like it's for the weather event. They still need to inspect/finish inspections of the power lines before they turn power back on. So, it could be that day or another day. And, if there's damage, that needs to be fixed.
From what I can tell, power was restored on Monday (10/28) by around 7 pm. I was already well out of the country.

To top things off, PG&E was warning there might be another shutdown Tuesday (10/29) , possibly before power would be restored in some places or that it might be restored for not even a full day before another PSPS. But, it didn't affect my area.
 
Just saw the Netflix special on "Fire in Paradise" and it was very scary. If you aren't into it, then I strongly suggest to you fast forward to the last 5 minutes of the show (its only 40 mins long) where a firefighter talks about how he is seeing an escalating severity to the fires and says we no longer have the ability to effectively fight them any more.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
Just saw the Netflix special on "Fire in Paradise" and it was very scary. If you aren't into it, then I strongly suggest to you fast forward to the last 5 minutes of the show (its only 40 mins long) where a firefighter talks about how he is seeing an escalating severity to the fires and says we no longer have the ability to effectively fight them any more.

70 years of putting out easy little forest fires has given us unstoppable wild fires.
 
Oilpan4 said:
70 years of putting out easy little forest fires has given us unstoppable wild fires.

Which is why the Camp Fire that burned Paradise roared over some recent past burn areas. Little trees, the regrowth from the past fires, dried out by a dry hot summer and fall, might as well have been gasoline. Right.

Fires don't follow a simple rule. Yes, some places/ecosystems do have the need for periodic fires. Some times on a nearly yearly basis, some times on a century or longer basis.

Wikipedia says:
Conditions immediately leading up to and during the fire combined to create a highly combustible fuel load:

Heavy grass cover due to a wet spring
An unusually dry fall
Decreased Humidity due to several recent wind events (23% dropping to 10%)
Unusually dry fuel (5% 1,000-hr. moisture level)
Hot, dry, sustained and gusting high winds (25-35 mph), including a Red Flag Warning on the day of the fire, similar to the Diablo wind or the Santa Ana winds of the California Coast Ranges.

The day of the fire, the fuel energy release component was above the historic record for November 8; the first fall rain is normally before November 1.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5628194/18-CA-BTU-016737-Camp-Green-Sheet.pdf

What does heavy grass cover have to do with past fires? Grass is adapted to fire, a yearly burn would lead to more grass cover rather than less.
Same for an unusually dry fall? Nothing.
Decreased humidity? Nothing.
Unusually dry fuel? Nothing.


Consider a river. The Nile. Not just a river.
 
More of a reason to practice responsible forestry like maintaining fire brakes on public lands and making sure power line right of ways are maintained.
 
Oilpan4 said:
More of a reason to practice responsible forestry like maintaining fire brakes on public lands and making sure power line right of ways are maintained.
"Fire brakes"?

What kind of a fire break would help with a wind driven fire throwing embers a mile or more downwind? And the embers started new fires, due to the dry grass, low humidity, dry fuels.

Power line right of ways need to be maintained to prevent trees from falling on power lines. But again, not factual for the Camp Fire that burned Paradise. It was the power line, not the right of way, that was the apparent cause.
 
WetEV said:
Oilpan4 said:
More of a reason to practice responsible forestry like maintaining fire brakes on public lands and making sure power line right of ways are maintained.
"Fire brakes"?

What kind of a fire break would help with a wind driven fire throwing embers a mile or more downwind? And the embers started new fires, due to the dry grass, low humidity, dry fuels.

Power line right of ways need to be maintained to prevent trees from falling on power lines. But again, not factual for the Camp Fire that burned Paradise. It was the power line, not the right of way, that was the apparent cause.

+1 The Camp Fire created issues of spot fires which is the reason so many people died. Winds blew hot embers that started fires into town miles away from the fire line. No "break" would have prevented that.

It is really quite pathetic how we place blame after the fact ignoring development that has overtaxed the natural resources of the area for decades. The dramatic change in climate and our continuance to ignore our part in the decimation of this planet.
 
Oilpan4 said:
Do all fires have winds blow burning embers a mile ahead of the main fire?

Depends on multiple factors. Damp fuels and low winds will not be throwing many embers. And even if thrown will likely not start spot fires.

The California climate has changed. Wetter winters and springs mean more grass and other small fuels. Drier and hotter summer and falls mean more extreme fires. More total precipitation, more variability in precipitation.

Add to this human factors: more people moving into fire prone real estate (and damn the government for trying to limit uses of private property). Insurance and mortgage might have prevented some of this by pricing fire insurance at the future risk, not at the past risk. Not giving mortgages without fire insurance. Yes, and also in some areas suppression of small fires can lead to larger fires. Not everywhere, and not always a useful tool.

Look at the whole picture.
 
WetEV said:
Oilpan4 said:
Do all fires have winds blow burning embers a mile ahead of the main fire?

Depends on multiple factors. Damp fuels and low winds will not be throwing many embers. And even if thrown will likely not start spot fires.

The California climate has changed. Wetter winters and springs mean more grass and other small fuels. Drier and hotter summer and falls mean more extreme fires. More total precipitation, more variability in precipitation.

Add to this human factors: more people moving into fire prone real estate (and damn the government for trying to limit uses of private property). Insurance and mortgage might have prevented some of this by pricing fire insurance at the future risk, not at the past risk. Not giving mortgages without fire insurance. Yes, and also in some areas suppression of small fires can lead to larger fires. Not everywhere, and not always a useful tool.

Look at the whole picture.

Fire creates wind. In the Camp Fire case, it was simply a fire with a lot of fuel burning at higher altitudes raining down on the town with the wind blowing just right. The dryness of the area simply made spot fires easy to start.
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
You can get a mortgage without fire insurance?
I've seen a reference in the news to some that lost houses in California that had mortgages without fire insurance. I don't think it was many people, and as I recall seemed to be limited to the appraised value of the building lot or less.

Sorry, but I can't find the reference now. I'm not sure if this was "lot loans", a fairly standard item, or something more exotic.

Of course, if you can't rebuild on a lot due to fire risk the real value of the lot isn't very high.

I wonder what happens if you have a mortgage and can't get fire insurance at any cost...Or any cost you could afford.
 
I can answer that based on windstorm insurance rates in Florida. It can get ugly. Here the state had to step in and create Citizens and support it with a bunch of taxes and surcharges when private insurers fled. It's a problem for private insurers when the risk of any single outcome becomes too extreme. Same reason you can't walk up to a roulette wheel in Caesars Palace and bet $10B on red.

I doubt fires present anywhere near the loss potential as hurricanes for any single event but who knows. Either way if you can't insure it you can't finance it, and if you can't finance it the pool of available buyers is drastically reduced... particularly at CA RE prices which seemingly would get caught in the downdraft. Lots of dominoes could fall in that scenario.
 
A news story from last year (while the Camp Fire wsa still relatively small) explaining some of the factors: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...cal-wildfire-season-california-it-may-n934521

One of the reasons we've had far fewer acres burned this year compared to last is that we had a very wet winter which saw significant precip in May and even some in June. I suspect another factor is that some (by no means most) of the fuel caused by the 5 year drought has already burned.
 
Increasing fire risk isn't just California.

https://www.npr.org/2019/11/08/777649636/wildfires-rage-in-australian-state-we-ve-simply-never-had-this-number-of-fires
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
...It is really quite pathetic how we place blame after the fact...

Even more pathetic that the "blame" issues forth from the President of the United States, not for any legitimate reasons, not from any knowledgeable and informed opinion, not from any desire to help the citizens he serves, but simply because of his political animosity towards a state with liberal policies and voting tendencies. Another opportunity to show his inflamed baboon-ass to the world.
 
Nubo said:
DaveinOlyWA said:
...It is really quite pathetic how we place blame after the fact...

Even more pathetic that the "blame" issues forth from the President of the United States, not for any legitimate reasons, not from any knowledgeable and informed opinion, not from any desire to help the citizens he serves, but simply because of his political animosity towards a state with liberal policies and voting tendencies. Another opportunity to show his inflamed baboon-ass to the world.

I am shocked you take any stock in anything he has to say?
 
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