Any information about the Pacific Palisades Fire

[Baz]

Good Lord.....these delays.........

[speeder]

Originally Posted by stevej37

Not sure if this is staged.

Doesn't look staged. Some people are just no good...luckily there are plenty of good people as well in a disaster.

[speeder]

[VINMAN]

Originally Posted by stevej37

Not sure if this is staged.

Why would that be staged??

Looting is beyond common in disaster areas. I've encountered it many times.

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[stevej37]

Originally Posted by VINMAN

Why would that be staged??

Looting is beyond common in disaster areas. I've encountered it many times.

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For YouTube likes.
There are tons of videos made for that purpose.


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[Baz]

[jyl]

SoCal Edison is the next PG&E -except it isn’t, CA law was changed to protect utilities from getting wiped out by fires they contribute to.

[HardDrive]

Originally Posted by jyl

SoCal Edison is the next PG&E -except it isn’t, CA law was changed to protect utilities from getting wiped out by fires they contribute to.

I don't understand how you solve for this. Folks in SoCal want power. Power lines are going to occasionally fall down and cause fires. Its Edison's fault folks choose to live in a tinder box?

[group911@aol.co]

Well, it's kind of their fault if they don't maintain their equipment or build it to withstand the conditions isn't it?

Originally Posted by HardDrive

I don't understand how you solve for this. Folks in SoCal want power. Power lines are going to occasionally fall down and cause fires. Its Edison's fault folks choose to live in a tinder box?

[berettafan]

For those who know- what is the reasoning behind not burying power lines these days?

[E Sully]

Cost to re-do and bury all existing lines along with easements would be extremely expensive, and probably have to undergo environmental studies.
In my town all new developments must have underground lines. The main street in town was re-developed 10 years back and everything was moved underground. Other existing above ground lines are just repaired as needed.
While I would love to have all lines buried, especially since my area seems to have lines knocked down and power out for 3-5 days at least once per year, I don't know what the cost ratio of tree cutting and lines repaired yearly compare to the cost of moving below ground.
Homeowners own and must maintain lines from pole to house. The cost to move those lines underground would fall on the homeowner. When I built an addition to my house I put my service from the utility pole underground, but being an electrician at least did not have to pay myself. Material costs for the rigid pipe and new wire and digging the trench were still not cheap. The cable company tried to charge me to move the fiber optic lines, but I managed to convince them to cover it by threatening to switch to another provider.

[gduke2010]

Originally Posted by berettafan

For those who know- what is the reasoning behind not burying power lines these days?

I think it’s cost. The power companies are spending a lot of money on green energy projects and with electricity costs already sky high, there isn’t money for burying those lines.

Trying not to sound political.

[MBAtarga]

Originally Posted by berettafan

For those who know- what is the reasoning behind not burying power lines these days?

No different than the reason phone lines and cable lines are on poles. Much cheaper stringing wires along poles than trenching and laying cables and lines. It's a risk - but apparently historically has saved money.

[Baz]

I'm semi-retired now, but was a landscape and irrigation contractor for quite a few years, so we dealt with utilities on a regular basis - both underground and above.

Some of my accounts were 6 story condominiums.....and along with those a need for utilities. In my observations of the amount of coordination needed when they ran these - different kinds from different companies - and subsequent servicing needs for the future - I thought of a concept as follows:

Install a culvert pipe underground that runs from the utility source at the street to the structure. Have it come in underneath the building and into the parking garage. The pipe would be large enough for a human to stand up inside. In that pipe....run all the utilities.....fastened to the vertical walls of the pipe. This would keep it away from any excavation harm and also make it totally accessible for troubleshooting or service needs.

No need to send a locator out to flag the place whenever they need that. Just go into the pipe and there they are. Cost of installing pipe is shared by all involved. Probably never happen but it's the same idea of using conduit to pull electric through - only on a grander scale...

[fintstone]

Dominion Energy in VA/NC has been going back and burying thousands of miles of lines. They asked (and received) an easement from me and my neighbors. It went very quickly. The machines are able to bore underground for a significant distance so you could not even tell where they were burying them. While they were in there, they partnered with another company (and the state) to run fiber optic lines for high-speed internet (for which I was very grateful). We never had it before where my primary home is and had to rely on poor (slow/intermittent/expensive) internet from satellite or cell tower. They did not bury lines inside of subdivisions/to homes (at least not yet), and the internet provider provided the "last mile" of fiber.

[Noah930]

Change of topic, but the anesthesiologist I'm working with today lives in the Palisades. His house was spared. His street and the one parallel to it were spared. Everything else burned in the surrounding neighborhoods.

He's not back living in it yet--that hasn't been allowed. But all his utilities are intact. He went home
yesterday and did some laundry.

[GH85Carrera]

Our neighborhood is all underground utilities. The main transformer for the block is in my back yard neighbor's corner of the yard. His was one of the first houses built 30 years ago. We have OG&E for our electric company. They had to send multiple crews out to try to figure out why the power going to the neighbor association's electric meter was not working. We have electricity to run the green belt water sprinklers.

It took them weeks to get to the issue fixed as all the lines are buried. At least we never had any power issues at the houses.

[rwest]

I’m not from CA, but is the ground hard rock not too far down so that burying cable might be difficult?

[wildthing]

I guess it depends on the area and the decade the neighborhood went up. I live in San Jose, CA and the older neighborhoods have power lines from utility poles. The newer neighborhoods have gas and power lines underground.

[A930Rocket]

I’ve been like houses since 1990 and every neighborhood had underground utilities. This is in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.