[nanodeath]

Hm...it's unclear whether you read the stream. They had reason to believe that the C-hook would fail after 97-100 years, yet weren't even checking the C-hooks on towers that were 100 years old. That seems willfully negligent.

[tuna-piano]

I think the point is that PG&E negligently caused sparks. But many things can negligently cause sparks, including dozens of human and natural causes. Even among power operators, sparks seem to not be too rare (for example, the tree that fell on the line).

So while PG&E can be blamed for that specific fire that doesn't really address the root cause of "why can some sparks in one place cause such huge destruction and can we do anything about that?"

I'm just not so sure that if you accidentally knock over one domino and a cascading whole room full of dominoes falls that you should take the blame for the cascading effects. Maybe whoever setup the dominoes behind the first one shares the blame as well...

[nullc]

> But many things can negligently cause sparks, including dozens of human and natural causes.

My favourite: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-mendocino-compl...

Someone tried to stop an angry yellowjacket nest by driving a concrete stake into the hole in the ground and their hammer thew off sparks and started a 459,123 acre fire-- the largest recorded in state history at the time.

[londons_explore]

I suspect that man was lying... It is very very very hard to start a fire with a hammer, even deliberately...

Yet if you had a wasps nest, you'd totally be tempted to douse it with a bit of gasoline, believing you could put it out before it spread to anything else... Except you couldn't...

And when the investigators came round, you'd totally tell them about the stake but not the petrol...

[chmod775]

> I suspect that man was lying... It is very very very hard to start a fire with a hammer, even deliberately...

Out of the millions of people who use a hammer to strike metal on metal every day, one of them will manage start a fire eventually.

Even the unlikeliest events are actually pretty likely at scale.

Sure, two thirds of them may just be lying, but unless you can prove they are (which really shouldn't be that hard, considering burning fuel leaves obvious traces), you should assume each of them are telling the truth.

[mensetmanusman]

I laugh at the image of a statistical ensemble of people hammering bees with hammers, with one of them causing a fire.

[ithkuil]

I laugh at the image of a statistical ensemble of people claiming to to bees with a hammer while instead setting them on fire with gasoline, with one of them actually hammering bees with a hammer.

[jsymolon]

Aside, I use a very large clear glass bowl to kill the nest. Flip it over the hole, leave it for a little over a week and the nest will be dead.

It has to be a clear bowl to trick the wasps to think that they can still get out otherwise they will dig a new exit.

[pixl97]

Heh, and you might just be the next person to start a massive fire from a lensing effect.

[scollet]

Problem solved, I guess.

[beamatronic]

If the forest is so sensitive that hammer sparks set off a fire, maybe no humans belong in the forest - except for the humans proactively trying to manage burns.

[frob]

The fire started in grassland, not in a forest. As it grew, it spread to forested areas. There is a lot of grassland out in California and it gets very flammable in the summer when it all dies out and dries up. Dead grass is basically well-aerated vertical kindling. It's so easy to light that when I was growing up outside of Sacramento, a common cause of local wildfires was cigarette butts flicked out a car window. When we mowed the lawn in the summer, we would keep the garden hose charged. Basically, it burns, burns easily, and burns quickly.

[m12k]

"why can some sparks in one place cause such huge destruction and can we do anything about that?"

Forest fires happen naturally all the time, but we've gotten so good at putting them out quickly, that at some point a huge buildup of dry underbrush will have amassed in a huge area, until a fire happens that is so big that we have no way to stop it. We're basically accumulating these huge powderkegs instead of letting the gunpowder burn one handful at a time.

[nemonemo]

In addition, as the original twitter stream says, climate change promoted additional growth of vegetation, which added even more fuel for wildfire. It would be an interesting topic of research to see which one contributed more to the proliferation of wildfire we are observing in the west coast.

[Wistar]

A couple whose trailer they were towing with an RV had a flat tire and sparks from the rim scraping on the pavement touched off the enormous and deadly Carr Fire of 2018.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carr_Fire

[Majromax]

> I'm just not so sure that if you accidentally knock over one domino and a cascading whole room full of dominoes falls that you should take the blame for the cascading effects.

Yes, you do and should take the blame under the eggshell skull doctrine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull). If the initial action was unlawful, then the perpetrator bears liability for the full set of consequences -- even if those consequences are more severe than normal based on unknown factors. Here, PG&E was clearly guilty of gross negligence in their maintenance, so they bear liability for the consequences.

Worse yet, this background situation wasn't previously unknown. The enhanced fire risk was widely understood, which would put PG&E under an even greater obligation to ensure their equipment was operated safely.

[dcanelhas]

One cannot reasonably blame them for all fires, but one can reasonably blame them for fires with a direct causal link to their negligence.

[bb88]

> Maybe whoever setup the dominoes behind the first one shares the blame as well...

There was a famous story here a couple years ago here where a mountain biker lit some toilet paper on fire and caused half a hillside to go up in flames.

Negligence, sure. Stupidity, no doubt. But it's also dry here in the summer, and that hasn't changed year after year. So sure, I guess, let it be the weather's fault or global warming, why not.

It's easier, afterall, to place the blame on other people or forces than to change behaviors that would prevent disasters in the first place.

[vlovich123]

No. I think the point is can we change our forestry practices. Ignoring the root causes and blaming the first dominoe isn’t helpful because there will always be some dumb thing to set off a massive fire. We have been assigning blame - is that effective at stopping the fires?

We do blameless post-martens as a best practice in engineering so that when we don’t have constant outages of critical internet infrastructure and that it comes up quickly when issues arise.

Why ignore a successful strategy that may show better results than just blaming whoever happened to be responsible for some sparks this time around? Who are you going to blame when lightning is the spark?

[khuey]

It's hard to have a "blameless postmortem" when 86 people are dead.

[Armisael16]

The NTSB doesn’t seem to have much trouble with it.

[bb88]

> blameless post-martens as a best practice in engineering

First, those don't exist -- despite any evidence to the contrary.

Second, engineers don't have shareholders demanding stock buy backs.

[Kwantuum]

Fires can start from natural causes too. It's ignorant to say that this sort of disaster can be prevented by fixing behaviour, and it's a special form of hubris to think that you can "unstupid" everyone. This is the worst plan you can have. Relying on all individuals not doing something stupid for a long time is a lost cause, just look at the state of covid in the US. There are people literally throwing parties or sending their kids to school while they know that they have covid.

[free_rms]

Many things can crash cars but if you crash one you're liable.

If the wildfires in CA were a new thing this season, I wouldn't want to witch hunt this year's culprit. But it's been a huge hazard for years now -- negligent sparks can't be tolerated.

[ajmurmann]

I love the car comparison because I think the comparison to car manufacturers' stance pre-"Unsafe At Any Speed" seems quite fitting. In fact car manufacturers at least had drivers to blame, whereas PG&E can really only blame themselves or "acts of god"

[ethanwillis]

The reason it "some sparks" caused such huge destruction is because PG&E was also not maintaining the brush underneath their towers. All they were doing was literally fanning the flames by flying over it with a helicopter.

[NavinF]

> literally fanning the flames by flying over it with a helicopter.

That's a hilarious image, but I doubt that literally happened

[ethanwillis]

It was just a little flare to add to the comment :) But I guess a lot of people took that part far more seriously than the first part.

[csours]

We're all thinking about C-hooks because that's what failed here. What if the foundation had failed? Or any one of a million other things. I'm not saying that PG&E are clear by any means, just that it's really easy to point fingers after an incident. Be very wary of hindsight bias.

So very much of America's infrastructure is aging and used past planned capacity. How can you tell ahead of time which infrastructure will bite you the worst? Water control structures (dams, levees, locks) are a great place to look because of their potential for widespread, costly disasters.

If this C-hook had failed during a rainstorm, there would have been localized power loss for some time, and extra work for a repair crew.

Now, as it happens, California is naturally prone to wildfires; add to that climate change, poor vegetation control, people wanting to live next to trees[0] - it really is only a matter of time before people are killed. Just look at all the fires burning now. How many of them were caused by faulty C-hooks?

Take the example from Fight Club:

> "Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."

The Narrator has provided us with a very vivid example: a fiery crash caused by a specific part. But what about all the other components? What about the other cars on the road? What about the guy that falls asleep while driving an affected vehicle and has a single car accident? There's a lot of noise in the real world.

0. For instance, I also live next to trees and love it (but not in California).

[hellotomyrars]

The issue isn't specifically what failed.

The issue is that the failure in this case was both predictable and ignored. PG&E willfully failed to inspect/maintain the equipment.

Accidents happen and you can't control for everything. But this is a very clear and obvious failure. The failure isn't specific to what failed in this case (The c-hook) but the failure of PG&E to do any due diligence.

[vladvasiliu]

> We're all thinking about C-hooks because that's what failed here. What if the foundation had failed? Or any one of a million other things. I'm not saying that PG&E are clear by any means, just that it's really easy to point fingers after an incident. Be very wary of hindsight bias.

I'm not sure that's the point. C-hooks are an example of a preventable accident. The problem isn't the c-hook itself but the policy / culture at PG&E and probably outside the company (as you point below) that allowed this to happen.

> So very much of America's infrastructure is aging and used past planned capacity. How can you tell ahead of time which infrastructure will bite you the worst?

Exactly. I see the twitter thread as an example of this broader issue. Of course, the solution is not to go around and check every single c-hook. The solution is to set up a plan (at the utility, state or federal level) so that this kind of avoidable accidents happen much less often.

I'm not saying that nothing like this would ever happen again, but even if such a plan could reduce such events by ten times, that would look like a success to me.

[ClumsyPilot]

> "the solution is not to go around and check every single c-hook"

The solution is precisely to check every single one at least a few times a century. This is not that much to ask.

[43920]

Right, I should clarify. PG&E absolutely should have known about, and prevented, the specific situation that caused this fire, and the fact they didn't do so is a huge problem. However, the surrounding area is such a high fire risk that a fire almost certainly would have occurred even without this failure (which the thread mentions: https://twitter.com/TubeTimeUS/status/1306377626487894017), and so the specific cause of the fire seems almost irrelevant to me. Even if PG&E did spend billions more on maintenance, and fix their inspection procedures, I don't see how this area would ever be safe, and so focusing on the power company as the source of the issue seems misguided to me.

[bhawks]

Climate change shouldn't be used as a get out of jail card free card for catastrophic events like this.

PGE has a very long track record of neglectful behaviours. From leaking chromium into drinking water in socal, san mateo gas main explosion, and the electrical fires in northern California.

There is something very wrong with how PGE approaches it's infrastructure and public safety. It would happen regardless of climate change.

[Johnny555]

Assigning them unlimited liability for catastrophic wildfires leads to the unintended consequence of making it risky for them to run power at all during high fire danger conditions, so they turn off power in these areas.

[bhawks]

They've been willfully negligent and reckless to the infrastructure they own to service their customers.

In this case we're not even talking about tree trimming, we have a 100 year old tower. It's obvious it will fail soon, there should be an internal maintenance program to replace/update it. There are no such programs, PGE operates in a way that there would never be such a program. PGE should be held liable for predictable out comes of its behaviours. (see all it's other catastrophic failures across the state)

A normal company would not exist after one PGE level negligent catastrophe. PGE is still around because it holds the state hostage to our energy infrastructure. This is not acceptable.

The key recurring theme is negligence. That's the reason PGE faces such high liabilities for the disasters it causes. This is not an act of God.

I believe it's totally possible to operate a for profit utility that's safe and reliable. PGE can't do that, now how can california untangle this mess.

[20after4]

Where I live in rural Missouri, we have "rural electric cooperatives." They are customer-owned utilities set up in the 1930s. From my experience and that of everyone I've talked to in the region, the coops are incredibly reliable, take safety and maintenance very seriously, and provide service at very reasonable rates.

It seems clear to me that for-profit business is the wrong model for an infrastructure monopoly like power delivery networks.

[bhawks]

PGEs for profit status is kind of derailing tangent in these discussions. There are many successful ownership models for running a utility safely and reliably.

PGE has a long term organizational culture in leadership that creates this environment of negligent behaviours. Essentially all of PGEs problems are due to PGE -climate, environment, geography and company profit motives are secondary causes of these disasters at best.

[Johnny555]

They've been willfully negligent and reckless to the infrastructure they own to service their customers.

No doubt, but I'm just pointing out the reality -- make them responsible for any size fire set off by their equipment, and they will respond by turning off electricity during high fire danger periods. This isn't something that "might" happen, this is exactly what did happen.

So simply assigning more liability is not the answer.

[Klinky]

That's fine then, have them turn it off during periods of high fire danger. Massive wildfires also interrupt electrical service.

Are you suggesting it's a good thing that they run their poorly maintained lines with a high chance of causing a fire during periods of high fire danger?

People want power, but they also don't want to die in a fire.

[Klinky]

Slaps on the wrist have the unintended consequence of a town burning down and 85 people dying.

[creato]

Yes, PGE did cause a fire through negligence. That's a problem. However, what is the appropriate penalty for this?

In my opinion, it is the average cost of a fire, most of which are small and don't cause much damage.

That this particular fire blew up into a big disaster was the result of many factors, only a few of which were actually in PGE's control.

[shajznnckfke]

That’s an argument you could make in any kind of liability lawsuit. It falls flat because the lawsuit isn’t worth filing in the average case, so nobody ends up being held to account for anything.

Example: a roller coaster has broken seat belts. Usually nothing bad will happen because physics keeps the rider in their seat. In one case, a rider falls to their death because they were leaning a particular way on a particular turn. Should the theme park not be punished because nobody was hurt in the average case? Or everyone who rode the roller coaster and wasn’t injured needs to sue for their piece of the pie (because the average damage is one death divided by the total number of riders)?

[content_sesh]

Whatever the appropriate monetary penalty is, it feels like jail time for executives and management within PG&E, who are ultimately responsible for the apparent culture of negligence within PG&E, is appropriate as well.

In terms of _average_ cost vs. actual costs, according to my non-lawyer reading of the Wikipedia article on the eggshell skull rule, it doesn't matter that these particular conditions made the fire significantly more costly than average. They have to answer for the damages from the fire they caused, not to the "average" or even "foreseeable" damages from such a fire.

[phendrenad2]

They should be fined the cost of the fire multiplied by the increased risk of fire that they caused. So (cost of camp fire) * ((chance of fire happening due to unmaintained c-hook) / ((chance of fire happening from unmaintained c-hook)+(chance of fire happening from all other sources)

[andbberger]

And if you read all the way to end you'll learn that the Camp fire would have been started anyways.

No need to assign culpability strictly to either PG&E or calfire for systematic wildfire mismanagement. We can blame them both! Also climate change.

[dvduval]

Right, and it also outlines how records were not kept up-to-date. I would be interested to know what has happened since then. What type of records are being kept now? it seems likely that with today's technology we can use something to keep an eye on these things without sending people in as often too. Perhaps we can use cameras or drones.

[woliveirajr]

There is a project from my former professor (?) and electrical company: use drones + cameras with specific filters to capture variation of temperature, wear and debris in towers.