[dragonwriter]

> California's mismanagement with it's forest is the same issue.

The majority (57%) of forest land in California is managed by the federal government even before considering the part managed by tribal governments, which are also out of state control though subject to federal oversight. Only 3% is directly under state control.

47.7% of the total land in California is federally owned (not uncommon in the West, where most federal land is; outside of 12 Western states, the Federal government owns only 4% of the land in the rest of the country.)

Western land management problems are, generally, problems of federal administration, not state government.

EDIT: But, it's important to note I am not saying the fires involving PG&E equipment are a federal problem rather than a PG&E problem. While the current federal administration and their cheerleaders likes to blame forest management and seems blind to the fact that, if true, that would be a federal issue, PG&E’s deliberate, knowing cutting of maintenance corners, curtailing inspections and cutting inspector training, knowingly leaving specific faulty equipment in place years after it was identified as faulty and dangerous, and covering up that it did all those things, are well documented. While they accepted a plea bargain to 84 counts of manslaughter, the facts documented in the investigation would seem to more than support conviction of 2nd degree murder (of the “abandoned and malignant heart” type), based on other cases where that has been applied in CA based on willful disregard of safety factors.

[cogman10]

Yeah, lots of issues came together for the perfect storm.

Personally, I do think that PG&E should have seen a harsher punishment. If some pyro had went in and started the same fire, they'd have been in jail for life. PG&E does this shit and they got a slap on the wrist.

But, your point is very valid. This place was a tinderbox. They were one lightning strike, on cigarette butt, one illegal bonfire away from going up in flames spectacularly.

The federal government has blame for not maintaining land.

Beyond that, they have blame for not aggressively addressing climate change (which has contributed to the level of dryness).

All of this points to a common societal issue. Rather than spend money to fix things, we wait until everything blows up before asking questions.

This shit scares me. How much more of our world is teetering on the edge of catastrophe?

[anigbrowl]

I think one of the key points in that Twitter thread is that the distributed responsibility disincentives anyone from pushing to tackle difficult problems (because no professional or personal liability is involved) and the centralization of profits ensures that the dysfunctional administrative structure stays in place.

[Retric]

You get much larger fires when they go undetected for significant periods of time. Lightning strikes can happen anywhere, but most ignition sources are close enough to people for early responses. Power lines are therefore unusually bad as they regularly start fires in forests a significant distance from people making both detection and response more difficult.

If power companies what to run lines through these areas they need to take responsibility for what’s going to happen.

[blackflame7000]

>"Rather than spend money to fix things, we wait until everything blows up before asking questions."

Are you buying? It's really easy to justify spending other peoples money if you make everything about life and death.