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by refurb 1157 days ago
California has had rolling black outs the last few summers.

And im not talking the boonies. Im talking just outside San Francisco.

Gas is way more reliable than electricity in CA.

2 comments

Oh if we're talking the rest of California… it's less of a service outage and more like a mass evacuation (8,000+ families). Then again I'd say regular leaks, fires, and explosions do not a reliable delivery system make.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-27/so-cal-g...

We’re not talking mass evacuation were talking outage.

But anyways, how many people died from the wildfires started by power lines?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/22/pge-power-l...

  But anyways, how many people died from the wildfires started by power lines?
Certainly fewer than succumb to natural gas related causes. Nationwide somewhere around 15 people die annually from pipeline related incidents, over 400 from carbon monoxide poisoning. Safety with electrical stuff marches forward. Fault (ground, arc) interrupters, fused plugs, polarized and grounded receptacles. Safety with gas handling has basically stagnated and we can't even get gas powered appliances to not leak gas.

California's got a long history of safety problems with natural gas:

https://la.curbed.com/2016/3/8/11181374/gas-leaks-los-angele...

If you’re having a mass evacuation you can’t very well use your appliances. What’s the point of this nitpick?
I never brought up mass evacuations?

But just pointing out gas and electric both cause them?

Not to the same degree they don't. Evacuations due to safety issues and service disruptions with gas are common. Evacuations due to safety issues with electrical service are not.
Another tragedy of the commons: Leaking gas infrastructure pollutes, causes explosion risks, and puts a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, and gas companies just have subscribers pay for the losses. Not that PG&E didn't socialize risk while privatizing profit regarding fires.