2020 Wildfire Season

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Originally Posted by altasnob

It wouldn't have been so hard hit if these aging hippies moved to, say, Kent, WA, instead and we let fires in that area burn naturally. So now, every summer, we're stuck with sob stories of people loosing their homes in fire prone areas of the west. It will never end.

The real sad part is these aging hippies who moved out to the forest, and drive their pick up trucks into town daily, have the gall to call themselves environmentalists.

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Friend of mine is a "small is better" architect and developer--urban infill, high density, small houses on small lots, etc. He gave a talk about that in Nevada City--the capital of aginghippiestan --and they about tar and feathered him and ran him out of town on a rail. A bunch of locals in the area just killed, at least temporarily a PGE tree cutting project.

I don't disagree with you that having a bunch of tiny communities scattered through the woods is bad, and not just from a wildfire standpoint. Much as a lot of people don't like them, from an environmental standpoint big dense cities are the best. Apartments in big buildings don't have 4 outside walls and most don't have an outside ceiling, so much more efficient to heat and cool and most people use mass transit. (I don't live in a big city so obviously I'm being hypocritical about this.) If we were all still a small number of hunter gatherers and subsistence agriculturalists we could all live closer to nature--in the middle of it. But that ship sailed about 5000 years ago and I don't see us turning back the clock that far.

Are we gonna talk about Paul Soleri?

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Originally Posted by old goat

Friend of mine is a "small is better" architect and developer--urban infill, high density, small houses on small lots, etc. He gave a talk about that in Nevada City--the capital of aginghippiestan --and they about tar and feathered him and ran him out of town on a rail. A bunch of locals in the area just killed, at least temporarily a PGE tree cutting project.

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Bit of an exaggeration there, considering Nevada city and grass valley each have a cohousing community and the company that brought cohousing (as a brand and concept) to the US and is HQ’ed in Nevada City :)

the end all goal is to preserve a handful of “heritage trees” and have pge underground the distribution lines in town. The handful of trees being protested are as old as the town, on historic properties, and contributing characteristics of what makes those properties listed on the national register. The lawsuit including naming the city government for not enforcing its own rules.

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Originally Posted by bodywhomper

Are we gonna talk about Paul Soleri?



Bit of an exaggeration there, considering Nevada city and grass valley each have a cohousing community and the company that brought cohousing (as a brand and concept) to the US and is HQ’ed in Nevada City :)

the end all goal is to preserve a handful of “heritage trees” and have pge underground the distribution lines in town. The handful of trees being protested are as old as the town, on historic properties, and contributing characteristics of what makes those properties listed on the national register. The lawsuit including naming the city government for not enforcing its own rules.

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Like I said . . .

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Originally Posted by bodywhomper

have pge underground the distribution lines in town.

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The town should pay for what it wants. As a ratepayer, I have zero interest in subsidizing them.

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Originally Posted by MagnificentUnicorn

I wanted to address the line of thought you brought up earlier. It’s the large transmission lines that are part of the BPA grid that are most likely to be the cause of wildfires, not the local residential distribution lines.

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Smells like a lie. Please substantiate your claim.
Calfire reports over 8,000 wildfires this season (fire.ca.gov/incidents). I doubt BPA grid transmission lines, or similar lines, account for any significant fraction of those.

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Originally Posted by LongShortLong

Smells like a lie. Please substantiate your claim.
Calfire reports over 8,000 wildfires this season (fire.ca.gov/incidents). I doubt BPA grid transmission lines, or similar lines, account for any significant fraction of those.

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He said a big cause of wildfires was local distribution lines for people living in the woods. Fires like the one that burned Paradise were caused by large transmission lines that supply large urban/suburban areas.

Of course most wildfires are caused by lightning and human negligence.


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Originally Posted by LongShortLong

The town should pay for what it wants. As a ratepayer, I have zero interest in subsidizing them.

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none of this would be under discussion if pge had conducted regular maintenance of their utility easements in town (or frankly all over their transmission and distribution system).

pge sponsors the town’s heritage tree program. https://www.nevadacitychamber.com/wp...nted_guide.pdf

The Eugene J de Sabla and PGE are strongly rooted in Nevada County, Nevada City, and Grass Valley: https://www.cagenweb.org/nevada/bios/EugeneDeSabla.pdf

Do you think those people in Nevada City would sign a waiver indemnifying PGE and their homeowner's insurance if any of the trees they want to preserve cause a fire?

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Originally Posted by MagnificentUnicorn

He said a big cause of wildfires was local distribution lines for people living in the woods. Fires like the one that burned Paradise were caused by large transmission lines that supply large urban/suburban areas.

Of course most wildfires are caused by lightning and human negligence.

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Aye, I'd still guess the local distribution lines cause more fires. There's just so many more miles of them. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if the local lines cause more fires per mile. The large lines usually have great vegetation clearance, with especially low risk of falling trees.

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Originally Posted by old goat

Do you think those people in Nevada City would sign a waiver indemnifying PGE and their homeowner's insurance if any of the trees they want to preserve cause a fire?

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The law should place greater responsibility on the landowner for trees near powerlines. It's not PGE's fault the owner planted a tree near the line, or failed to remove it while it was small. I don't think I should subsidize folks living in the forest. Same goes for my neighbor - plant elsewhere, prune it, or pay for your own tree removal. Responsibility.

Those trees are not in the forest. They are in the middle of town. They were landscape trees planted before the town received electricity. And several are part of a 19th century cemetery.

Pge broke their own current published guidelines for vegetation management regarding tagging those specific trees for removal.

I believe town is different, but the utility easement on my property is pretty clear that pge maintains the aerial portion of the easement along with discretion of any tree that could fail and compromise the easement. Depending on what standards are followed, the horizontal distance considered could be twice the height of the tree. Around me, pge does not follow that large distance standard, but they can. The hazard tree removal project in paradise that is currently occurring is following that standard.

The recent devastating CA fires that I can remember from electrical systems involved transmission lines or private electrical systems. Off the top of my head, I can’t remember ones started from failures on distribution lines.

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Originally Posted by LongShortLong

The law should place greater responsibility on the landowner for trees near powerlines. It's not PGE's fault the owner planted a tree near the line, or failed to remove it while it was small. I don't think I should subsidize folks living in the forest. Same goes for my neighbor - plant elsewhere, prune it, or pay for your own tree removal. Responsibility.

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PG&E is required by law to maintain the rights of way, regardless of outside parties’ actions, or inactions. They need to inspect the ROW regularly, so as not to be ‘surprised’ by a scenario such as described above,
https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/yar...gulations.page

In the 1980s and 1990s, proposed WUI thinning projects met with a great deal of resistance in Los Alamos NM - people liked the trees. The Cerro Grande fire burned into town destroying many buildings, also destroying the resistance to WUI projects.

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Originally Posted by bodywhomper

Those trees are not in the forest. They are in the middle of town. They were landscape trees planted before the town received electricity. And several are part of a 19th century cemetery.

Pge broke their own current published guidelines for vegetation management regarding tagging those specific trees for removal.

I believe town is different, but the utility easement on my property is pretty clear that pge maintains the aerial portion of the easement along with discretion of any tree that could fail and compromise the easement. Depending on what standards are followed, the horizontal distance considered could be twice the height of the tree. Around me, pge does not follow that large distance standard, but they can. The hazard tree removal project in paradise that is currently occurring is following that standard.

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TDPUD is cutting trees along the line that runs along the street behind our house. They're removing every tree within 12 feet of the line--Jeffrey pines well over 100 ft tall in many cases. I guess the idea is the protect the line from branches dropping out of the trees. Or is there another reason for that distance?

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Originally Posted by LongShortLong

The law should place greater responsibility on the landowner for trees near powerlines. It's not PGE's fault the owner planted a tree near the line, or failed to remove it while it was small. I don't think I should subsidize folks living in the forest. Same goes for my neighbor - plant elsewhere, prune it, or pay for your own tree removal. Responsibility.

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Woah, this is ignorant as fuck.

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Originally Posted by Meadow Skipper

In the 1980s and 1990s, proposed WUI thinning projects met with a great deal of resistance in Los Alamos NM - people liked the trees. The Cerro Grande fire burned into town destroying many buildings, also destroying the resistance to WUI projects.

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USFWS took 6 years bro provide their Biological Opinion (approval) in 2003 for a prescribed burn/thinning project adjacent to San Bernardino at the WUI adjacent to the cal state. The area burned in the Old/Grand Prix Fire (arson) when the NEPA document was being posted for public review. Part of the university campus and adjacent neighborhood burned. People (residents) died during the fire and the related winter mud/debris flows. The RX work would have started that winter/spring. The USFWS fell on their sword for the multi-year delay.

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Originally Posted by LongShortLong

The law should place greater responsibility on the landowner for trees near powerlines. It's not PGE's fault the owner planted a tree near the line, or failed to remove it while it was small. I don't think I should subsidize folks living in the forest. Same goes for my neighbor - plant elsewhere, prune it, or pay for your own tree removal. Responsibility.

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Whoa, so landowners are responsible for maintaining the easements on their property for appropriate use of said easement? So now if you have a road easement on your property it’s your job to maintain it? That’s a ground breaking opinion.

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Originally Posted by neufox47

Whoa, so landowners are responsible for maintaining the easements on their property for appropriate use of said easement? So now if you have a road easement on your property it’s your job to maintain it? That’s a ground breaking opinion.

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Everyone should also be regularly inspecting any buried natural gas pipelines on their property too.

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Originally Posted by old goat

TDPUD is cutting trees along the line that runs along the street behind our house. They're removing every tree within 12 feet of the line--Jeffrey pines well over 100 ft tall in many cases. I guess the idea is the protect the line from branches dropping out of the trees. Or is there another reason for that distance?

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12 ft is the recommended minimum in the pge literature that is approved by the CPUC. Pge has made it clear that they have the right to fell every tree (regardless of species or tree health) that could hit their lines if it lost a branch or fell over.

They just hardened the infrastructure in my neighborhood (good!) which included new alignments and wider span between the parallel aerial wires. This resulted in a lot of tree felling (good!). On my property, they felled a healthy medium-sized blue oak that was over 40 feet away from the existing centerline of the distribution lines and more than 20’ aerially from the lines. The pge licensed arborists explained to me that the centerline would be shifted closer to the tree, there was potential for the healthy oak to split at a large “V” and land on the line, and removal at the entire tree was necessary because it likely would not survive a very heavy pruning. the tree is now on the ground. In the end, the foreman shifted the new lines in the other direction and the tree would have not been a problem and could have remained and untrimmed.

Presentation and q&a from last week with Susan Prichard, U of Washington researcher. She covers a lot of material, especially in the q&a section at the end.

https://youtu.be/EYp33ojpW5g

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Originally Posted by neufox47

Whoa, so landowners are responsible for maintaining the easements on their property for appropriate use of said easement? So now if you have a road easement on your property it’s your job to maintain it? That’s a ground breaking opinion.

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Responsible for trees they plant, yes. If PGE owns a tree for some reason, PGE should maintain said tree.

Are you saying landowners can plant trees on road easements? Sounds ridiculous

If you’re a landowner, say 50 acres, and there’s a distribution lines that crosses your back 40 on an easement and does not supply power to your property, longshortlong, are you suggesting that things should be changed for that property owner to maintain that easement related to vegetation growth that could compromise the distribution lines/poles?

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Originally Posted by old goat

Friend of mine is a "small is better" architect and developer--urban infill, high density, small houses on small lots, etc. He gave a talk about that in Nevada City--the capital of aginghippiestan --and they about tar and feathered him and ran him out of town on a rail. A bunch of locals in the area just killed, at least temporarily a PGE tree cutting project.

I don't disagree with you that having a bunch of tiny communities scattered through the woods is bad, and not just from a wildfire standpoint. Much as a lot of people don't like them, from an environmental standpoint big dense cities are the best. Apartments in big buildings don't have 4 outside walls and most don't have an outside ceiling, so much more efficient to heat and cool and most people use mass transit. (I don't live in a big city so obviously I'm being hypocritical about this.) If we were all still a small number of hunter gatherers and subsistence agriculturalists we could all live closer to nature--in the middle of it. But that ship sailed about 5000 years ago and I don't see us turning back the clock that far.

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Along us 6. That's some of the driest densis forest I have seen. With little compounds tucked in the trees. I am surprised that disaster has not already happened.

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Originally Posted by bodywhomper

If you’re a landowner, say 50 acres, and there’s a distribution lines that crosses your back 40 on an easement and does not supply power to your property, longshortlong, are you suggesting that things should be changed for that property owner to maintain that easement related to vegetation growth that could compromise the distribution lines/poles?

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I am thinking more of the owners with a cabin in a development. I've seen PGE do extensive logging for people's second homes. That ought to be a homeowner/community responsibility.

If PGE has a line going some distance, e.g. across SPI lands, that seems different (unless the line exists primarily to serve that landowner). And again, if the landowner is planting eucalyptus trees in the easement, again their responsibility to pay for its maintenance. The line through the forest to the cabin subdivision... does not seem the landowner along that line has much responsibility, but perhaps the community at the end of the line does. PGE could add it to their bills.

A for who actually performs the maintenance, that would be a contractor licensed to work near power lines. And perhaps PGE is a good entity to be in charge of inspection and ordering of maintenance.

Basically, the beneficiaries of the powerline should be responsible for it. City slickers should not be subsidizing country bumpkins (especially in this era of freedumb).

eta: I haven't thought it all out. However, I see no reason a city dweller should have any responsibility for the decisions of rural communities. Markets (and governments) are more efficient when the costs are appropriately recognized.

An interesting article on evacuating vs. stay and defend.
https://www.outsideonline.com/241720...ng-stay-defend

Ping blurred.

Accompanying link to interesting statistics.
https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/f...tics-wildfires