It gets reported and investigated all the time. PG&E, a large power company in California, paid around $14 billion in the court case following the big fires there a few years ago.
The search term is
PG&E hooks. For example, a breakdown on hackaday.Why?
Evidence used to convict PG&E of the 2018 Camp Fire shows the company knew old parts needed replacing, but tried to show they could last longer.
Money, I guess. The people who originally installed these hooks are probably dead of natural causes by now (even if they were quite young) so I imagine they’d be well-past service life of the parts too.
EDIT: Age of one of the broken hooks seems to be 97 years, costed 56 cents (not in modern money), and also:
According to a February 1987 engineering evaluation, the company ordered the tests of two worn hooks that were found on a transmission line in Contra Costa county – hooks that look chillingly similar to ones taken from the nearly 100-year-old transmission line blamed for the fire that left 85 dead.
This. It’s the fundamental reason natural monopolies like utilities are problematic to privatize. Democratic governments have an incentive to prioritize residents and citizens interests. The only interests private companies incentivize are shareholders, who increasingly do not care if their profits result in destruction, death, and disaster because they don’t know or care about the people being harmed. They don’t live in the places that are burning, so why would they reduce their take just to ensure the safety of the communities the company serves. As long as the losses they take from lawsuits and the cost of paying governments to limit their liability, are less than the cost of maintaining the lines then 100 year old hardware seems “Good Enough” to them.
Can you regulate them to the moon and back to prevent that? Sure. By the time you’ve finished building that bureaucracy, it would have cost you a fraction of price just to have a government department do it.
I’m not sure about that particular statistic (half of the total number of fires, regardless of size? Half of acres burned?), but utility lines definitely cause a lot of fires. This can be mitigated by burying lines, which IIRC is what San Diego does, but it’s expensive so companies don’t want to do it unless their arms are twisted.
It’s sad spending a few more dollars and not reporting billions in profits to save vast amounts of land and property is frowned upon.
Yea I guess I should have tried to slip frequency in there somehow.
Californians know that the electrical company transmission lines are neglected. It was reported heavily.
But I’m told by some whiny ass crybabies after that Pratt prick lost that it’s the dems fault for all the wildfires.
It sort of is. These companies need to be regulated more.
You read it somewhere, so clearly someone has reported it
The issues are how do you
- Get people to pay attention to those reports and care?
- Get those people to vote accordingly?
- Get those elected officials to hold the electric companies accountable?
- Hold those elected officials accountable when they don’t?
- Keep those people engaged and doing points 1-4 consistently so that it doesn’t happen again?
You show the effects of the consequences of how it was reported, blame them and when it’s elected officials, you hold them accountable. The problem is that no one knows how to actually hold people accountable without getting nasty. We need to do what Zohran Mamdani did and put ourselves in the spotlight and do not shy away but keep it clean, and respectful.
Many of those forests need to burn regularly. Check with a qualified forester for your area but often the forest needs to burn so who cares.
Fire isn’t needed at any intensity at any time of year, every year. Fire adapted plants can be and are getting over-burned by fires that are getting more intense (less rain, more heat). This is exacerbated by non-native plants (especially grasses and eucalyptus) that outcompete the native plants and are then extra vulnerable to fire.
You’re confusing wildfires with bushfires.
Many of those forests need to burn regularly. Check with a qualified forester for your area but often the forest needs to burn so who cares.
Removed by mod
Explain it please.
Ok. I’ll try.
Trump sucks.
It’s super popular to blame Trump for everything.
Dude can’t read.
Tell me if you’re still confused.
ELI3
I would but I was in violation of the rules. No biggie.
Whatever is wrong with you is no little thing.
Ok Mr Perfect
