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Reader Comments
Is PG&E liable for his death, probably not for this person clearly had health issues, so I have to ask the question, where the heck was his caregiver? It's not like nobody knew that the power would go out, it was all over the news for several days before it was shut off. Why wasn't his battery powered unit right next to him. Many questions need to be answered, but the caregiver and/or his family are the ones who need fall on the sword for their failure to make sure their loved one had someone available to jump into action the moment the power went off.
As for the outage itself, I think PG&E did the right thing. We lost 80+ people in the Camp Fire which destroyed the town of Paradise, one of those people was my cousin, so yes it hits really close to home. Its reported that there were 11 points of damage throughout the system, even if only one of them created a repeat performance of the Camp Fire, then that would be 1 fire too many and how many lives would have been lost then, who will take the fall for those lives lost.
The public maybe up in arms for the inconvenience for a couple of days, but what is your life worth? What is the life of your friends, family, and neighbors worth? Are you willing to risk their lives because you don't want to be without power? That would be pretty selfish if you ask me.
If society wants the power to stay up under hazardous conditions, then society just might have to give the power utility indemnification against the loss of life, regardless if the fault is the utility companies. This is one of those situations where you can't have your cake and eat it to.
R.C..
To say that PG&E has aging infrastructure is a gross understatement. Their high-power transmission lines date back to 1910 - yes, that's right, 1910 - with no substantive safety upgrades performed since 1910.
How does the CPUC justify allowing a utility, chartered with serving the public/taxpayers, to avoid infrastructure safety upgrades for over 100 years? Go and examine the piles of cash in the freezers of all CPUC commissioners during the past 100 years to understand part of the answer. Another component lies in the number of CPUC commissioners with direct and indirect ties to these same utility companies before, during, and/or after their terms as commissioners. What happened to the literal billions of dollars PG&E should have been spending on infrastructure maintenance since 1910 and why does the CPUC continue to allow PG&E to shirk this responsibility as of today? Why hasn't either the previous or current gubernatorial administrations declared a state of emergency allowing the state to dip into its $19billion slush fund to perform the safety upgrades?
In this instance, putting the blame on the victim and his daughter who served as his caregiver lacks compassion as well as a full understanding of the systemic issues at play within this dysfunctional cluster-fuck. His daughter had to quit her job years ago in order to provide him with the 24/7 care that neither of them could afford to purchase through other sources. Consequently, they did not have any money available to purchase generators - like many of the middle and low income who were somehow among the vast majority impacted by these outages - please note PG&E's specific announcements that they would NOT cut power to San Francisco nor Silicon Valley - why is that??? Their transmission lines run through the same regions and also date back to 1910 with no measurable safety upgrades.
A very good personal injury attorney will soon proceed to file a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the surviving daughter and she WILL prevail. Even if PG&E's current bankruptcy status relieves them of a payout obligation, the State of California - vis a vis the already overburdened California taxpayers - will be writing a seven figure settlement check to her. And the California taxpayers have no one to blame but themselves. Their decades-long voter apathy has allowed a corrupt super-majority to run rampant through the state giving away billions of taxpayer dollars to real estate developers and illegal alien benefits while California citizens and taxpayers are consistently told to shut up and keep bending over; hence, the state now lead the nation with a six figure annual outflow of taxpaying citizens to all-points east.
Gavin Newsom's recall effort is picking up a lot of steam because of this shenanigan with the power shutoff, along with many other major gaffes, and he will most likely be recalled within the next twelve months if not sooner.
CPUC had no business turning a blind eye to PG&E's malfeasance and negligence for over a century and now the chickens have again come home to roost in the form of more lawsuits that will hurt the taxpayers of California as PG&E remains under bankruptcy protection.
Anyone who has to live on critical life support equipment has to understand that you cannot depend on the public utility to provide 24hr/365day power. It is physically impossible for any utility anywhere in the world to provide that level of service.
The real pisser here is that even without a backup generator, there is one thing that the family could have done and that is to buy a UPS. Depending on the power requirements of the oxygen machine, for less than $500 they could have had a device that would provide enough power to give them more than 10 minutes to get him on the battery powered unit. These UPS's have alarms on them that will make enough noise that you will not be able to ignore the warning and would be able to hear it even through closed doors.
As for your wrongful death, let's change the scenario, no wind storm shutdown but that a car hit the power pole that feeds their home. The caregiver is still only going have less than 12 minutes to get him on the battery unit. This person who hit the pole, are they now responsible for the death?
Now let's look at the oxygen machine, I can guarantee you that the owners / operators manual will have a disclaimer clearly informing you that if someone's life is going to depend on this equipment, you must take personal responsibility for this and provide your own backup power equipment.
Now take the car hitting the pole and causing the outage. Is the driver liable for this death? The driver could be charged with manslaughter, they didn't plan on killing this person, but the death did happen. But did the victim and their caregiver take the personal responsibility to make sure that the critical life support equipment had the appropriate power backup systems to prevent this unfortunate situation? If they answer no, then the driver can't be charged, let alone convicted of manslaughter, or sued in civil court for wrongdoing death.
So as we apply your wrongful death argument to PG&E, the president and the BoD had to make a decision, right or wrong, good or bad, to shut down the power system because of high winds that could exceed the safe operating specifications of the system. This would become a force majeure (a major force of nature beyond anyone's control). Since it is well known now that the grid is substandard and could fail big time in these high winds, if they do not shut down the power, then they should be charged with wrongful death and then sued for loss of life & property. But they did shut it down. Now we know from the article that there were 11 areas in the grid that took some damage from the wind storm. How many of those could have resulted in a fire that rages out of control like the Camp Fire? All of them? None of them? We will never know at this point. But let's say they didn't shut it down and all 11 of these damage points sparked 11 Camp Fires. That 11 times 80 (the death toll in the Camp Fire) or 880 people who could have lost their lives. Now let's put you in the shoes of the president of PG&E, you have to make a decision that affects millions of people: Do you shutdown the power and save countless lives? Or do you keep the power on and risk those lives? I can tell you I would much rather face the scorn of society for shutting down the power, rather than face the nightmares and emotional distress that comes with knowing that I could have shutdown the power and saved all of those lives. What about you Dr. G., would you shut down the power?
Well written.
R.C.
Yes, PG&E, the CPUC, and the PUBLIC WATCHDOGS, have ALL FAILED to make sure that the grid was properly maintained all of these years. Oh, and it is not limited to PG&E or CA, these problems are occurring everywhere, it's just CA also has to deal with dry conditions every year at this time of year, along with the many droughts that can make it even worse.
So are there any SOTT Readers out there who would have kept the power on despite the known risks?
My Father was born in 1931 to a midwife at a cabin in S.C. They were sharecroppers. His father, who I never met, was much-older-than-my Grandma and a Marine from WWI, plus our Central American Escapades, such as General Smedley Butler wrote about, in ‘ War is a Racket ’. (If you’ve not read it, you MUST - it’s really short; & to the point. Free link. [Link] .) “Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 - June 21, 1940) was a United States Marine Corps major general, the highest rank authorized at that time, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.” (Aka, He had cojones de acero - Balls of Steel.)
Well my father’s father, had PTSD bad I guess & as the depression worsened, (in SC at least) . . well when 1937 hit, he split. So my Grandma packed up the kids, moved to family in IL for a while, and then on to Oakland where she became a valuable Rosie the Riveter, because she was about 4'11" so she could get out into the very tips of the wings to rivet. So my father’s family was in SC until he was 6, IL when 8, then Oakland and where my Grandma’s totally cool house was on ‘Proctor’ Ave.
Grandma's house we all well remember from our youths. It was in the Oakland Hills. We'd spend ALL holidays there - sneaking drinks of beer from sundry uncles’ ‘dead soldiers’ lying around (they salted their beer back then) while we still lived in California, and when we'd go back to visit, and when I would go back to visit while surfing or Skiing the Sierras.
Her ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD burned - it ALL BURNED, and more . . . in the Oakland Hills Firestorm of 1991, the 'then' largest fire (in terms of $ losses) in history. A few months after the fire, I drove to where her house had been, and took a scary video that I still have somewhere. Rolling hills with burnt foundations all the way down to the freeway, over towards other hills, and occasionally, an inexplicably spared house. It looked like pics of Dresden. (I never knew that if all the foliage was gone, you could see the Bay from her house!) Here's but one typical image: [Link] R.C.
*Corrected, clarified from brief comment at a previous Cal. fire/power article.
P.s., On the legal issues, there, that whole matter went to the CSC because if the state were properly held liable, (the fire department only partly put out a small fire... it was still smoking, as they drove away- WHHOOOOFFFF.....So the state would have gone bankrupt and the CSC did some important Sovereign Immunity decision on it.
RC
While I'm probably at least a decade older than you, our paths could have easily crossed. I know your grandmother's neighborhood very well.
BC
Like Mr. T would say... Fools!
I have to wonder how long the liability for providing power can be endured by this private enterprise.
As for the brush clearance, PG&E has been slacking and this year they are playing catch up. Still a lot of work to do.
In the mountain areas you have trees which can easily exceed 100 ft tall so in a major wind storm (winds above 40 mph/65 km) a tree outside of the easement that the utility must keep clear, in theory if uprooted could still fall on the powerline. This particular storm saw winds exceeding 60 mph/95 km.