Some Local Politicians Are More & Some Are Less Than Forgiving And Understanding Of SCE’s Line Shut-Offs

Some two dozen San Bernardino County communities sustained power outages during the severe windstorms of earlier this month which resulted in catastrophic fires of historic proportion in the Los Angeles cities and communities of Pacific Palisades, Altadena and Eaton Canyon.
Southern California Edison, the utility company which supplies electricity to those areas of Southern California not serviced by San Diego Gas & Electric, the City of Needles, the City of Colton, the City of Riverside, the City of Anaheim and the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, engaged in sporadic, varied and intermittent shut offs as part of what the company refers to as its public safety power shutoff program.
Those deliberate outages are intended to prevent the sparking of fires by damaged or downed power lines in an area where extremely dry vegetation acts as kindling and prevailing meteorologic conditions will push the fire itself or embers in multiple directions, causing immediate and widespread migration of the flames.
In San Bernardino County, the public safety power shutoff program extended into Upland, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, Rosena Ranch, Rialto, San Bernardino, Redlands, Grand Terrace, Yucaipa, Oak Glen, Wildwood Canyon, along Mill Creek, Angeles Oaks, Smiley Park, Green Valley Lake, Running Springs, Lake Arrowhead, along Shake Creek, Cedar Glen, Blue Jay, Crestline, Cedar Pines Park, Summit Terrace, Lake Silverwood, north of Baldy Village, in Wrightwood, in Deer Haven between Phelan and Pinon Hills north of Wildhorse Canyon and in Chino Hills.

Those outages represented some degree of inconvenience for those subject to them. Many of those weathering the situation and their political representatives accepted that such precautions were needed and the inconveniences part of a trade-off they needed to make to avoid the potential of their homes burning to the ground, as in upscale Pacific Palisades or in Altadena or the extreme north end of Pasadena.  Some public officials made statement calculated to steer a middle ground between the utility companies and their executives on one side and their constituents who went without power on the other.
In Fontana, where the outages were confined for the most part to the north end of the city and did not go on for more than three to four days, Mayor Acquanetta Warren made it sound like everyone – the power companies, the government and Fontana residents – are one big happy family who have got each others’ backs.
“I want to thank you for your patience and understanding as we navigate the challenges brought on by the recent high winds and power outages affecting our community,” the mayor said. “These outages are part of our effort to mitigate any wildfire risks associated with electrical infrastructure. While the City of Fontana does not have authority over Southern California Edison’s operations or decisions, we are doing everything within our power to support our residents and advocate for a swift resolution. Fontana is working to ensure the safety and well-being of all of our residents.”
The city is dependent on Southern California Edison for the electricity to run traffic lights. That presented a challenge when the company cut the power, Warren said, but the city and power company worked together toward a solution, she insisted.
“Our public safety and public works crews have been working night and day across the city, addressing wind-related damages, putting out two fully engulfed house fires, cleaning debris from more than 50 reports of downed trees and handling signal light outages,” she said.
Everyone needs to remain calm and do what is sensible, Warren said. She did not blame anyone for the handiwork of Mother Nature. “Keep in mind, that until electricity is restored in those areas, those signals will be down,” Warren said. “So, please adhere to traffic laws — stop, until it’s your turn.”
In Grand Terrace, where Southern California Edison has some major storage, switching and transmission facilities, the company initiated longer-term outages. Over the course of a week, the power remained off, with an 18-hour reprieve after several days. But thereafter, the power went off again.
Newly elected Councilman Matt Brown was not as reserved and delicate in his comments as was Warren. At the January 14 city council meeting, he went after Southern California Edison in a major way, giving voice to some of the the anger his constituents felt.
Whether Southern California Edison deserved the verbal fusillade Brown unleashed was a matter of perspective and whether it had a salutary effect was also open to debate. Some thought Brown to be grandstanding and that it was better to put up with several days with no electricity than to see Grand Terrace go the way of Rome during the reign of Nero. Others welcomed his remarks.
“I’m angry,” Brown said. “There are a lot of people here who are angry. We have good reason to be. There are a lot of people hurting in the community.”
He said that when he had the opportunity to hear from Southern California Edison Corporate President Steven Powell, he detected a lot of double-talk.
“I don’t feel what I heard from Mr. Powell was…’’ Brown’s voice trailed off and he didn’t finish the sentence before starting again. “He’s totally out of touch. When it comes down to money, you guys don’t want to re-energize our lines, only to have to take them down again. We don’t care. That’s your job. You’re to deliver our electricity, and if the wind dies down, you should turn it back on. If the wind kicks up 12 hours later, so be it. Then turn it [off]]. But don’t make us sit for a week.”
Southern California’s Edison’s top drawer schmoozer, Mark Cloud, was on hand to sooth the irate masses of Grand Terrace residents and de-fang Brown.
On behalf of the corporation, Cloud, whose function within the company is that of a “government affairs” specialist, ate crow. And when he finished with one plate, he gobbled down another.
“I’m so sorry for what you are going through, for what our company has done to the city,” Cloud said. “I am so sorry. This outage has been completely, frankly, unacceptable. It’s taken too long. It’s too frequent and you’re not getting the information you’re looking for.”
Cloud then tried to explain what he called the “logic behind the outages and the wildfire mitigation strategies and plans that we have in place.”
He said at the root of the problem is the “extreme weather event we are experiencing throughout the Southland” and that the Inland Empire and Grand Terrace are in a “high risk fire area. The incredibly dry condition and high winds play a role as well as our wildfire mitigation plan.”
Cloud said that utility companies are under the gun by government regulators to operate in such a way that they minimize to the greatest extent possible if not eliminate entirely the chance that electricity running through power lines will set off a fire somewhere during conditions which involve high winds or extremely dry vegetation or both, whether those power lines are intact or have been blown down. As the consequence of devastating fires, such as the Paradise Fire, the state puts a higher priority on preventing fires than ensuring that the population has uninterrupted access to electrical power.
Citing the “Paradise Fire” as an example, Cloud said the “intensity of fires, scale of the fires has gone up.”
The Paradise Fire, also known as the Camp Fire, came about when a Pacific Gas and Electric Company transmission line in the Feather River Canyon failed during strong winds.
According to Cloud, not only do Southern California Edison personnel initiate power shutoffs, the system now incorporates automatic power interruption as part of the combined state and private utility fire safety protocol.
“We are placing on top of our power poles these days… a lot of automated technology,” Cloud said, “…wireless reclosures, a lot of technical stuff that will allow us to not only detect faults instantly, but also de-energize lines instantly as well in an automated way so that our lines, when they’re live, don’t spark a new fire in the Southland, which can happen when there’s high winds Obviously, the winds we are experiencing with this wind event is different. Clearly, it has lasted a very long time. I’ve grown up around these winds and I’ve never seen this level of wind before. Wind, obviously, can affect our system but so can a number of other things. If wind for example is blowing vegetation into the lines, that can bring down a line. It can not only knock your power out, it can also spark and send sparks down to the ground and if there’s not good enough vegetation management, that can start a fire.”
Brown pushed forward with expressing his perception that Southern California Edison President Steven Powell was disregardful of the circumstance that the residents of Grand Terrace had fallen into.
“I want to see pressure put on Edison, because these timelines are unacceptable by any means,” Brown said. “To be without power for seven days when there’s no wind is just unfathomable. I can’t believe you guys are letting this happen.”
Cloud attempted to step a narrow line that included not antagonizing Brown and placating him by not contesting what the councilman said while acknowledging his company’s shortcomings and simultaneously explaining the reasons why the company had to keep Grand Terrace in the dark for six nights.
“There is an operational reason why this area was hit harder than others,” Cloud said. “There is a fine balance between reliability and keeping the fire at bay. We’re not doing a good job of it here.”
Cloud made the point that the high voltage transmission system lines conveying electricity across the region are much higher in the air than the local distribution system lines. Consequently, he explained, the high-tension lines represent less of a fire-sparking hazard than the local power distribution lines, which, accordingly, are prime candidates for shut off. He suggested by this an explanation of why Southern California Edison was still conveying gigawatts through Grand Terrace to other destinations while denying the city the lesser quantity of megawatts needed to keep the power on within the city.
“The decision to de-energize your circuits [is] not made in an an unruly fashion,” Cloud said. “It’s obviously very prescriptive. It’s very much tied to government regulation and policy. Public safety power shutoffs is a policy tool of last resort.”
He gestured to indicate the power station at the periphery of the city.
“That substation and the transmission lines being there are critically important to reliability across the region,” he said. In this way, he explained, Grand Terrace had been called upon to make a sacrifice for the greater good in Southern California.
“You happen to be in a really serious cluster of utility infrastructure all around us,” Cloud said. “You notice the transmission lines coming behind us here. That’s called our Western Devers Transmission Line. It is relatively new. It brings renewable energy from the desert to this region. That comes into the substations that are up on the hill above the 215 Freeway. That makes this area more sensitive to outages and I wish that wasn’t the case but it is. If one of the substations goes down from a fire or a wind – because that can happen; lightning strikes also play a role in knocking out power or a substation – what we’ll have is a catastrophic fire that goes beyond Grand Terrace. It will reach all the cities around us that are fed by these substations up above us here. That is the complication we are seeing here in Grand Terrace. That doesn’t mean it excuses the length of time you’ve been out and the frequency with which you’ve been out. It doesn’t.”
-Mark Gutglueck

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