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Comment by ransom1538 | Hacker News Reader

Most of California is a tinderbox. In late summer, when you walk in brush or in the woods, the ground 'cracks' as you walk - from dry sticks and pine needles. California burns every year. Fires have started from car exhaust pipes, people dropping a cigarette, knocking over a camping gas stove, etc. The solution isn't to ban "camping gas stoves" - the solution is to have fire breaks BEFORE the fire. Fires get out of control in California because of it's massive size and fuel source. Why do people blame PG&E? Would we all feel better if it was a kid playing with a magnifying glass? The solution is to destroy the main electrical company? We would all be happier if they were government owned electrical lines that caused the fire? I don't follow the logic.

I am sure PG&E will enjoy slashing all their current (and past??) employee retirement benefits. Who wins here?

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I learned the other day that the reason California is so prone to massive fires is because they do not allow fires to occur naturally, and instead do a lot of fire prevention work. Over time, ironically, this results in a ton of dead, dried vegetation accumulating.

The general consensus among experts seems to be that nature needs a regular “release” for a lot of stuff, otherwise “pressure” builds up and results in what we humans consider disasters.

This is true, and ironically the more money that is invested in fire fighting, the more vegetation is allowed to build up for a future fire until the size overwhelms the current capital investment for firefighting. This funding policy guarantees larger and larger fires.

Meanwhile, no one is seriously discussing this issue, and everyone is blaming it on climate change, which will only make the voters of California feel hopeless, and therefore do nothing about it.

I have passed controlled burns in the Sierras before, so it cannot be categorically true that California works to prevent all fires.

Do you have a citation for this claim?

If you let the fires burn out then you’re violating the people’s god given right to build a house in the middle of a forest full of kindling.

In this country we can accept just about anything except for nature to run its course.

> ... California is so prone to massive fires is because they do not allow fires to occur naturally ...

This was "national policy" in US and it applied to all states, and not CA specifically. It was the scientific consensus and various agencies followed that advice.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wildfire_suppressio...

We now know better, so the current scientific consensus is that the past consensus was wrong. Welcome to falsifiability.

The answer I’ve heard is they are supposed to clear the area around their equipment, to lower the chances of fires starting, which they have not been doing.

Why do that when you can just not and keep the money with no consequences. It's not like California has a history of corrupt utility providers or anything.

This is an absolutely horrible response by someone who clearly doesn’t live in the area.

PG&E has constantly prioritized shareholder profits over renovating their aging infrastructure. They caused the biggest wildfire in the history of California and are now _finally_ facing a reckoning for their reckless and destructive behavior.

Fix your goddamned infrastructure and get a smaller bonus. That’s what we want.

So the State government has no influence over the choices of PG&E? And here I thought it was a regulated utility. Who knew?

>Why do people blame PG&E?

People blame PG&E because investigations have traced several colossal fires back to electrical equipment.

Shutting off the power isn't a panacea. But California's electrical grid was built for the climate of the past, and is increasingly looking dangerous on high-fire-danger days in the climate of the future. So shutting it off on those days is going to have to become a component of prevention, unfortunately.

I have many friends in an area devastated by one of the large fires a few years ago, and the sentiment I've seen over the past few days is largely gratefulness. A recognition that, as bad as blackouts are, if they can prevent a catastrophe, they're worth it.

Built for the climate of the past? Which one, the one over thousands of years in which CA routinely undergoes multi-decade droughts, or the more recent one of a few hundred years in which the dry periods last just a few years?

I think the problem is the people of CA are not willing to engineer water infrastructure necessary to support the population based on the longterm climate record.

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