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Comment by dehrmann | Hacker News Reader

I'm not entirely sure what people want them to do. A year ago, people were calling for PG&E to be shut down (then where would you get your power from?), and there was strong pressure to hold them liable. They got the message, and they're doing the one thing thing can do with only a ~year of notice: cutting off power when and where it's risky.

Until more lines are buried, there's more maintenance around them in these areas, or PG&E is released of liability, this is what happens.

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I imagine people would like PG&E to have a functioning website that shows where power is going to be turned off, to have a more predictable warning system so people can have more than a few hours notice of impending blackouts, to have better managed community centers so people can access essential resources during blackouts, etc.

This is relatively basic stuff that a large corporation should be able to figure out with a ~year of notice. Instead there first few blackouts have been very poorly managed despite the fact that PG&E knew this was coming.

> more than a few hours notice of impending blackouts

I'm not sure if weather is predicable enough to do this in the micro sense. Obviously, warning that Sept-Nov might have blackouts is easy.

Hmm, but we know weather like two weeks in advance

We understand it isn't an exact and perfect prediction for the state of things half a month from now, but it's better than nothing.

"your area is at risk of blackouts next week - 60%" is better than nothin'

Having the state (or even local municipalities) buy them out and turning the utility into a publicly-owned utility is one popular opinion I keep hearing. They might have more money to start burying lines if they didn't need to answer to investors.

So then when there’s a fire, some locality gets sued into bankruptcy?

Then so be it? Seems better than having an entity so large that it's shutting power off to large chunks of the state.

What? PG&E aren't shutting off power because they are large.

They are shutting off power because there are massive windstorms hitting California right now that are hitting massive swaths of the state at once. Other utilities in California also are performing "public safety power shutoffs".

Even LADWP, the PUBLIC utility of Los Angles has commenced "public safety power shutoffs"

Mind you, the entire concept of "public safety power shutoffs" was 100% California state government approved in May.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-power-shuto...

They can always claim sovereign immunity. Something rarely mentioned around government management of X (utilities, health care, police, etc.) is that it's harder to hold a bureaucracy liable for any wrongdoing.

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