California has a wildfire problem and always has of course.
But the news this week about the multi-million-dollar settlement by the state’s largest power company, Pacific Gas and Electric, raises concerns about how serious the wildfire problem has become.
PG&E will pay 55-million dollars for two major wildfires that started because of aging power lines and destroyed homes and cost lives. In the settlement, the huge gas and electric company also agrees to five years of independent oversight to prevent more power lines from starting more fires.
Aside from any legal trouble, PG&E isn’t the only power company that has to worry these days about how to prevent power lines from sparking wildfires.
SDG&E for instance has taken more steps since the huge wildfires in San Diego County, which destroyed thousands of homes in the early 2000’s, to improve infrastructure and to better monitor wildfire risks. And like other utilities, they have gone to preemptively shutting off power to communities where wildfire risks are high.
And this all is happening during a time when California and other Western states are seeing more hotter and drier years of weather and more drought conditions.
The wildfire problem in California will never go away so efforts to do all that can be done to prevent them must continue, now more than ever before.
(Photo Getty Images)