| Show Downed power lines A fiery culprit only money can stop 0 Joe Los Angeles Times Power lines are the suspected culprit behind at least five of the 12 major fires that burned in Southern California last week including the Witch fire which burned nearly acres destroyed 1041 homes and killed two people Although acts of arson generate public outrage and police action power lines pose a problem with no easy solution Should utilities do more to prevent failures particularly in wild land areas prone to high wind And are ratepayers willing willingto to foot the bill The utilities and the public sector need to come cometo cometo cometo to the mountain and realize there is an issue here that needs to be addressed Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev said Its almost like a taboo subject voltage High-voltage lines can start fires when they cross touch tree branches or hit the ground causing the electrical current to arc in explosions of sparks When visited the scene of the Canyon fire in Malibu it struck him how often he had heard of downed power lines sparking fires in the Santa Monica Mountains during heavy winds He sponsored a motion which supervisors approved last week to have county staff work with Southern California Edison to research ways to lower the risk of power-line power ignitions in prone fire-prone areas This is an issue that has gone un-addressed un for decades said State regulators require utilities to clear brush and meet pole strength standards to help prevent downed power lines But they say the only certain way to remove the fire threat is to replace overhead lines with underground ones Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas Electric say that would cost costa a minimum of 1 million a mile And in remote rocky areas the cost soars from that baseline Edison alone has more than miles of overhead lines in its square-mile square service area which covers all or parts of 11 counties in Southern and Central California Some money is set aside by regulators to bury lines but the funds fall far short of the need Edison is expected to collect 35 million throughout Los Angeles County in 2007 for placing overhead I lines ines underground according to spokesman Steven Conroy Its up to the county working with Edison to identify the projects he said Utilities around the country are putting new power lines underground and replacing some overhead lines with subterranean ones But most of the buried lines are in residential areas where people didn't w want want nt them marring their views not in the wind-prone wind where a few sparks from a power line can turn brush into a raging monster Old overhead power lines still crisscross the grasslands and chaparral canyons of San Diego County's Laguna Mountains site of three c of the six largest fires in California history the Witch fire last month the Cedar fire of 2003 and the Laguna fire in 1970 Power lines were the cause in the Laguna fire And there have been other near disasters Just a mile from where the Witch fire started power lines fell in Santa Ana winds last November sparking a fire that could have been devastating had firefighters not put it down so quickly Dave Geier vice president of electrical transmission at said last months month's fires might change the equation of how authorities decide where to bury power lines The question is How can we do a better job in prioritizing some of these circuits in terms of he said To this point its it's been standard utility practice to have these lines in rural areas overhead Southern California Edison has clashed with fire authorities in the past In 1997 state officials investigating the acre Malibu Calabasas-Malibu fire raided Edison's headquarters in Rosemead The The California Department of Forestry II yr t i JI 4 11 c 4 n i I II IIII II r y 11 yr I Ii IiI I I j n II III I 1 I 1 Los Angeles Times photo by Irfan Khan KhanAn i iAn I IAn An Edison crew works to restore power in Running Springs Calif after last months month's fire j i and Fire Prevention said at the time that the utility repeatedly had hindered investigations by withholding information or by removing evidence from the scenes of major fires Edison denied the allegation Prosecutors ultimately concluded that Edison failed to trim trees around power lines that sparked the fire but that its negligence was not criminal The issue of power-line power fire safety largely has faded from public view since then Part of the reason is that this type of fire is relatively rare Yet when power-line power fires occur its it's often during high winds And those fires can be particularly destructive In the Santa Monica Mountains power lines sparked 8 percent of the fires since 1981 I according to a University of Wisconsin study on fire ignition But those fires were responsible for 24 percent of the total acres burned They are rare events but extremely destructive when they occur said Joe Mitchell a Ramona resident and scientist who has done extensive research on power-line power fires Mitchell is working with the Sierra Club to oppose a major transmission project called the Sunrise that would cross the Laguna Mountains Of the 20 largest wildfires S' S Sin in California history power lines were suspected or blamed for four accounting for about 2 21 f percent of the charred acreage according to forestry department a II II statistics It appears that power lines 4 played an even larger role 4 in last months month's devastation than they have historically y The fires linked to possible i power line failures the Witch fire the Canyon fire j the Rice fire near Fallbrook the Ranch fire near Castaic and the Grass Valley fire S Sin in the San Bernardino Mountains collectively y charred more than y acres and 1500 homes 4 The California Public 1 Utility Commission is investigating each of the 3 J fires and will determine a what if anything c could a i have been done to avoid the 4 failures said Richard Clark i director of the utility's g consumer protection and safety division j tI 3 tIIE IE I |
