NFPA Journal - Winter 2022 - 56

Perspectives
its electric transmission infrastructure
in the area and found evidence that
the company had been recklessly negligent-that
it was aware of fire risk and
yet didn't do enough to address the
threat. That said, of course, there are
other external factors that have made
the consequences of powerline failure
much higher over time. One major part
of the story is the fact that the risk profile
of the company's service territory has
changed considerably over the past 10
years because of periods of very severe
drought, which killed millions of trees.
On top of that, we've also seen a migration
of residents into these more rural
areas of the state that are served by very
old infrastructure, increasing the potential
for more destruction of homes and
businesses. It's a confluence of variables,
and it's extremely challenging to address.
What do we know about the
transmission lines that sparked
the Camp Fire?
These were high-voltage powerlines that
carry electricity over long distances from
generating stations. The lines are hung
from the arms of their towers on strings
of insulator discs-if the live wire gets
too close to the metal structure it can
create arcing that can be very dangerous.
The hook that broke on the morning
of November 8, 2018, was about the
width of a fist and connected the arm
of a 100-year-old transmission tower to
the insulator discs. The hooks can wear
down little by little as they swing in the
wind over decades, and that's exactly
what happened. This hook had been
purchased for something like 56 cents in
1919 and hung shortly thereafter, and it
remained in place until the morning it
broke nearly in half. When it broke, the
wire swung against the metal tower and
created an arc of electricity that settled
on very dry brush below the tower.
What did investigators learn
about line maintenance?
They found that PG&E wasn't doing
enough to inspect and maintain these
tiny pieces of hardware that were holding
the wires to the tower. These lines are
56 | NFPA JOURNAL * WINTER 2022
in very remote areas and very hard to get
to. PG&E wasn't getting close enough to
these hooks to understand that they were
about to give out. Between roughly 2000
and 2018, the company had reduced
the frequency and the thoroughness of
inspection of its transmission lines. They
would [inspect] this infrastructure by
helicopter, or sometimes walk along the
ground, but these tiny pieces of hardware
are many feet in the air and difficult to
observe unless you're doing something
at close range, like climbing the tower or
maybe using a drone.
After [the Camp Fire], PG&E sent
inspectors to look closely at these little
pieces to find out if others were at risk
of failure. They found that the hook that
broke and started the Camp Fire wasn't
an anomaly. They found other pieces of
hardware in the vicinity that were very
worn out, that had been hanging for
decades, wearing down little by little. It
was one of the reasons that prosecutors
determined that this had been reckless
negligence and that PG&E should have
been aware of this and knew that there
was risk but wasn't doing enough to
address it. Later, PG&E did a full-scale
inspection of all equipment in these
high-threat fire areas and found a lot of
things that should have been addressed
over the years and weren't.
What were some of the issues
PG&E found?
Kind of everything. There were other
issues with hardware. There were issues
with structural integrity in general,
like equipment that was worn out or
degraded. Either the company didn't
notice, or it had deferred repair. They
had to work very hard to install temporary
fixes until they could get out and
make sure that everything truly was
safe. And then, of course, there's inherent
risk throughout the system. Things
fail for all kinds of reasons. Even if you
think you've taken every precaution, the
risk is inherent. It's a very tough situation
that the company faces.
You explain in the book that
PG&E isn't an outlier when it
comes to old transmission
lines and equipment.
Transmission lines are some of the
oldest parts of the grid in many places.
The lines I'm referring to in California
were some of the first large transmission
networks in the country and date
back to the 1920s. A lot of other transmission
lines were built just after
World War II to support massive population
growth, and while they might
not date to the twenties, they are still
coming up on 70 years old or more.
That's not to say that they're all in a
state of disrepair. Different companies
have different approaches for maintaining
things and replacing components.
It's easy to fault utilities for not
investing in infrastructure and
safety, but what other factors contributed
to the lack of safety over
the years in California's utilities?
These utilities are supposed to be
subject to close regulatory oversight. But
the regulatory body in California, the
California Public Utilities Commission,
oversees many industries and was
stretched very thin in the years where
we saw PG&E's system safety decline
precipitously. The regulator also
underestimated the extent to which
climate change was going to change
the risk profile of PG&E's service territory,
similar to the way the company
underestimated it. And there's been
criticism-and I don't really get into
this in the book as much as perhaps I
should have-over how to better manage
[wildfire-prone areas] so that when
something inevitably happens, the likelihood
of these huge, uncontrollable fires
can be lessened. It's not just power lines
that cause fires-it's lightning, campfires,
accidental ignition from anything.
We need more proactive forest management
and that's another agency. So this
is absolutely the convergence of a lot of
different things.
You write that California's
government " treated PG&E as
a tool in their quest to preempt
the long-term effects of climate
NFPA Journal - Winter 2022

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