This fall, California residents awakened to a new reality of inconvenience and terror. In early October, the utility companies Pacific Gas and Electric, San Diego Gas and Electric, and Southern California Edison all announced precautionary power shutoffs for thousands of customers, prompted by especially hot, dry conditions and forecasts for strong winds.
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| A helicopter drops water while battling the Saddleridge Fire in Porter Ranch, a suburban Los Angeles neighborhood, on October 14, 2019. |
Just days after the first announcement, a fire broke out in Los Angeles. The Saddleridge Fire burned through almost 9,000 acres in the northern San Fernando Valley, around the hillside neighborhoods of Sylmar, Granada Hills, and Porter Ranch. One person died; 88 structures were damaged, and 19 were destroyed. Although the cause of the fire has not been determined, initial reports pointed to SoCal Edison transmission lines. Then, in spite of the shutoffs in other parts of the state, the massive Kincade Fire broke out in Sonoma County two weeks later, consuming nearly 78,000 acres and destroying 374 structures. A PG&E transmission tower was noted as a possible cause.
Fires have dominated the California news cycle in the past, as the dry season dragged into October and the Santa Ana winds started to blow. But this fall seemed different. In the wake of November 2018’s Camp Fire—the deadliest, most destructive fire in the state’s history, killing at least 85 people—we entered what might be considered a year of climate change awareness, bookended by the news that we may only have a dozen years to contain global warming and the Global Climate Strike this September. News accounts about wildfires have taken on even greater urgency. As many commentators have noted, the changing climate and ongoing deficiencies in the regulation and management of utility companies present a new, dreadful normal.
Read the story from The Nation by Kian Goh - “California’s Fires Prove the American Dream Is Flammable.”
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