Day: October 10, 2019

In an effort to curb wildfires, PG&E started shutting down the power due to high winds in Northern California.

It may take them up to 7 days to restore power to the affected areas.

SAY WHAT?

How about PG&E simply fixing or maintaining their equipment? Oh Right… They’ve filed for bankruptcy because of all the law suits from the last major fire that they were apparently responsible for. Uh, what the hell is going on here? They didn’t have to kill the power in the 70’s, 80’s or 90’s so what’s changed?

Could it be that in order to keep profits and executive salaries high they’ve skimped on maintenance? Could it be that zoning and over development have created a situation where too many high tension lines have been run out to places that are inaccessible and therefore not easily maintained?

I’ll admit that I think it’s funny as hell.

I’d love to see San Francisco and Sacramento plunged into darkness. Both bastions of insanity could do with a nice long dark wake up call.

How would all the electric cars be recharged? OMG it would be a disaster and people’s cell phones have to be recharged. What? no computers, internet, streaming services? You mean we have to, gasp… talk to each other face to face?  After the first night it would probably look like something out of The Purge.

And why would it take up to 7 days to restore power?

All PG&E is doing is shutting down the grid.  Assuming no damage, shouldn’t it be a simple matter of resetting the system and powering it back up?

Of course, while the power is down maybe PG&E should use the time wisely to make routine repairs and improvements. However, doing that would require planning and certainly overtime pay. Since they’re in bankruptcy it’s unlikely that there is a lot of cash for the overtime, but I’ll bet the top executives are still getting their obscene paychecks.

The mental image of Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and Sacramento residents having to resort to cooking fires while living in their million dollar homes tickles me to no end.

But we all know that isn’t what’s going to happen. In fact here is the outtage map.

It’s mostly the people who can’t afford to live in the cities who are being affected. You know, the workers that have to get up at 4am to get ready for their commute of 2.5 hours to work. Then they’ll have to deal with streetlights being out and signal lights not working, when they finally do get to work the odds are pretty good they’ll have some jerk supervisor that chastises, or outright punishes them for being late.

I guess my point is that instead of PG&E killing the power, they should be working to make sure that the power lines don’t come down in the first place. 

But California is apparently fine with being plunged into the dark ages. So long as Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and Sacramento don’t go dark. 

I could make a killing selling flint knives and stone clubs.