172 Wine Country infernos overwhelmed fire crews, probe of deadly blazes will take months more

Jan. 26--SANTA ROSA -- Investigators are still "several months away" from determining what caused a series of lethal infernos in the North Bay and nearby regions during October, a top state fire official told a legislative panel on Friday.

Among the complications: 172 fires were reported at the outset of the October blazes, which were among the most destructive in the state's history.

The fires killed 44 people, destroyed 8,700 homes and buildings and burned 245,000 acres.

"The challenge is that many of the fires merged together," Ken Pimlott, director of the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told the state Senate's Subcommittee on Gas, Electric and Transportation Safety.

This news organization was the first to report on fire dispatchers responding to multiple calls of downed power lines and blown transformers as the deadly blazes sparked. That evidence led state regulators to review whether PG&E power lines may have caused the fires, and the utility's stock subsequently tumbled as the company warned investors about hundreds of millions of dollars in possible liabilities, but no determination of the fire's cause has yet been made.

Prior to the fires, PG&E became a convicted felon for actions linked to a fatal natural gas explosion in San Bruno that the utility caused in 2010.

In October, emergency crews were overwhelmed by 911 emergency calls reporting a slew of wildfires in the North Bay's Wine Country and nearby regions of California, Pimlott said.

"We had deployed; we were prepared," ahead of the deadly fires, Pimlott told the panel. But he added, "I don't think anybody could be prepared for the conditions that surfaced in California on that Sunday night, Oct. 8."

Sonoma County dispatchers sent out fire crews to at least 10 different locations across the county over a 90-minute period starting at 9:22 p.m. to respond to 911 calls and other reports of sparking wires and problems with the county's electrical system amid high winds, according to a review of emergency radio traffic by the Bay Area News Group.

Pimlott told the subcommittee he had scheduled a meeting in Sacramento on Friday with the investigators who are trying to determine the cause and origin of the roughly 18 major fires that scorched Northern California. The subcommittee is chaired by state Sen. Jerry Hill, a Democrat whose district includes portions of San Mateo County and Santa Clara County.

"Hopefully in the next several months" fire investigators will be able to determine the cause of the devastating blazes, Pimlott told the lawmakers. "The process is well along. We are hopeful that this is months and not years, and hopefully sooner."

The numerous outbreaks, along with the merging of the infernos, could make it more tricky for investigators to determine the cause of each blaze.

The subcommittee's goal, Sen. Hill said, is to craft ways to prevent destructive wildfires.

"Are utilities and regulators doing enough to ensure that the risks associated with our electrical equipment are properly managed?" he asked.

The lawmakers vowed to ensure that accountability is part of the subcommittee's work.

"We will not forget" the victims of the infernos, Hill said. "We will work to hold accountable any entity found responsible for these devastating fires."

Michael Picker, president of the state Public Utilities Commission, warned that preventative measures might not be enough to reduce the risk of destructive fires to a comfortable minimum.

"Perfect safety is going to be really hard for us to reach," Picker said.

About 4 million people -- roughly 10 percent of the state's population -- now live in the 70,000 square miles deemed to face elevated and high fire risks, as identified in a new California fire map, Picker said. That's up from 31,000 square miles in prior fire maps.

Some lawmakers criticized the PUC for moving too slowly to implement state laws designed to improve safety related to utilities and wildfires.

"When we are talking about how we better prepare our state, there is the hope for a strident effort to enact these protections as best as possible," Assemblyman Marc Levine, whose district includes the North Bay, told Commissioner Picker.

Pat Hogan, senior vice president of electric operations at PG&E said the utility spent $440 million during 2017 on vegetation management, up from $247 million in 2014. The utility intends to spend an "equivalent amount" to the $440 million this year, Hogan said.

San Francisco-based PG&E also said it would add new equipment and replace old equipment to improve electricity safety.

"We recognize the wildfire risk in California is growing," Hogan said.

Sen. Hill questioned PG&E about its upgrades on reclosers, equipment that can automatically restart power in lines after a service interruption. If electricity pulses are sent through lines that are in contact with trees or other vegetation, that can start a fire. PG&E operated a number of reclosers during the time of the North Bay fires.

"It's now my understanding that PG&E has installed the capability to remotely disable the reclosing function on about 75 percent of the reclosing devices in your system," Hill said to PG&E's Hogan.

"That's right," Hogan replied.

Hill pressed on, asking, "Do you actively disable these reclosers?"

Hogan said PG&E launched a pilot program that tested the disabling of 38 reclosers, a small fraction of the thousands of reclosers in the PG&E system.

"We have put together a program to proactively take those reclosers out of service when we have high fire risk in those areas," Hogan said. "The prudent operation we took was to create a pilot, make sure there were not any unintended consequences, and then roll it out further."

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