California regulators recently concluded a small fire in Grass Valley exposed sizable flaws in PG&E’s maintenance efforts, just as the utility is facing a backlog of 170,000 unfinished repairs in high-fire-risk areas.
"I was shocked by how many places where they could have done the right thing, where they could have taken action," said Ken Buske, a veteran electrical engineer who has investigated more than 1,000 fires.
That 325-degree level, Buske notes, is about the heat level normally set to bake in an oven. He said that every day that pole continued to overheat, the invisible danger grew.Instead, PG&E’s own records show the work was delayed for six months and then canceled altogether a few months before the fire.
Buske says he is puzzled how a visual inspection could suffice for the overheating reflected in that infrared image. PG&E says it has made changes since the fire and discovered a total of 17 cases where its field inspectors substituted visual checks for infrared findings. It no longer allows that, it says, and has upgraded other training and inspection standards. It has also launched an"aggressive" program to underground 10,000 miles of distribution lines to further reduce the risk of sparking wildfires.
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