New blackouts to prevent fires hit Northern California. Could they come to Idaho?
Pacific Gas & Electric began shutting off power Wednesday morning to 150,000 households in 18 Northern California counties to reduce the risk of wildfires due to high winds. The shutoff followed three times last month when California’s largest utility turned off electricity, affecting an estimated 2.4 million Northern Californians
Idaho regulators don’t see those kinds of rolling blackouts coming to the Gem State. Thank the weather.
“Because California’s wind and weather events are drastically different than what we experience in Idaho, it would be inappropriate to mimic or mirror those types of actions,” said Stephen Goodson, a policy analyst for the Idaho Public Utilities Commission.
They don’t see serious weaknesses in Idaho’s electric-power infrastructure, either. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has blamed the outages on decades of neglect by PG&E of its lines and towers. He has also criticized PG&E for inadequately clearing tree branches and brush from around power lines.
In Idaho, the PUC “closely monitors” the maintenance programs of Idaho Power and other utilities, Goodson said. He said they have adequately maintained their equipment.
“When emergencies like fires occur, we work with agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to ensure prompt, effective responses,” Idaho Power spokesman Sven Berg said in an email. “Shutting off power to our lines is an option, but it would be one of the last in the series of steps we could take to keep our lines and other equipment safe.”
Idaho Power, Berg said, relies on building and maintaining safe, reliable equipment including power lines, poles, substations and transformers.
The utlitity operates more than 32,000 miles of power lines across its service area, stretching from Eastern Oregon to Blackfoot in Eastern Idaho. Every year, workers inspect and perform needed repairs on roughly 9,000 miles of distribution lines — which bring electricity to a home or business — and 1,200 miles of transmission lines that go between a power plant and company substations, Berg said.
The utility also operates a robust vegetation management program to keep trees and other plants away from our lines, Berg said. Trees are trimmed and removed when necessary. Chemicals are applied to keep plants from growing near certain power poles.
“We prune more than 120,000 trees every year to keep them away from power lines,” Berg said. “This is all a part of our efforts to maintain a safe and reliable power supply.”
Oregon Trail fire in Boise brought changes
But the Boise-based utility’s equipment has caused fires in the past.
A small clamp that melted on an Idaho Power pole and dripped hot aluminum onto grass and sagebrush ignited the 2008 Oregon Trail Fire in Southeast Boise. The fire caused $4 million in damage, destroyed 10 homes, severely damaged 11 others and killed one person.
In the aftermath, the city of Boise strengthened its fire code by adopting 21 building and five prevention requirements. They affected new homes in the Wildland Urban Interface, the area where homes are most threatened by wildfire.
The city also thinned thick sagebrush stands in the Oregon Trail Reserve, in the area where the fire burned. The presence of sagebrush helped the fire spread quickly up a hill where the homes burned.
Goats were also brought in to eat tall, dry grass.
One source of trouble: squirrels
Sometimes, utilities say, they can’t be blamed for fires originating from their lines. Last month, a squirrel contacted an Idaho Power line in Pocatello. Idaho Power said the rodent caused a fire when the line fell to the ground. It burned about a quarter of an acre and knocked out power to 1,060 customers.
Fires from electrical lines and other infrastructure have not been a problem in the Boise National Forest, spokeswoman Venetia Gempler said. The forest doesn’t experience the high winds that Northern California sees or the dry Santa Ana winds that can cause fires in Southern California, she said.
“They also have different vegetation than we do, and that also adds into it,” Gempler said by phone.
The federal Bureau of Land Management manages more than 6,000 milies of electric powerline right of way on public lands in Idaho, mostly in Southern Idaho. Fire prevention and control, including the use of manpower or herbicide-assisted vegetation clearing, is a standard stipulation in agreements with utilities, BLM spokesman Ken Frederick said by email.
“BLM Idaho and Idaho Power have developed a positive and productive working relationship,” he said.
From 2015 to 2019, there were 52 powerline fires on BLM land in Idaho, scorching a total of 3,000 acres. That’s only a small percentage of the land burned by wildfires. Over the past decade, the BLM has fought an average of 417 fires a year, burning an average of 372,410 acres annually, Frederick said.
Despite public perceptions, lightning isn’t the major cause of Idaho’s wildfires. Eighty percent of the wildfires that burned in Idaho in 2018 were human-caused, according to the Idaho Department of Lands.
Part of California’s problems have come as greater numbers of people have moved into areas where fires were historically common. Scientific American reported that many of the homes and businesses burned in the 2017 Santa Rosa, Sonoma and Napa fires and last year’s Camp Fire did not exist 50 years ago.
Climate change plays role
“Obviously, a very big issue is that people have been increasingly building in fire-prone areas,” Benjamin Cook, a Columbia University research scientist and expert on how climate change and other conditions affect wildfire risk in the West, told Scientific American. “Where climate seems to be playing a role is that once these fires get going, they become bigger and spread faster.”
Sustained winds of more than 70 mph — and gusts that exceeded 100 mph, the level of a Category 2 hurricane — whipped the Kincade Fire in late October and early this month in the Sonoma County wine country. By the time the fire was contained on Nov. 6, it had burned nearly 78,000 acres and destroyed 374 homes, businesses and other structures, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, but Pacific Gas & Electric, California’s largest utility, concedes it may be to blame. A 230,000-volt transmission line near Geyserville, where the fire started, malfunctioned seven minutes before the fire started.
In a report to the California Public Utilities Commission, PG&E reported a broken jumper wire on a transmission tower. The wire was 25 years past what PG&E considered its useful life.
This story was originally published November 20, 2019 at 12:46 PM.
