PG&E equipment may be to blame for starting the Dixie fire near where the campfire started

[ad_1]

The Dixie Fire that is currently burning in Butte and Plumas counties has grown to over 30,000 acres since the start of last week, and PG&E now admits its equipment may once again be the source of the initial sparks.

The blaze started on Tuesday, July 13 near Camp Creek Road and Dixie Road, northeast of Pulga and a few miles east of the ignition point of the 2018 deadly campfire. And now, as KCRA reports, PG&E says a technician sent to investigate a power outage in the area was the first to discover the fire, which was burning near the base of a tree that had fallen into a utility pole.

According to a report that PG&E submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission on Sunday, the technician arrived in the Cresta Dam area on the afternoon of July 13 and “observed from a distance what he thought was a blown fuse. on the PG&E Bucks Creek 1101 12kV Overhead distribution circuit upstream of its location. ” It took some time to reach the utility pole in question due to the steep terrain, but when he got there at 4:40 p.m. he saw “two of the three fuses blown and what he thought was a healthy green tree. lean into the 12 kV Bucks Creek 1101 conductor … He also observed a ground fire near the base of the tree. “

About 50 minutes later, at 5:30 p.m., Cal Fire air support began dropping flame retardants over the area, as the blaze reached about two acres.

The blaze had exploded over 2,250 acres by Thursday morning and by Monday morning it had reached over 30,000 acres and was 15% contained. The blaze increased to 11,000 acres on Sunday alone.

Interestingly, as the Bay Area News Group noted last week, PG&E is required to submit a report to the CPUC within two to four hours of a serious electrical incident or an incident in which they believe their equipment is at fault. the origin of a fire. But this report took five days to be tabled.

In a statement to the Chronicle, PG&E spokesman Matt Nauman said that “the information submitted by PG&E is preliminary and the company has submitted this report with great caution.” The report apparently followed Cal Fire’s collection of certain PG&E equipment in the area as part of its investigation.

As we all know, PG&E equipment, sometimes associated with high winds, has been blamed for several major wildfires in northern California, including the Tubbs and Nuns fires of 2017 which caused massive destruction in Sonoma County, the 2018 camp fire that wiped out the city. heaven and killed 85 people, and the 2019 Kincade fire. Settlements for damages from previous fires were finally reached last year as PG&E emerged from bankruptcy largely caused by these fires . And in April, the company was charged with a felony relating to the Kincade fire. The cause of last year’s glass fire in Napa and Sonoma counties is still under investigation.

The old Caribou-Palermo transmission line that started the camp fire and was then said to be in poor condition is no longer live. However, PG&E has other transmission lines in the area that run through Feather Canyon, one of which appears to go beyond the ignition point of the Dixie Fire.

Related: Dixie Fire Approaches Campfire Burn Scar With Over 18,000 Acres Burned; Smoke clouds covering the sky nearby

[ad_2]