A broken PG&E wire was found near where the Kincade Fire started, California utility says
25 October 2019
Published by https://www.usatoday.com
USA – Pacific Gas & Electric, California’s biggest utility, says a broken jumper wire was found on a transmission tower near where the raging Kincade Fire broke out two days ago in northern California.
The utility said in a filing with state regulators that it registered an outage at the tower at 9:20 p.m. PT on Wednesday, only seven minutes before the fire erupted near the Sonoma County wine country town of Geyserville.
The blaze, only 5% contained on Friday, quickly swelled to 34 square miles, burned 290 buildings and forced the evacuation of 2,000 people.
Although PG&E had cut power on some lines in the area Wednesday afternoon because of concern over threatening weather, the utility said had kept the power flowing on that particular stretch of high-voltage transmission lines, which carry electricity from the power plant to various substations, because winds there had not triggered shutdown protocols.
The power shutoffs were imposed after PG&E electrical equipment was blamed for several blazes in recent years that killed scores of people and burned thousands of homes.
In its filing on the Kincade Fire, PG&E said a worker noted that a CAL FIRE team battling the blaze had taped off the area around one transmission tower. Fire workers directed PG&E to what appeared to be a broken jumper wire on the same tower. A jumper is the wire that carries the electrical current.
PG&E CEO Bill Johnson said it was too soon to know if the faulty equipment ignited the fire. He said the tower had been inspected four times in the past two years and appeared to have been in excellent condition.
CAL FIRE says that the cause of the fire is “under investigation.”
