By David M. Greenwald
Sometime next month, the US will likely top half a million dead from COVID—lives have been ended, many have been permanently altered, many have lost their businesses and are in danger of losing their homes. It is important to keep perspective.
At the same time, the past week in conjunction laid bare just how vulnerable we are to utility and infrastructure failure. That was brought home when the Sacramento region, and indeed most of Northern California, was exposed to a strong but not overwhelming storm.
It may have been the strongest storm of the year—at least to date. But let’s face it, this was not the storm of the century. It was not a hurricane. It was not a blizzard, at least in the valley. It was not a catastrophic tornado.
I can understand trees go down. I can understand losing some power.
But to me what has happened is unacceptable. At my home in South Davis, power went out sometime around 8 pm on Tuesday night and did not come back on until about 2 pm the next afternoon. That’s 18 hours. When it did come back on, there was no internet—Comcast. That would be down until Friday evening.
That meant no one at home could connect to the internet—since, for whatever reason, the house never got great cell reception. (We have to use wifi to make even cell calls). That meant not only could I not do my job in the morning, but my wife could not telecommute and my kids could not distance learn.
When I drove to the office on G Street on Wednesday—no power. And with no windows, I could connect via hotspot on my phone, but even with battery powered lights, it was dark. Plus I only had 
about two hours of laptop use at a time before I had to recharge.
By Thursday, with the power still out downtown, I was able to find co-working space willing to let me crash for a few hours, where I worked feverishly to get things done, as I socially distanced with a mask on.
Power finally came on by Friday morning after being without for basically two full days. By Friday evening, I was told the rest of downtown was back up. But was also told there are parts of town that won’t be back until Sunday, and places in Yolo County like Woodland, not until perhaps mid-next week.
According to the Bee, “Restoring power for the hundreds of thousands of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers and tens of thousands of Sacramento Municipal Utility District customers has been a long and laborious process.
“Even as the peak of the windstorm has passed, continuing severe weather — including snow that will fall even harder today across some of PG&E’s territory in the mountains and foothills — has slowed restoration efforts due to both the extent of damage and safety precautions that must be followed.”
It seems like PG&E has gotten worse over the last several years. I can’t remember as many prolonged outages as we have seen in recent years—and while fires are definitely a matter of concern, it just seems like this has gotten worse.
So there we have it: a modest storm has the ability to shut down our areas for days. PG&E of course has rightly been under fire for their role in wildfires. In June, the company pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter, marking the first time a major utility has been charged with homicide.
“Our equipment started that fire,” PG&E CEO and President Bill Johnson said in Butte County Superior Court last summer. The company was found by a grand jury to have repeatedly ignored warning about aging power lines and faulty maintenance, not to mention it failed to follow state regulations.
The company was fined a paltry $3.5 million, the maximum amount, but then forced to a $25.5 billion settlement to compensate victims and their families—as if you can do that for dead loved ones.
Many complained that the settlement was too small for a company that size. They have declared bankruptcy. But I think we need to re-think the model for providing electricity.
What we experienced this week was nothing compared to the catastrophic loss of life, and it is a reminder that PG&E is ill-equipped to handle even modest acts of nature these days without prolonged disruptions to lives and business.
But there is another side to what we saw this week—internet. With COVID the need to have fast, reliable internet has gone from really important to absolutely essential.
During our webinar that we were able to have yesterday, we talked about distance learning, the digital divide, and disadvantaged communities. Davis may fare better than many, but what we learned this week, with prolonged power and internet outages from at least Comcast, we are not nearly good enough.
There was a day last spring in the early days of the pandemic, where under the strain, Comcast went down for a day or so. Classes were cancelled. Commission meetings were cancelled. Business again interrupted.
If we are going to rely on telecommuting for our jobs and our livelihood during the pandemic, and maybe after as a way to cut down on commute time, office space, and other costs, then we need to have fast and reliable service.
In 2019, the council voted to study municipal broadband.
“We can’t approve a municipal fiber network today,” Councilmember Will Arnold said, “but we can kill it, and I’m not willing to do that.”
That day, council voted to have staff return with a plan for a phased-in approach for building municipal fiber—a key step toward broadband. That was 2019—pre-COVID. Things are much more urgent now.
A key consideration was the cost.
As Dan Carson put it at the time, “Building such a network in Davis would be costly.” He wrote, “The total cost of construction would exceed $100 million.”
I don’t want to pick on Councilmember Carson here—his concern was legitimate. But I think we have now exposed how costly not building such a system is. If we are going to rely on the internet for our education, our businesses—indeed government itself, we need a system that works.
Unfortunately, not many systems will work without power and we have learned that even going the CCE (Community Choice Energy) route still leaves us vulnerable to PG&E.
This past week has exposed our shortcoming and it is incumbent on city government to figure out ways for us to survive in the world during and post-COVID. What we saw this past week is that we are not yet ready.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Support our work – to become a sustaining at $5 – $10- $25 per month hit the link:
This article hits on three of this list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World_problem#:~:text=%20Things%20that%20have%20been%20cited%20as%20being,Inc.%20attempted%20to%20alleviate%20this%20problem…
Not sure the point of your post. Explain to me: How do you run a business these days with slow internet access? Yesterday I from noon to seven: I hosted a webinar/ community discussion, recorded a podcast on Zoom, held a meeting for our social media, and did a training for our LA Program. All over Zoom. Fortunately, the power was back on and was able to connect to the internet at sufficient to do all of that. You complain about businesses leaving the state but then don’t seem to understand the realities of running a business.
I don’t know but I thought I was being lenient as you might have possibly received a bad haircut recently or maybe your TV remote isn’t working?
Slow internet access and poor mobile-phone coverage aren’t “first world” problems.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/03/07/mobile-connectivity-in-emerging-economies/
During electric failures, I’m especially glad that I have propane and a gas stove. It’s a good reminder of the issues of mandating electric-only buildings. I can cook and have some heat even when the electricity is off.
Don
Microgrids and integrated distributed energy resources can address much of this reliability issue. The real point for electrification is to eliminate gas in new buildings first because installing gas lines just for reliability purposes is very expensive. Electrifying existing buildings is more expensive and likely to leave some residual gas uses. However the gas supply will dwindle. Propone tank backup may end up being the most cost effective, less environmentally damaging alternative.
Me, too! And I had the same thought – what if I had been forced to electric only? I had lit the natural gas heater before the power went out. And while others were freezing, I was warm throughout our 42-hour outage. Unfortunately, the gas stove had been replaced with an electric, so I had to eat out, eat cold, and ask neighbors with a gas stove to warm some pots for me. Natural gas rocks!
Why have an idea ? California could just nationalize PG&E and then run it as a wholly owned government entity, inject lots of that sweet taxpayer cash to “fix” everything wrong with it’s infrastructure and distribute all the resultant profits to other state government bureaucracies to spend on other great initiatives “for the people”… Isn’t that what the socialists that run California want to do anyway
I’m sure that somehow racism will also enter into the equation. It always does.
Darn thank you Keith ? I’m going to have to start writing this stuff down
Pretty obvious problem and yet you have posted three times and offered nothing.
First world problems. Storms happen and electricity sometimes gets cut off as a result. Thankfully we needed the rain.
Storms happen, this one shouldn’t have knocked out the power as long as it did. Must be nice to be retired and not have to worry about such things.
I trade stocks so the Internet is important to me. I can deal with the inconvenience of a cutoff for a day or two.
Funny Ron. They can’t even reliably give the service I’m currently paying for, you want me to pay more?
Hey Ron – do you know what this is?
My response (for some unknown reason) was deleted.
Unreliable electricity is one of the primary reasons that inhibit economic activity and growth in developing nations. This isn’t a “first world” problem–only someone ignorant of world economic issues would agree with this characterization.
That’s me, ignorant. 🙂
Who are you talking to? No one named Ron has posted.
“Funny Ron” is a new commenter on here.
As opposed to the old “Unfunny Ron”, who may have had comments deleted.
But at least there’s no “Ignorant Ron”, so far today.
Says Keith, who just introduced the subject himself.
Could we maybe all agree to stay on the topic of emergency preparedness.
Yeah, says Keith. 🙂
Chris… suggest you re-read the article, mentally substituting the pronoun “I” for the pronoun “we”… this isn’t “socialist” per se, but more like “nothing should ever happen to me that ‘hurts’ me, or worst yet, inconveniences me!”-ism, wrapped in a “it’s for others!” cloak… at least that’s how I read it…
We were lucky… our power went out 9:45 P Tues, and was back on by ~ 3: A Wed, so I guess I could be accused of “power-privilege”. Like Don alludes to, I figured the fact that we have a gas stove, camping stoves, and matches, we would only been inconvenienced… not the end of the world, even if power been out 4-5 days. As Don points out, making everything “electric” is not necessarily a prudent thing, unless one has an emergency generator, powered by NG or propane.
If one looks at the PG&E power outage map, as I did early Wednesday, it is clear that the ‘failures’ were by and large at specific points, “up-stream” of a lot of users… DUH! It was not a ‘system wide failure’, even if the effects were somewhat ‘system-wide’.
And if everyone had full ‘municipal fiber’ and broadband, the results would have been ~95% the same…
In another article/thread, re: affordable housing, you can see more along the lines of “socialism”… the premise that ‘home-ownership’ is on the same plane as ‘affordable housing’ as to “rentals”… yet both articles that fully ignore, and don’t seem to give a whit about the storm’s effect on the (“so called”) homeless, who not only had no power, internet or phone access, but in very many cases, they ended up with no shelter, even in the form of tents destroyed/collapsed due to the winds… [oh, and there is some credible evidence that there were “cells” in the storm that were actually mini-tornadoes/cyclones…]
In both articles, it is arguably focused on protecting and/or asserting “privilege”, and ignoring those without ‘privilege’ who are not much “protected”… some believe that uninterruption of broadband, power, and home ownerhip at rates any individual who wants, are God-given “rights”, and the City and others are derilict in not ensuring those “rights”… of course, at no additional ‘cost’ … or at least all costs borne by “others”…
I know a lot of people who had power but no internet.
Sounds like an internet provider issue… may or may not be related to PG&E… but if the power outage crippled their hub, there was not thing one they could do about it…
Years ago had problems with Comcast… so, I decided not to be a customer of theirs… pro-choice…
“Community fiber” probably would not affected your experience… see the chaplain, and he/she can punch your TS card…
Well, I know they’ve always told you
Selfishness was wrong
Yet it was for me, not you
I came to write this song
–Neal Peart, “Anthem”
Why do you want to protect a private entity that has most of the powers of a government agency, the political sway of a private corporation, and the taxing powers equivalent of a state agency? Because that’s exactly what PG&E has right now. (I’ve been working on utility issues for more than 3 decades.) By municipalizing PG&E we eliminate the enormous political power that is used to enrich their shareholders unduly. Otherwise everything else is pretty much unchanged. Ask SMUD customers if they’re unhappy with their utility…
I believe that SMUD customers also experienced a power outage.
I recall a time when no one seemed all that concerned about “who” was providing energy, and it seemed to work pretty well.
Not sure what happened.
What happened is our utility became as mass murderer.
How is one going to access the Internet (with electronically-powered devices) if there is no electricity? Batteries in laptops, for example, don’t last very long without recharging.
Same thing with wireless routers, printers, etc.
Again, a lot of people had electricity but no internet. My house for two days had electricity, no internet. That meant my wife had to take days off work. Kids missed school.
Without providing some overall context, one cannot determine how many people were in your situation. It seems like a lot of people had neither one.
Regardless, your suggestion of having the city pay for a municipal Internet service does not guarantee reliability.
Maybe call Comcast to complain, instead of writing an article asking the city to pay for it?
How about May when Comcast went down and they had to cancel schools and city meetings?
Requiring guarantee is a good way to ensure nothing happens. Having better infrastructure is important.
So call Comcast (and PG&E) and tell them that you’re willing to pay more, for more reliable service.
And while you’re at it, tell PG&E that you’re willing to contribute toward their infrastructure upgrades, so that they don’t burn down rural communities.
Funny Ron. They can’t even reliably give the service I’m currently paying for, you want me to pay more?
Hey Ron – do you know what this is?
That’s likely what they’d say (or imply), if you want the systems upgraded. Don’t blame me.
Maybe stop demanding improvements, unless you’re willing to pay for it.
Found this comment on Facebook (it was marked public so I don’t mind posting it here).
Getting the service I pay for is not asking for an improvement.
There would likely be some kind of legal agreement, regarding the degree of reliability that you can expect (as well as some prescribed recourse).
And if you want something more reliable, then tell them. And that you’re willing to help pay for it.
Because the city is not going to give this to everyone for “free”, either. Somebody has to pay something, at some point.
The more I see of those with a particular political persuasion, the more clearly I see that they want “someone else” to pay for it.
I can probably get credited with two days for loss of service. As far as I know, Comcast has no way to do what you are proposing. Have you ever actually tried to deal with Comcast? And yes, I am willing to pay for something more reliable… Community Broadband.
You never answered my question about what that image was?
It says “wi-fi” on it, so I assume it’s a wireless router. Though it doesn’t look like the one I use, at all.
Will that name and password allow me to logon, within a radius of your location? Assuming that both PG&E and Comcast are working?
If you want to drive next to my house – have at it. It’s the hotspot that the district gives in order for disadvantaged kids to be able to access the internet during distance learning.
It is likely that professionals, rather than the city, would actually install what you’re proposing. The city would sign the check.
Yes, unfortunately.
Again, one cannot assume that. It’s the infrastructure that would make it more reliable, not necessarily the provider.
Regarding the “hotspot” for disadvantaged kids, why do you have access to it? (And are you now asking others to improve it / pay for it?)
I would also question how improving the city’s Internet infrastructure would help all of the disadvantaged (or even “advantaged”) “out-of-district” students that DJUSD has enrolled.
Or would that just be a case of, “too bad, so sad”?
Maybe those are the ones that will park outside of David’s house (and his “upgraded infrastructure”), during the next storm? 🙂
Please stay on topic.
We are blessed in this town to have our own local internet service provider, DCN/Omsoft. That is a RARITY and no one should take this for granted – for in most communities it is not, granted. What in the world are you doing on Comcast?
I have Comcast at home which is bundled with cable and the landline, and Omsoft at the office. We also host the Vanguard on Omsoft.
So, David, what do you mean by “reliability”… how many hours out of the last 5 years have you been without internet due to PG&E? Comcast?
Let’s put it this way – I have it set up so that I have Comcast at home, Omsoft at the office out of the belief that I will not have both down at the same time. Until this week, that has largely worked. There have been a number of times over the past year where Comcast is down and I have to drive downtown in the wee hours of the morning to post the Vanguard. I couldn’t tell you the exact hours, but definitely more than 100 in the last year. This week was the first time that I was stuck in the position of being unable to access the internet for a prolonged period of time that it actually disrupted distribution of the Vanguard. But PG&E seems to be getting worse now. We’ve been lucky in Davis that we have not experienced the disruptions other communities have – some still don’t have power.
The thought has occurred to me that this might be the result of “biting the hand that feeds you” (in regard to PG&E, like AT&T before it).
As the U.S. (and California in particular) increasingly require “so-called” (there’s that phrase again) renewable energy, one wonders how it might impact reliability (including locally).
I suspect that most people don’t realize how dependent our systems are on “non-renewable” energy, or how realistic it actually is to transition.
I also see an enormous potential for corruptive influences/claims, regarding “green” technology.
Wouldn’t local municipal solar and personal solar power generation and systems have alleviated much of the problem?
You’re right that often renewable energy is a supplemental energy system to the main non-renewable one. But perhaps a larger build out of the renewable electrical system (at the local and personal levels) that augments the main power system might ease some of the pains experienced recently.
Individual (remember, portions of the distribution grid were literally or figuatively, “down”) solar power generation, with the cloud cover we had, at night, without serious storage? Which ‘dispensary’ do you frequent? Must supply some ‘good s$%t’
I’m no solar expert but I believe it can generate some power in dim cloudy light…or at least generate some during the brief breaks of blue sky during the storm days….also important would be to have the optional storage batteries (which not all personal solar installs have).
Hey, if this wind problem keeps up…..maybe there’s a market for personal wind power…..though here in North Davis…I’m guessing there would be protests because the personal windmills would endanger the wild turkeys.
also…I’ve never smoked any !#$%t. I hate all smoke. I’ve had plenty of 2nd hand highs from going to many concerts and it gives me a headache and makes me sleepy. In fact the night I proposed to my wife we went to a George Clinton show at the Warfield. We were in the balcony and couldn’t see the show due to all the smoke. I almost fell asleep from all of the smoke. So we left early. The last time I saw George Clinton it was outdoors.
hey people who’ve been givin’ the heavy to our man CG,
he’s a Parliament/Funkadelic fan!
Much respect!
Sounds like the coronavirus and pot smoke have something in common.
The distribution and generation systems are quite separate in a utility. The storm outage was caused by local distribution system failures. What was in the generation mix had no impact whatsoever on that outage. The August outages were related to generation, but the evidence is showing that it had little to do with technology and mostly to do with the market rules in the California ISO. So in the end, neither of these outages have anything to do with the amount of renewables. (I’ve worked on utility issues since 1985.)
And quite well used . . .
Potential? It was RAMPANT in the Obama administration. One of the main reasons I couldn’t vote for him the second time. From the looks of Biden and his executive order mound, he’s gonna be Obama on steroids for so-called green energy, and all the ugliness that goes with it.
I think we need a good old-fashioned electronic magnetic pulse EMP put whole world back into the Stone age somewhere let us ReDiscover our Roots. I think it would be kind of fun no candy bar phones no computers the only thing to listen to is your wife yelling at ya.
A few thoughts.
First, I had a fire in the fireplace to stay warm. Used my emergency stockpile of firewood that I keep for just this type of emergency. If I wasn’t prepared it would have been cold and uncomfortable for us all. Perhaps in the future if the prices come down people will have storage batteries for such an outage.
Second not having internet cost me the ability to close out a long stock position during a short squeeze. If you are ever lucky or smart enough to have a stock you own pop up during a short squeeze you must act quickly enough to capitalize on the trade because as soon as the shorts cover the price goes back down.
Everyone else had the equivalent of a snow day, missing distance learning at school or taking a day off from work.
What was particularly bad about this week was that we had multi-modal failures. Usually when the power goes out there will be evacuation centers set up but due to the pandemic many people could not avail themselves of these kinds of resources. So for those who have sought refuge to protect themselves from those less at risk for a bad Covid-19 outcome the combination of a power outage during a pandemic proved to be especially challenging.
In a twist of irony; the best solution for the unfortunate people seeking shelter would have been to give them tents and blankets since you can’t pack people together into shelters safely due to Covid….though I’m not sure how well the those tents would have done in all that wind.
Yeah, right… that answer worked great for hundreds in Davis, Scramento, and the region… they won’t get Covid from being ‘sheltered’, but hypothermia, pneumonia, colds and flu are still in play…
Perhaps some could have gotten at least the first shot of vaccine, before they were sheltered, if not for the fact that others, with less overall health risk(s) hadn’t ‘pushed to the head of the line’…
Probably the most “let them eat cake (or, scraps)” post you’ve ever posted.
What’s sad is that you fully believe I posted that entirely seriously. That’s really sad. I mean…good lord…did you believe I seriously advocated the tents idea as a solution…again…that’s sad on your part.
In fact, I’m not sure how your response even relates to mine….other than being adversarial in tone. I’m guessing your overly sensitive response may be due to having your knickers in a twist due to the unfortunate circumstances we find ourselves in due to Covid and the storm….I suppose that’s understandable as many poor people were in a bad situation due to cracks in our already problematic social net.
As for the “let them eat cake” remark….I take it you’re referring to my belief that there isn’t really a housing affordability crisis as you poorly define it?
Hard to tell Keith E… coin flip to tell whether your comment was “tongue in cheek”, or “head” in another orifice… I’m very cool in you saying it was the former… I know others where they would have meant it literally, so would assign it to the latter…
[edited]
What I meant to add, Keith E, was I hope you have a great day, weekend and week… for reals…
no reason it can’t be both. lots of humor starts from that end. take it easy…times are rougher than normal for most…sometimes ya gotta laugh at it and see the humor in it…twisted or otherwise.
Once again the conversation is veering into personal acrimony. I suggest you all discuss the topics without making comments about other participants.
Uh oh. Now you’ve done it. Here comes the Davis Anti-Smoke Brigade . . . run!
Batteries don’t burn nearly as clean as wood.
We don’t get hurricanes nor blizzards and rarely tornadoes, so no need to build infrastructure to withstand them.
I was up late Tuesday night. The rain part of the storm was mild, but the winds were among the most violent I have ever witnessed in Davis. There was a catastrophic pressure differential from the warm high tropical air, to the rare far-northern California “cold dome” weather phenomenon. This was a violent and uncommon wind event. I despise PG&E and their murderous anti-preparedness as much as the next guy, but don’t discount the ferocity of Tuesday night’s storm.
Thank God it was raining and everything was wet or else the winds might of whipped up that 50 ft. wall of fire we’ve been warned about. 😉
Yep!
From what damage I saw, in Davis and the region, there were mini tornados (cells)… last one I remember in Davis was 1990-ish… it skipped Rancho Yolo (so much for the trailer park theory), ripped shingles off the roofs of houses up and down our E Davis street, but some houses had zero damage, others had minor, but noticeable… we did lose a portion of a fence. A really big Oak was uprooted @ Davis Cemetery… sounded like a freight train, 100 feet away…
So, at least in East Davis, a roughly a one in 25-30 year occurrence of those type of winds…
But some would demand zero inconvenience at any time… after all, they are already paying for the ‘uninterrupted service’… those folk are about as “real” as those saying Trump won the election in a landslide. Obviously, a failure of government and utilities…
Some folk need some cheese and bread/crackers with their whine…
I remember that tornado well. I was in my room with the windows open as it was warm for the season. A very strange vibe was in the air, and our of nowhere all the loose items on the wall rose up, almost as if the source of the disruption was the room itself. It was so odd!
I had no idea what the heck just happened. Next day in the Enterprise, a map showed the path of the tornado center. It passed from the east side of south Davis, over the freeway and east side of Olive Drive, over 2nd Street just east of L Street (a couple blocks from my home), so I probably caught the flank of it. It then proceeded north to towards the Davis Cemetery.