HELL IN PARADISE – PART 4 – THE BATTLE FOR TRUTH CONTINUES

19 VIDEOS ADDED 8/10/22
This is no joke folks.  Don’t buy the hogwash that the mainstream media and the ruling class feed you.  This is all out WAR ON THE GENERAL PUBLIC.  They are reducing the population in any way possible, including outright attack with WEAPONS!  HighPower HiTECH weapons of DESTRUCTION!  If you hide your head and do not research for yourself, whoa to you.  You have no one to blame but yourself.
TRUTHERS have been doing their best to warn and prepare you for what is coming.  Open your eyes, shake off your slumber, walk away from anything that changes your state of consciousness and get out of the PROGRAM.
This stuff may not be directly affecting you right now…but it is coming to your neighborhood.  They have all kinds of ways to cause disaster and chaos.  Their goal is to kill all who stand up to them or refuse to submit and for those who do submit, to take away your homes, your cars and your children.  Everything and anything that you currently possess.  THERE WILL BE NO PERSONAL POSSESSIONS IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER.  They WEF have already made that very clear.
The fact that you found this obscure little webpage, tells me that you are on the right track.  God is leading you to ALL TRUTH.  Listen for HIS VOICE and follow it.  DO NOT TRUST ANYTHING OR ANYONE ELSE!

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October 16, 2019

AND EVEN AFTER WATCHING THIS HALF OF THE PEOPLE STILL WONT BELIEVE ITS REAL

 

FOOTAGE IN THIS VIDEO!  YOU MUST WATCH!

James Munder
Published on Dec 8, 2017
THANKS TO APLAINTRUTH.INFO & TRUTHSEC ANONYMOUS Aplaintruth VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YmTn… Truthsec Anonymous VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbzCd… SUPPORT MY HUMBLE CHANNEL 🙂 https://www.patreon/JamesMunder DON’T YOU JUST LOVE MY SUPER AWESOME CHANNEL? THIS IS THE ONLY PLACE ON THE ENTIRE INTERNET YOU CAN SEE MY MASTERPIECES OF DIVINATION! 😅 SPONSOR MY INSPECTIONS OF THE MASTERMIND MAINSTREAM MEDIA & TOGETHER, WE WILL TRAVEL THROUGH THE RABBITHOLE INTO OZ, UNMASK THE VILLAINS IN OUR MAGICAL MYSTERY MACHINE & STRlKE WHEN THEY LEAST EXPECT US— LIKE A PACK OF FURIOUS VELOCIRAPTORS! WE ARE THOSE MEDDLING KIDS THAT WON’T LET YOU GET AWAY WITH IT! ! 👷👦👱👧🐕🐿 Support My Channel & Work Here: https://www.patreon/JamesMunder

PARADISE INCINERATED FOR GOLD AND MINERAL RIGHTS-URGENT MESSAGE TO RESIDENTS AND RELATIVES

COMMENTS   

#1 by Jackie Alnor on December 4, 2018 – 6:03 pm

  1. Hi Joe- Thank you so much for that intel on the mineral rights – my very good friend lives in Paradise — she can’t get back in there yet — her house is still standing but damaged. All other houses on her block are gone. I passed that along and she thanked me profusely.

  2. #2 by Anonymous on December 10, 2018 – 11:45 am

    PURE INFORMER BRILLIANCE-R12 REPLACED BY BOMBS IN PEOPLES KITCHENS-SHIT JOE! WHERE DO FIGURE THIS WILL END?

 

This video gives better illustrations and explanations of the theory that the NorCal fires were caused by exotic laser– and/or maser-based weapons, located on high-altitude drones or orbiting platforms.

 

I’m fully aware that the above sentence is highly contentious and that it sounds totally crazy! I’d refrained from commenting on these claims until I finally started looking into these YouTube posts late Friday night. After looking at this footage, I’m persuaded that something anomalous has happened, to say the least.

In what some are calling the “Only forest fires where the trees didn’t burn,” this video shows clips about developments in Directed Energy Weapons alongside even more dramatic scenes than shown previously of the suspiciously uneven devastation in Santa Rosa and in nearby towns of Northern California.

Alexandra Bruce

Contributed by 
Contact

Paradise fire map update: How did the Camp fire start in Paradise, California?

CALIFORNIA’s most destructive fire in history has killed at least 23 people. But how did the Camp fire start in Paradise, California?

California wildfires: Family drive through ‘apocalyptic’ scene

 The entire town of Paradise, in California, has been wiped out by the fire, which started on Thursday and  is still burning in surrounding communities. Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said the county was bringing in a fifth search and recovery team. An anthropology team from California State University, Chico was also assisting, because in some cases “the only remains we are able to find are bones or bone fragments.”

Honea said: “This weighs heavy on all of us, myself and especially those staff members who are out there doing what is important work but certainly difficult work.”

The victims have not yet been identified, but at least 110 people are still believed to be missing.

More than 6,700 buildings, almost all of them homes, have been destroyed.

Alex Hoon at the National Weather Servic said more firefighters were needed at the area on Saturday, as wind gusts of up to 50 miles per hour are expected until Monday, which could aggravate the fire further.

 

Paradise fire map update: How did the Camp fire start in Paradise, California?

Paradise fire map update: A fallen power line is seen on top of burnt out vehicles in Paradise (Image: GETTY)

Officials hope many of the elderly people on the list just unable to contact loved ones due to being without mobile phones.

Honea said the agency was also bringing in a mobile DNA lab and encouraged people with missing relatives to submit samples to help with the identification process.

The death toll so far means that this is the third-deadliest fire on record in California.

The blaze has spread 164 square miles (425 square kilometers) and has cost at least $8.1 million (£1,387,260) to fight so far, according to Steve Kaufmann, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Flames from the Camp fire burn near a home atop a ridge near Big Bend, California

Paradise Fire: Camp fire road closures (Image: GOOGLE)

A fallen power line is seen on top of burnt out vehicles on the side of the road in Paradise

Flames from the Camp fire burn near a home atop a ridge near Big Bend, California (Image: GETTY)

Two people were also found dead in a wildfire in Southern California, meaning the death toll across the state is now at 25, after the fires tore through Malibu, which is home to some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

State officials reckon the total number of people evacuated from their homes around California is at more than 200,000.

The air in Paradise is still thick with smoke and people who stayed behind to try to save their home or who managed to get back to their neighborhoods found cars burned to a crisp and their homes reduced to rubble.

There was a break in the strong winds yesterday, but officials already know the gusts will be back today, so most evacuation orders remain in place.

OPERATION TORCH CALIFORNIA: A Special Report on the Firestorm Terror Operation

Globalists Use Geoengineers to Conduct
False Flag Environmental Terrorism
to Distract from Election Theft

“Operation Torch California is a very real ongoing black operation being conducted by the U.S. Intelligence Community in collusion with Operation Gladio.  These false flag terrorist attacks are first and foremost a highly sophisticated psyop.  They have many goals.  And they will continue until California has been completely subjugated by the globalists.”

— Intelligence Analyst & Former U.S. Military Officer

State of the Nation

The apocalyptic firestorms that have afflicted the state of California over the past 4 to 5 years are the direct result of deliberate acts of state-sponsored environmental terrorism.  Specific regions around the state have been purposefully geoengineered to explode into massive conflagrations resembling various types of natural wildfires—forest fires, brush fires and grass fires. See: (CALIFORNIA FIRESTORMS GEOENGINEERED: Here’s why and who’s doing it)

The very same New World Order globalist cabal responsible for turning the Northern Levant (i.e. Syria and Iraq) into a dystopian, post-apocalyptic wasteland is also behind so many manmade calamities that are disguised as natural events across America.  Hurricane Michael is another example of a geoengineered catastrophe that was aimed at the Florida Panhandle. HURRICANE MICHAEL: A Geoengineered Superstorm Targeting Tallahassee and Florida Panhandle—Why!

Whereas the globalists utilized ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra terrorists to wage war against Syria and Iraq, they harness the forces of Mother Nature to stealthily wage weather warfare against the American people.  And they get away with these highly destructive and deadly disasters by blaming ‘the weather’.  They also use mass illegal immigration to flood the border states in order to carry out their Purple Revolution.

California firestorms are false flags and engineered

No one is saying that these biannual wildfire seasons haven’t threatened California every year for many decades.  However, what the geoengineers are doing now is significantly intensifying each successive period of these out-of-control and massive infernos.  The recent firestorm calamities have never taken place with such speed and ferocity, even during the worst wildfire seasons.

It’s what they are doing between the fire seasons that is particularly offensive to the people of California.  The geoegineers have been overseeing a regimen of chemical geoengineering that rains downs a tremendous amount of aluminum oxide onto the land below.  This chemical compound (‎‎Al2O3) comes from coal fly ash and is eventually incorporated into the plant structure of all vegetation. See: U.S. Government Spraying Tons Of Toxic Coal Fly Ash Into Atmosphere Via Chemtrails

In the aftermath of the unrelenting spraying of the skies across America with chemtrail aerosols, forests are slowly dying as the grasslands and brush are drying out at an unprecedented rate.  Chemically mobile aluminum has never been so prevalent throughout the atmosphere and it’s contaminating everything on the earth and in the seas.  Vegetation of every kind is particularly susceptible to dehydration and therefore vulnerable to blight.

Then, after months or even years of droughts that are purposefully geoengineered, it doesn’t take much to trigger these telltale firestorms.  Especially when the perpetrators are employing arson drones and satellite-based laser weapons is it quite easy to start a spate of fires like the “Camp Fire” that just destroyed Paradise, California. California’s Camp Fire: “Most destructive fire in state history”

KEY POINT: To name the most devastating fire in California history “Camp Fire” represents the profound cynicism associated with this well-planned pyro-psyop.  How easy it is to now blame that geoengineered wildfire on a simple ‘camp fire’.

Not only was that horrific fire a fastidiously fabricated false flag operation, it was set by arsonists who were sponsored by and materially supported by the U.S. Federal Government.  How else could the geoengineers get away with the deployment of fire-starting drones and laser-firing satellites except with government approval and the use of state assets. Massive Blue Laser Weapon Being Used in Unidentified City (Video)

KEY POINTS: The laser weapons involved with these acts of terrorism could only be permitted to be placed in the perfect positions to trigger these massive fires with the consent of the state and federal government.  Airspace is, in fact, so tightly controlled and monitored that any intrusion via sky-based weaponry would be known in advance and warily tracked by the appropriate government agencies.  Why, then, is this naked criminal activity always permitted in the skies of California?  Why has Governor Brown allow unfettered spraying of the skies with chemtrails?

Now that the “false flag” component of these manmade fires is understood, the “engineered” aspect ought to be obvious.  These manufactured fires neither start nor spread in the normal vectors associated with a natural wildfire.  Hence, there’s only one explanation: arsonists have been enlisted in various capacities to do the dirty work.  Some of those arsonists are flying drones that function as flame-throwers; others push the button from weaponized aircraft flying overhead.  Then there are the satellite controllers directing laser beams on their targets below. See: Video Evidence of Tech Arson Being Used to Start the ‘Camp Fire’ that Destroyed Paradise CA

Malibu Fire Jumps to 35,000 Acres as Dozens of Homes Destroyed

Arsonists on the ground are frequently used by the perps to make sure these wildfires happen in certain locations.  These arsonists vary widely depending on their assigned mission.  Some are expertly CIA-trained arsonists who are also extremely competent at covering up their crime and not getting caught.  Others are set up as fall guys who may have to be apprehended should the scheme start to unravel.  Then there are those patsies who are purposely sent into the fire zone so that they can be accused (and convicted) of arson, although they are innocent. See: Arson Arrest Made In Fast-Moving Southern California Fire

Hard evidence

The great thing about unaltered satellite footage is that they always possess the classic signatures of unnatural events.  While they can be misinterpreted, they don’t lie.  Hence, in the case of these unnatural firestorms, there is plenty of incriminating hard evidence now available to the trained eye.

The following firsthand and quite revealing witness account is provided by a former volunteer firefighter.  It sums of what many of us armchair investigators have known for years.  However, this particular explanation goes far deeper into these black operations than any other we have seen. No. Cal. Witness Account of Suspicious Firestorm Activity by Former Volunteer Firefighter

Then there is satellite footage like that provided in this video.  There are anomalies which appear in this video which can only be explained as the hand of man, not Mother Nature. VIDEO: CALIFORNIA BURNING BECAUSE OF DEW ATTACK (DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPON)?  The screen-capture below, which was taken from this video footage, is especially telling.

Take note of the 3 symmetrical blue dots (located in the center of this screenshot) that appeared on the satellite image exactly where the “Camp Fire” exploded out of nowhere in No. California.  These laser signatures occurred just prior to the starting of the “Camp Fire” that completely destroyed Paradise, California.

Truly, there are so many manmade pieces to this Firegeddon scenario that they cannot all be covered in this one report.  For instance, look at the melted metal hub caps from this moving video that shows the charred bodies of several individuals trapped in their incinerated vehicles. California Camp Fire Graphic Aftermath (Video)

The photos in the following link show a road in Malibu that buckled even though there was nothing of note that would burn to the high temperatures necessary to melt asphalt and twist the steel guard rails.  Really, how did that happen unless it was somehow torched from above by a very powerful pyro-weapon. How does steel twist and asphalt buckle when there’s nothing to burn under bridge in Malibu fire?

There are many photos at the following link which tell a story that is substantially different from the official narrative.  It’s impossible for houses to burn down to the ground and all sorts of trees and other structures nearby remain completely untouched by the flames.  It’s also impossible for vehicles to get so burned out that the metal tire rims melt into streams of molten fluid, especially when trees a few feet away are unscathed by the fire.

How did these vehicles burn up in the Cali. fires when trees nearby remain untouched?

There’s also evidence emerging of weather modification being used to create favorable conditions for these firestorms to start and then “spread like wildfire”.   Various geoengineering investigators are posting their reports about weather anomalies which can only be explained by the various atmospheric manipulation techniques. See: Satellite Transmitter-Generated Blockade Prevents Weather From Moving Into California (Video)

How did all these vehicles burn so badly on a wide highway surrounded by sparse vegetation?

Who’s behind this and why are they burning down California?

The best way to understand how these disastrous acts of firestorm terrorism are being carried out is to identify who’s doing it and why.  Only then will the true scope of Operation Torch California be properly comprehended.  As follows:

Here’s the short story.

The New World Order globalist cabal just perpetrated the largest election theft in U.S. history.

And, the perps are still in the process of stealing so many elections (e.g. FL and AZ) that the need to distract the electorate from their electoral crime spree has become an existential necessity for them.

End of story.

(Source: DEW Attacks and Weather Warfare Waged to Distract from Massive Election Theft)

There are multiple NWO objectives that are being accomplished with these yearly firestorms and mudslides, droughts and deluges experienced by the Golden State.  For example, globalist governor and Jesuit-trained Jerry Brown has been using these cataclysms to aggressively push the CO2-driven Global Warming agenda. See: Globalist Governor Jerry Brown UsingFIREGEDDON To Push Fraudulent Climate Change Legislation

But there is much more going on with these arson wildfires than meets the eye.  For instance, the UN agendas are being implemented in California at breakneck speed.  As the largest state economy in the USA, the globalists plan to use the state as the model for destroying American culture and undermining state sovereignty.  Toward that end, Relentless Acts of Geoterrorism in California are Perpetrated by Shadow Government to Compel Compliance with UN Agenda 21 and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Vision 2050.

KEY POINT: It’s no accident of fate that the CA arson-triggered wildfires are nipping at the properties of the Hollywood elites.  Not only are the stars and celebrities being warned not to leave the NWO reservation, they are being stampeded into the pen of compliance with regard to the CO2-driven Global Warming hoax. ENTIRE MALIBU UNDER MANDATORY EVACUATION ORDERS (Video)

New World Order agenda advanced

The destruction of California by Deep State will continue unabated until it’s subordinated to the foreign and supranational powers within the Shadow Government.  The NWO cabal intends to transform the entire state into a corporate-communist fiefdom of sorts run by little Big Tech tyrants like Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.  Then, at the appointed time, California will declare its independence from the United States so that it will be liberated from the Trump administration and all future Republican rule.

This is why the illegal alien invasion is allowed to proceed without any state governmental hindrance.   With a slowly increasing majority of Spanish-speaking immigrants from south of the border taking over the state, it’ll be much easier to secure votes that reject the U.S. Federal Government and demand secession.  California is already the 7th largest economy in the world so they can easily get along without the other 49 states.  Of course, both Oregon and Washington State would likely join with California to form a union that politically represents the Left Coast.

In this context, the annual firestorm seasons serve to scare people off the preferred lands, and many others away from the state altogether.  The mass migrations from California have been occurring at an unprecedented rate over many years now.  What is scarier than thick fire smoke wafting through the air twice a year and thousands of homes being burned down to the ground.  The bottom line here is that these terrifying wildfires are quite instrumental at motivating people to vacate the premises.  And that’s just what they’re doing…in droves.

Conclusion

Each California fire season is intentionally exacerbated for a different set of reasons such as those listed above.  Clearly, the November firestorms of 2018 will be remembered as the BIG DISTRACTION from the biggest election theft in U.S. history.  The Powers That Be also carried out the Thousand Oaks CA massacre for the very same reason: DISTRACTION
CA Bar Mass Shooting: State-Sponsored False Flag Terrorism to Distract from Massive Election Theft

SOTN posted several articles over the past several months that warned about this pervasive and unparalleled Democrat conspiracy to “steal every election in sight”.[1]  Well they have done it.  Now Deep State must keep everyone sufficiently distracted in order to cover up their electoral crime spree.  The perps knew all along that it was only a crime wave rather than a “blue wave” that could get them back into power.  Hence, only in this way were the Deep State Democrats able to win so many seats to take back the House.  They had to shut down all the investigations into their numerous scandals as each successive one makes Watergate look like a walk in the park.

With so many election thefts under their belt, it should come as no surprise that the globalists are torching California.  Given that both Hollywood and Silicon Valley are breathing smoke-filled air, this HUGE distraction will be hyped by the Mainstream Media for the rest of this year.  As the election thefts by the Democrats come to light, there will be even bigger distractions manufactured to facilitate the nationwide cover up.

The Bottom Line: California is under attack yet again by highly advanced Directed Energy Weapons. The photos at this link prove beyond any doubt that DEWs have been used for years to start and spread the California firestorms: Conclusive Photographic Evidence Proving California Is Under Attack by DEWs

State of the Nation
November 12, 2018

Source

[1] RED ALERT: Democrats will try to steal every election they can on November 6th

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http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=107676

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California fire: PG&E canceled planned power shut-off in Paradise area just before Camp fire broke out

PLEASE LOOK AT THESE PHOTOS VERY CLOSELY.  TELL ME, HOW CAN THEY CALL THIS A “FOREST FIRE”?  WHAT DO YOU SEE IN EVERY ONE OF THESE PHOTOS???  I SEE TREES, MOST OF THEM COVERED IN GREEN FOLIAGE!  HOMES, AUTOMOBILES, INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS TOTALLY DEMOLISHED, HARDLY A SHRED OF THEM TO BE FOUND!  CARS FILLED OVER, AND BURNED BY HEAT SO HOT IT MELTED THE STEEL AND THE RUBBER TIRES!  YET, THE LEAVES ON THE TREES – UNTOUCHED!

 

When strong autumn winds roared into Northern California, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. decided it was going to take an extreme action to prevent a repeat of last year’s firestorms that destroyed thousands of homes in Santa Rosa.

On Oct. 14, the company cautiously shut off power to some 60,000 Sierra foothills and North Bay customers, hoping to prevent any downed power lines from sparking a fire. On Nov. 6, PG&E again began warning 70,000 customers — including those in the town of Paradise — that it might flip the switch in the face of fire danger.

But for reasons that remain unclear, the utility decided not to shut off power that day.

Fierce winds picked up in the Sierra foothills that morning, fueling the most destructive fire in California history, which has burned nearly 10,000 homes, killed at least 71 people and left more than 1,000 unaccounted for.

The cause of the Camp fire is still under investigation, but there is suspicion that, like several of the wine country blazes last year, it was sparked by power lines. PG&E said a transmission line in the area went offline 15 minutes before the fire was first reported, and the company found a damaged transmission tower near where investigators have said the fire began.

PG&E has said weather conditions “did not warrant” a shut-off but has declined to explain further. Utility officials have said a preemptive blackout would probably not have prevented the Camp fire, even if power lines turn out to be the cause. The company doesn’t shut off transmission lines that operate at or above 115 kilovolts, the size of the line under scrutiny in the Paradise blaze.

These are the victims of the California wildfires

Transmission lines can be critical to providing power to millions of customers, the company said, whereas more localized distribution lines — the kind that are shut down when conditions are determined to be dangerous — funnel power to homes and businesses

The electrical system is also under investigation as a possible cause of the Woolsey fire in Southern California, which destroyed 800 structures and killed three. Southern California Edison reported an issue with a circuit in the utility’s Chatsworth substation minutes before the fire broke out in the same area.

Power companies are expanding the use of planned blackouts to prevent their lines from sparking infernos in a state still struggling with a new paradigm of wildfire danger. Yet the practice — prompted by criticism of past inaction and encouraged by California legislators this year — has led to calls for additional guidelines and oversight.

And then there are the trade-offs. Shutting down power can endanger hospital patients or people who rely on oxygen tanks and other lifesaving electrical equipment and can hinder the ability of residents to receive emergency warnings. But failing to turn off fragile electrical infrastructure during high-risk scenarios can be catastrophic.

“I think that is the crux of the public and the policy debate,” said Elizaveta Malashenko, director of the safety and enforcement division at the California Public Utilities Commission. “How do you strike the right balance and manage the risks on both sides?”

The future of the utilities hangs in the balance, too. Commission President Michael Picker raised the question on Thursday of whether PG&E needs to be broken up, promising an examination of the company’s organizational structure to determine the best way to ensure safety.

Utilities make the decision to shut off power on their own, on a case-by-case basis, depending on predictive models and weather observations. That it’s so informal may explain why there’s no precedent for state regulators to levy fines, either for failing to act or for too aggressively turning off power.

Until recently, San Diego Gas & Electric was the only California utility that de-energized power lines during high-risk fire conditions. Over the summer, state regulators strengthened the SDG&E guidelines and applied them to all investor-owned utilities as a fire prevention tool of last resort. The CPUC is holding a public meeting on de-energization next month.

As soon as the public outreach began, local officials protested.

LIVE UPDATES: The latest on the California wildfires

City leaders in Malibu, designated an “extreme risk” area, raised serious concerns about Southern California Edison’s public safety shut-off plan months before Santa Ana winds swept the deadly Woolsey fire to their doorstep.

City Manager Reva Feldman wrote in a July letter to the California Public Utilities Commission that most Malibu residents live in remote areas accessed by a single road, making evacuations difficult. Without power, internet access would be lost, and residents without landlines would be cut off from emergency alerts and evacuation instructions. Traffic signals wouldn’t work. And water would cease to flow in a system that relies on powered pump stations, hindering firefighting efforts.

Like PG&E, Edison warned 85,000 customers — but only cut power to 100 — before the Woolsey fire ignited. No determination has been made whether sparks from power lines played played a role in the fire, and investigations by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection can take several months.

State Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo), a fierce PG&E critic since the company’s natural gas pipeline burst in San Bruno and killed eight people in 2010, said utilities should be able to shut down any power line that poses a danger to their customers.

“If it’s beneficial and a safety concern, then all lines should be on the table,” Hill said.

PG&E has detailed a combination of factors it considers before striking power, including warnings from the National Weather Service, humidity levels generally at 20% or below, sustained winds of at least 20 to 25 mph and gusts of 40 to 45 mph or more. The local temperature, terrain and climate also play a role, along with observations from crews on the ground.

PG&E has declined to explain which factors failed to meet its criteria when it called off the plan the morning the Camp fire began.

The National Weather Service issued a red-flag warning one day prior, predicting wind gusts of up to 55 mph and low humidity levels across the region.

At 4 a.m. on Nov. 8, hours before the fire started, a weather station east of Paradise recorded sustained winds of 32 mph with gusts of 52 mph. Humidity dropped as low as 11% that day.

“It was a strong north wind event and really dry fuel conditions,” said Dan Keeton, meteorologist-in-charge of the National Weather Service in Sacramento. “It was a significant red-flag event and one of the stronger ones of the season.”

The National Weather Service in Oxnard predicted even higher wind gusts and humidity in the single digits in a red-flag warning issued for most of Los Angeles and Ventura counties at 8:45 a.m. on Nov. 8. The Woolsey fire began less than six hours later.

“An evaluation of the measurable … criteria, combined with judgment on impacts to the local community, determined we would not shut off power,” Edison spokeswoman Sally Jeun said in a statement.

If companies cut power, they must inspect all of their lines before flipping it back on. PG&E filed a report with the state after the planned outage in October, detailing 18 instances of wind-related damage to its equipment and five hazards “such as branches found lying across conductors” before it restored power.

But the lack of advance notification concerned local and state officials.

The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, Cal Fire and the CPUC sent a letter to the utilities last month highlighting the need for more notice. Recent action by the companies to cut power make clear “utilities must provide specific, real-time information so the state can take appropriate steps to ensure public safety,” the agencies wrote.

Hill wonders whether PG&E hesitated to shut off power in Butte County because of reaction to the first planned blackout.

“Did they make that decision because they didn’t want the political fallout and public relations fallout from customers who complained in October?” the lawmaker asked.

Senate Bill 901, a wide-ranging measure signed into law in September to address fire liability and forest management, requires all utilities to provide the state with a plan for cutting power during high-risk fire conditions.

SDG&E said it first cut power, pioneering the practice, five years ago. David L. Geier, the company’s senior vice president of electric operations, said it started considering preventive shut-offs after deadly fires swept through San Diego County in 2007.

“We believe we have to try to eliminate every fire,” Geier said.

Geier said SDG&E worked with customers who provide essential services — such as water and telecommunications — for more than a year in advance of any shut-off. It’s also spent $1 billion to replace aging wooden electrical poles with steel and stronger wires, as well as technology to more accurately gauge humidity and wind speeds.

Other changes could also lessen the impact of power shut-offs. Michael Wara, a climate and energy researcher at Stanford University Law School, said power companies and the state could invest in more solar panels and batteries to power homes during planned blackouts.

Malibu Mayor Rick Mullen said the state needs an electrical overhaul that includes the construction of underground power lines. Even in hindsight, he stands by his community’s concerns about losing power and says electricity was critical to their evacuation efforts.

“It’s almost 18th-century technology, in some ways,” Mullen said of the “rickety poles” and wires that funnel power to homes in his community. “Let’s make the investment to make the system durable.”

Track key details of the California wildfires

taryn.luna@latimes.com

 

SoCal Edison workers replace burnt power poles and run new lines along Highway 74 near Mountain Center after the Cranston fire in Idyllwild on Monday, July 30, 2018. Destroyed lines have cut off power to much of Anza. (Photo by Terry Pierson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

 

PUBLISHED:  | UPDATED: 

From the ashes of last year’s huge fires in Butte, Shasta, Lake and Los Angeles counties, this state’s utilities have suddenly acquired vast new powers to control and influence the lives of millions of Californians.

The new reality is that no one living near a potential fire area – and that includes wide swaths of this state – now can be sure when the lights will go off and come back on.

It’s all because California’s big utility companies have accepted blame for contributing to the start of several multi-billion-dollar fires and want no part of anything similar in the future. So anytime they deem wind and weather sufficiently threatening, they’re shutting down power to prevent arcing and sparking on their lines, whether or not they’ve been maintained.

This would be fine if standards existed for what constitutes fire danger from power lines, which helped start and spread fires from San Diego to Paradise, from Simi Valley to the Sierra Nevada in 2017 and 2018. There are no such standards.

So when Pacific Gas & Electric Co. announced it would undertake the year’s first power shutdown in early June because of possible record-setting temperatures and high winds in Napa, Solano and Yolo counties, anyone without immediate access to newspapers and electronic media had no way to know their lights, TVs and appliances would go dead for an unpredictable time.

That exercise, also affecting parts of Butte and Yuba counties, affected “only” about 21,000 electricity customers. No one knows how many had electric-powered oxygen supplies, CPAPs for sleep apnea or other medical devices. No one knows how many had independent power supplies, whether solar or from generators. But a lot of people and businesses were suddenly imperiled.

PG&E figured fire risks outweighed all others. “The safety of our customers and the communities we serve is our most important responsibility,” said one company vice president. Too bad PG&E hadn’t realized that before last year’s Paradise Fire, or before the Wine County fires of 2017, both admittedly at least partly the products of corporate negligence.

One thing for sure: Before this year’s just-opened fire season is over, PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric (along with several municipal utilities) will be doing the same kind of thing to many, many more people, with the same kind of notice under the same whimsical standard.

The lack of predictability here is the problem. Certain temperatures, wind directions and speeds must soon be written into firm standards for when deliberate power cutoffs can occur. Given sufficient notice via printed inserts in electricity bills, customers could know what to expect and when. Now they don’t. Which leaves some folks as vulnerable to power company judgments as they are to actual fires.

The real question here is why state regulators, principally the Public Utilities Commission – now many months after the last big wave of fires –  still have not yet developed firm guidelines for utilities to live by.

This leaves many customers vulnerable to chancy, unreliable weather forecasts and the will of utility executives.

Last fall, when PG&E staged its first modern-era fire-prevention power cutoff, one reader near Nevada City called the move “blatant terrorism,” which was exacerbated when winds in the area turned out never to exceed a paltry 7 mph. He called it a form of blackmail, designed to accustom consumers to accepting the will of the utility.

The PUC already allows utilities to dun customers steadily for maintenance: they took in more than $6 billion in such funding over the last four decades without accounting for most of it. The new charges are for tree-cutting (often done against the will of tree owners) and other long-neglected fire prevention tactics.

So far, it’s all random, chancy stuff. Utilities and the public need rules for the companies to live by, giving millions of Californians some ability to predict when their power will be turned off, just in case they can’t or don’t want to read or listen to the news 24 hours a day.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com.

CONTINUE TO:

  HELL IN PARADISE – PART 5 – CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX

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