SUBCOMMITTEE MEMBERS STANDING COMMITTEE STAFF ANTHONY CANNELLA JAY DICKENSON ROBERT M. HERTZBERG CHIEF CONSULTANT NIDIA BAUTISTA MIKE MCGUIRE PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT HENRY STERN California State Senate MELANIE CAIN ANDY VIDAK COMMITTEE ASSISTANT SCOTT WIENER COMMITTEE ON SUBCOMMITTEE STAFF LAURA MCWILLIAMS ENERGY, UTILITIES, AND COMMUNICATION CONSULTANT BEN HUESO, CHAIRMAN SUBCOMMITTEE ON GAS, ELECTRIC, AND TRANSPORTATION SAFETY JERRY HILL, CHAIRMAN CALIFORNIA BURNING: UTILITY WILDFIRE PREVENTION AND RESPONSE FOLLOW-UP TO THE NOVEMBER 2015 WILDFIRE SAFETY HEARING The devastating wildfires that occurred throughout California in 2017 burned over 1.2 million acres1, damaged thousands of structures, and caused multiple fatalities. The largest fire in the state’s history, the Thomas fire in Southern California, began in early December of 2017 and consumed over 280,000 acres.2 The most destructive fire in the state’s history, the Tubbs fire in Northern California, began in early October of 2017 and burned over 5,600 structures.3 The Tubbs, Redwood Valley, Atlas, and Cascade fires – all in October of 2017 – became four of the twenty deadliest fires in the state’s history, resulting in 41 fatalities.4 While the fires of the 2017 season remain under investigation and their causes uncertain, communities and decisionmakers are urgently searching to apply the lessons from this recent wildfire season in hopes of preventing the same conditions in subsequent years. 1 Statistic includes all wildfires responded to by CAL FIRE and those occurring in US Forest Service area in California. These numbers are subject to change until the final fire season reports are completed. See: http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_stats?year=2017; 2 “Top 20 Largest California Wildfires” CAL FIRE statistics; updated 01.12.2018; http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/Top20_Acres.pdf 3 “Top 20 Most Destructive California Wildfires” CAL FIRE statistics; updated 01.12.2018; http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/Top20_Destruction.pdf 4 “Top 20 Deadliest California Wildfires” CAL FIRE statistics; updated 11.29.2017; http://calfire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/Top20_Deadliest.pdf 1 of 13 As highlighted by this Subcommittee two years ago, human-caused ignitions account for the majority of known wildfire sources, with electrical power lines being a subset. Power line fires occur hundreds of times each year. In 2015, the most recent year with complete fire activity statistics, electrical power accounted for 51% of total acres burned, with vegetation contact accounting for the majority of that percentage.5 Rarely do these fires grow to be large and destructive, but when they do they can be catastrophic. The 2015 Butte fire – which was found to be caused by contact between a power line and a tree6 – burned 70,868 acres, destroyed 921 structures, and caused 2 deaths. The purpose of this hearing is to once again examine how utilities and state agencies respond to the risks associated with power line infrastructure, especially as those risks are elevated with drought, tree mortality, and urban growth into wildlands. The 2017 fire season made all Californians – both northern and southern, both rural and urban – aware of the very real presence of fire. Utility infrastructure needs to be both protected from this destruction as well as prevented from causing it. Findings The impact of recent Legislative oversight into California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) decision making has resulted in shifts to the assessment of utility risk and the funding of mitigation strategies. CPUC analysis of utility risk management strategies is still in its infancy, providing little insight into the current framework’s successes or failings. The effects of high wind speed and extreme weather events should lead regulators and utilities to implement best practices to reduce the likelihood of future fires. “Best practices” can take multiple forms. Effective regulation often contains a mix of regulatory design types, rather than a single approach. The establishment of robust electric safety culture, both at utilities and the CPUC, is crucial for ensuring safety performance, especially in high-hazard situations. The very real risks posed by utility infrastructure in drought-ridden landscapes lend extreme urgency to the CPUC’s task. 5 http://www.fire.ca.gov/downloads/redbooks/2015_Redbook/2015_Redbook_FINAL.PDF 6 CAL FIRE investigation report, 15CAAEU024918; Sept. 9, 2015; http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/uploadedFiles/CPUC_Public_Website/Content/Safety/Electric_Safety_and_Reliability/Facility_Safety/ Citations/E20150916-01%20Public%20Butte%20Report%20Attachment%201%20CAL%20FIRE%20Report%20Redacted1.pdf 2 of 13 “A New Normal”: Changes to California’s Landscape Over the last century California’s average temperature has steadily marched upward.7 Precipitation volume, on the other hand, remained steady while shifting from snow to rain.8 Drought remained a periodic presence, but the recent, five-year drought marked the driest on record.9 On January 17, 2014 Governor Brown proclaimed a State of Emergency as a result of this drought, and directed state officials to take action, including vigilance toward increased fire risk.10 Almost two years later, on October 30, 2015, Governor Brown issued another State of Emergency, this time in response to the extraordinary level of tree mortality throughout California’s forests.11 The drought and resultant bark beetle infestation were largely found to be the cause of the tree die-off. On December 11, 2017, the USDA Forest Service announced that over 129 million trees spanning 8.9 million acres have died in California.12 Accompanying these trends has been increased population growth, increased residential development in woodland areas, and increased fire suppression efforts and forest densification.13 All of these trends have greatly increased the risk of wildfire in California, posing a hazard to people and critical infrastructure. While firefighting efforts in California have grown more sophisticated since 1932 – the date prior to which CAL FIRE’s records become “less reliable”14 – the intensity of California’s fires has not. Over half of the largest, *Detailed cause information was not reported for every fire and will not equal total cause counts. ~24% of fires over the 5 year average were considered deadliest, and most destructive “undetermined” (bar not shown). Source: footnote 5. fires in California have occurred within the last 10-15 years.15 Of 7 National Oceanic and Atmos. Admin. “State Annual and Seasonal Time Series;” (1895-2015) https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/state-temps/ 8 Dept. of Water Resources; “California Climate Science and Data;” June 2015; pg. 3 http://www.water.ca.gov/climatechange/docs/CA_Climate_Science_and_Data_Final_Release_June_2015.pdf 9 http://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-latest-drought/ 10 https://www.gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=18379 11 https://www.gov.ca.gov/docs/10.30.15_Tree_Mortality_State_of_Emergency.pdf 12 http://calfire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/newsreleases/2017/CAL%20FIREandU.S%20ForestAnnouce129Million DeadTrees.pdf 13 Stephens, S.L. et al, 2017. “Drought, Tree Mortality and Wildfire in Forests Adapted to Frequent Fire.” Bioscience Advance Access XX, 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/bix146. 14 “Top 20 Largest California Wildfires” 15 Id. 3 of 13 these, a not insignificant number have been caused by electrical power lines, as shown in Figure 1. Several factors contribute to this over and above the already mentioned trends: electric utilities’ obligation to serve, requiring stringing power lines through woodland areas; aging infrastructure with slow investment timelines;16 and California’s strong Diablo and Santa Ana winds that increase the likelihood of damaging infrastructure and then contribute immensely to the spread of any resultant fire. These conflating factors make wildfires unlike any other disaster. Rulemaking in Response to Wildfire Threat Despite wildfires being characterized as capricious, natural phenomenon, many of California’s recent fires are marked by human influence. As such, human intervention and management could offer many of the solutions to mitigating fire’s associated risks. For the case of power line caused wildfires, they tend to ignite under high wind conditions that stress utility infrastructure or under conditions where equipment is run to failure. The catastrophic “Black Saturday” bush fires of early 2009 in Victoria, Australia highlight this. A Royal Commission report found that while electric infrastructure accounted for about 1.5 percent of all wildfire ignitions they were responsible for a disproportionately high number of the wildfires that caused significant damage, noting: “…on days of extreme fire danger the percentage of fires linked to electrical assets rises dramatically. Thus, electricity-caused fires are most likely to occur when the risk of a fire getting out of control and having deadly consequences is greatest.” 17 Yet, the risk associated with power line fires should be lessened relative to the rigor applied to power lines’ engineering and maintenance. In other words, equipment built and maintained to higher standards should perform at higher standards. However, for most investor-owned utilities, the regulatory compact means the Public Utilities or Service Commission is often tasked with balancing developing regulations while not driving up electric bills with ineffective solutions. The Royal