Possibility of Phones Being Down During Emergency Power Shut-offs Sparks Communication Concern in Letter to the Editor
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The Southern Humboldt Fire Safe Council is concerned about phone service being out in some rural areas as a result of PG&E shutting off power during emergency fire weather events.
As you know, PG&E is laying out plans to shut down power during emergency fire weather events. Frontier has generator backups and personnel for continuing service to town landlines (e.g. Redway, Garberville) in a power shutdown, but rural areas in Southern Humboldt from Palo Verde to Dutyville (including many off-grid areas, and areas with no cellphone coverage) will lose phone service after a few hours at best. Landlines will be shut down once the battery backups run out. The batteries serve the lines for up to three hours, compared to the 2-7 day shutdowns predicted by PG&E.
What this means is that during emergency fire weather conditions, times when many fire-fighting resources are drawn down, off fighting fires elsewhere, people in these outlying highly flammable areas will be unable to report fires promptly. They will also not be receiving timely evacuation notices from the county Humboldt Alert system.
The public health situation is especially dire for elderly and infirm people. It affects, for example, Tan Oak Park south of Leggett, a nonprofit that among other services provides Section 8 housing for disabled people.· Frontier has probably 12 battery stations in these remote areas. There are portable generator chargers, but Frontier does not appear to have the personnel or the emergency planning to distribute them and keep them running over a period of days.
The Southern Humboldt FSC has been mostly concerned in our discussions about the area we serve. North of us (from Miranda, Salmon Creek) is served by Pac Bell. We don’t know what their situation is, but suspect it’s similar. In fact, we suspect that this is a sleeper issue that will affect many areas in the North Coast and throughout California.
· We don’t think this problem will be solved this year or any time soon–policy makers are not yet interested. In the meantime, people who could be affected should be informed of the risk. Frontier is not taking on the job of notifying its customers. Your page is one that many people in our area follow regularly. Redundant communication systems need to be encouraged: cell phones with 12-volt chargers to charge off a vehicle, HAM radios, CB radios. In some areas, people living off-grid or who run generators in emergency power outages might have internet service when the phones go down (assuming good power back-up to that internet service during power outages), and could phone out through Google Voice or other VOIP systems.
Any help you could give us in getting the word out would be appreciated.
Sincerely,
Gail Eastwood
on behalf of the Southern Humboldt Fire Safe Council
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🕯🌳Thank you Gail for bringing this to our attention, and thank you Robin and Kym for posting this information. Personally I think PG&E needs to give Forntier a helping hand if there the one’s cutting the power and Forntier is trying to give people in the more rural areas a life line then they should give a helping hand. 🖖
We keep an up to date (the old wide band ones are obsolete) 12 vt CB radio for just this reason & fingers crossed the cell towers hold. Communications is a real issue, and a serious one, in times of emergency.
I have VOIP in combination with my land line…. along with reliable backup power. Short term backup is easy for satellite and VOIP with an UPS (uninterruptable power supply). The VOIP units themselves are pretty cheap… $40 for a basic box, and no charge to operate them.
Beyond that I have a scanner and baofeng radio (also cheap) if all else fails.
Thank you Gail and SH Fire Safe Council. This is important issue to plan for.
~the weirdest thing about the Four 10-hr. days of electricity shut-down, was, one of the days my land line still functioned. PacBell service, cordless w/answering machine built-in.
Good heads-up for the community, Thanks! I suspect there are so many things we will need to rethink and establish new strategies for in our very near future.
Get your Ham or short wave radio license.
Get a sat phone. Cheaper than ever. I have an Iridium 9555. Just make sure you are aware of what minutes/data plan you sign up for. I pay 30 a month for 15 minutes a month. It is for emergencies.
Take responsibility for yourself.
Generator, inverter, cellphone-booster and Satillite internet, my phones work as long as cellphone or satillite internet is working and my generator or car has gas.
I have emergency solar battery packs for my cell phone and tablet. I have a hand crank radio for listening for emergency radio signals. They get charged up once every 4 months. But all the precautions only work if there is a source that’s still sending information- cell phones towers still working, the lot if cable not disrupted.
KMUD is beefing up their back up power, both at the station and at the transmitter on Pratt. They intend to stay on-the-air to provide vital information. Include a battery operated radio in your Go-Bag.
Yay, KMUD! Donate if you haven’t already.
how was it done back before phones or electricity . it wasnt that long ago . prolly back in 1940 or so before some had phones and maybe electric .
how did they get the word out for help or danger heading that way .
back then , neighbors helped neighbors . walked or rode horses or buggies to help or get help. but then again , in that area with all the pot , both legal and illegal , and guards it cant be neighbor helping now a days.
Smoke signals?
Almost every rural county in northern California is being jeopardized by PG&E’s plan. Will turning power off to a region really make the utility’s liability go down? Likely not. More likely is that it will trigger a sea of smaller claims, plenty to keep PG&E’s lawyers employed. For every possible PG&E caused fire, there are dozens of emergencies caused by other things that cycling power off will not stop. Our firefighters double as first response medical, and for most fire districts, 85% of the emergency calls are for medical aid. So the power outage affecting telcos is a real emergency right in our towns. Power goes out, telcos go out, 911 becomes unstable, medical alarms and residential devices stop.
The biggest fire risk is likely the use of gensets on hot windy summer days with minimal clearance and underrated wiring. Toss in the use of barbeques for cooking, candles for lighting, and the power shut off plan actually increases the community fire risk. And if we go days without power, gas stations will not be able to pump the fuel they have and folks wont have gas to fill the gensets with, so more radical behavior kicks in. With a 911 system being jeopardized we increase risks of accidents, cooking fires or small incidents becoming overwhelming on the first response. Remember the fire fighters rely on mains electricity for the base radios, repeaters and town sirens that dispatch many fires. Now add in the need to evacuate if there is a fire, and the possibility of zero gas available regionally.
It all totals up to one thing – PG&E is looking to cripple towns with their outage idea, so state politicians will cave and bail them out without demanding infrastructure be upgraded. PG&E’s selfishly choosing to “mitigate” one possible damage without considering the dozens of very likely or probable damages their action will cause to the people who rely on their service. Its just another example of them playing russian roulette with citizens lives.
Is it proper to say a telco should have reliable power for major events? Yes, and sadly some jury will likely be called to decide what is a major event and what isnt, probably after more death and economic ruin from PG&E’s rabid culture of deferred maintenance .
So once more PG&E just shifts responsibility from their inability to safely deliver power, this time onto the backs of the people who pay their bills and onto a few telcos whose only fault is relying on the power utility for doing what a power utility should do.
Brad,
Many have been caught off guard by the increased length of fire season and the severity of the fires.
Out of curiousity, if you were in charge of PGE’s efforts to safely deliver power how would you go about it and how would you finance it?
I said this 20 years ago leading up to Y2K and I’ll say it again : why have we built a system that we are so afraid of turning off?
Sheer laziness and greed. I was without power for two weeks and, even though I had a back up generator, at the end of that time, I was bored, bored, bored because I ceased being entertained by public media 24/7 as it was too expensive to run the generator constantly. Couldn’t go to town as the road was blocked, the neighbors became a PITA. Sigh. I’m a child of my times even though I was a prepared child. At least for a short stretch.
Californians “pge is a bad corporation that kills people through negligence” pge “were shutting your power down to reduce risks” Californians “Hell no your no shutting down my phone!”
I have been without pg&e power for as much as 2 weeks. My landline always worked….
Hey DOGGO!…….10 days w/ no PGE is our record.. where in the hell are you?….ALWAYS be kind to the lineman and women. maybe they will move you up the list. seriously where are you?… We have voice over internet telephone… wont work w/ out PGE/ or a generator…But you have a land line?
Been out for 3 weeks at a time a couple of times. Last winter (apparently it came on for about an hour in that timespan), and during the 2008 fires. 2003 was pretty extended… and numerous multiday outages over the years.
The advantages of edge of civilization living.
Picture of PG&E flying crews in to reset burned poles on a smoke filled day where USFS grounded their aircraft because of low visibility.
I had a land line during the two week period without power. At least until at&t left the line laying on the road. People kept driving over it and it stopped working after a couple of days. At&t was in no rush either to tack it back to the pole or fix it later. In the end the phone was out for a lot longer than the two weeks the power was out.
PG&E fixes power accoding to a priority list, which can leave certain roads to be fixed later than all the surrounding areas.
Being bundled with Suddenlink causes my landline to not work after about half an hour of no electricity because of the Suddenlink equipment. And PG&E says they will not be responsible for all the freezers filled with food? I guess we all need to go back to canning food instead of freezing it…
This has been going on in carlotta also. All it takes is more copper wire install by at&t, or a backup generator which I was told would not be installed.
This is not a pg&e issue, it’s an at&t issue.
Landlines should work unless the tele. lines are down/ broken. they are 14 volt[?] and propane generators as back upat switchboards.. Not dependent on PGE
In some places a phone company has run underground low voltage wires that they power the landlines with when the PG&E is down. Not so in our outlying areas of Southern Humboldt. Frontier (and probably most phone companies) has generator backup systems in place for the towns (Redway, Garberville). So some landlines will continue to work during power shutdowns. However, in the outlying areas here, the landlines are powered by battery backupx in an emergency, which last at best three hours, and there are no generators in place to continue backing up the affected lines, and we have serious questions about the possibility of connecting and fueling portable generators that Frontier has to date not answered..
Geoffrey davis: Landlines should work unless the tele. lines are down/ broken
This is correct for anyone directly wired to a telephone switching room, called a “central Office”. CO’s generally have significant battery and genset backup, good for many days+. One must be within maybe 5 to 10 miles of a town with a CO to be directly wired.
In rural counties the hill folks are directly wired to a Pair-gain/DSLAM which looks like those wide little cabinet things spread throughout the backroads. These cabinets then use long distance links to get back to town. These are the problem for us; they will have only a couple of small batteries giving a couple of hours of backup, at best.
Cell transmitter sites each have some different amount of battery/genset backup duration, and their link out to the phone network has the same list of different durations. VOIP services depend on your house having power, and whatever backup duration your internet provider supports (generally not much).
My takeaway is the same as many have already said, sat phone if you can afford it, GPS/sat tracker that can be used for texting ($24 a month), CB with neighbors as has been the case in the hills for many years, and Ham radios are super cheap and the test is no longer difficult.
There is great value in leveraging the clever self-reliance that is the bedrock of our culture to maintain a way to communicate that is not dependent on outside services/corporations. The Ham radio networks are free, individually and group hosted by geeks like me, and outside of govt./corporate whim.
Here are links to a couple of Ham radio clubs that maintain mountaintop transmitters throughout the county:
http://farwestrepeaters.org/
https://www.humboldt-arc.org/
With a license and a handheld radio costing from $50 to $200 one can talk all around northern California along with making emergency phone calls. Almost every neighborhood/household has a budding technology geek; encourage them to get involved and they can share that connection to the outside world. Bored tech-savvy teens are a great place to start and the clubs will welcome and mentor those kids.
Btw, you were close on the telco line voltage, it is DC, but it’s 48 volts.
Maybe some firebrick surrounding one of these portable generators would help keep the cell phones charged? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D29QNMJ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B07D29QNMJ&linkCode=as2&tag=nomadeverywhe-20&linkId=56fbf18f04c6d2f2549e0000c3b6cebf
During the Camp Fire in Butte Co.,we evacuated and found we had no radio station or cell service. We drove over the mountain with many others as we couldn’t use the main road out. We had no idea where the fire was or which way it was going, or were to go if we found ourselves facing it. If that fire had started a couple of hours earlier, so many people would not have survived,especially during a PGE shut off. Our land line worked for a short time then went out. PGE isnt the only way fires start, and think its irresponsible to cut off power and leave people with no warning system in place.
Also, its my understanding the judge in the gas explosion case has ordered PGE to shut down during low humidity and high wind events. Govenor signed a law that will not hold PGE liable for any fires after the camp fire. So PGE is bailed out, just like the banks back in 2009, so we all have to fend for ourselves. The night before Camp Fire, PGE was threatening to turn power off, but didnt. If it had been 4 am, instead of 6 am, most would have been asleep, no phone service, no cell, TV, radio, as all the towers burned. Even the police dispatch had no communication. Told everyone to call if they needed help getting out, then said we cant help you. Such a tragedy, but I’m surprised the death toll wasnt much higher. Thankful for that, but 85 people died. I’m horrified and still upset. No roads out if it happens again. No info on changes made if it happens again. God Bless all of you up there near the Mountain fire. Prayers for you all.
This review video about a portable energy setup seems pretty fair and square. I really like this guy, despite not agreeing with any of his political conclusions and perhaps agendas. He’s helpful, and that’s all that really matters in the end, especially when they’re so busy trying to ‘normalize’ raising the rates for half the usage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXpYKe5oWRc