Report: San Diego County spends less on fire services than neighbors
Sep 1, 2010
La Jolla Light
By City News Service
San Diego fire agencies invest significantly less in fire and emergency medical services than their counterparts in Orange and Los Angeles counties, according to a study released Wednesday.
The study by the National University System Institute for Policy Research found that fire agencies in San Diego cumulatively spent $152.85 per resident in fiscal year 2009-10, compared to $177.98 in Orange County and $217.71 in Los Angeles County.
The data was culled from the budgets of more than 70 separate fire protection agencies throughout the three Southern California counties, according to the Institute for Policy Research.
Erik Bruvold, the institute's president, said the findings should be "worrisome" to San Diego residents in the wake of the 2003 and 2007 firestorms that destroyed 4,500 structures and caused billions in damages.
"In the seven years since the 2003 firestorm we have seen many important steps toward improving our fire fighting efforts," Bruvold said. "However, the biggest one - significantly increasing investment and the priority placed on fire and EMS among municipal budgets - hasn't been a step that enough local policy makers have embraced."...
Showing posts with label fires. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fires. Show all posts
Thursday, September 02, 2010
Sunday, August 10, 2008
FEMA and Sanders got together after the fires, now taxpayers pay inflated bills
Jeanne Fowler couldn't could not figure out why A.J. Diani Construction Co. removed so much cement from her property. Her property had a lot of concrete, she said, but her driveway and pathways were not destroyed. Now she knows: the contractors were paid by the pound.
Diani removed 305 tons of concrete, 372 tons of ash and trash, and 11 tons of metal from the remains of Fowler's home, according to invoices. The company charged $164,789; her insurance company agreed to pay $57,779.
Who pays the difference? Taxpayers.
Watsonville-based Granite Construction Company also participated in the clean-up.
Complaints over debris cleanup tab unanswered
By Dana Wilkie
U-T WASHINGTON BUREAU
August 10, 2008
"Mayor Jerry Sanders... was told in the spring that homeowners were outraged by the program's high costs...At the same time, Sanders' spokesman acknowledged, the mayor heard from homeowners who were getting “fairly elevated invoices.”
"Spokesman Fred Sainz said the mayor “immediately inquired” about the high bills, and though he wasn't wholly satisfied with the explanations from city staff members, Sanders “took their answers at face value.”
"Sanders has been unwilling to comment on the debris-removal program before or since The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Aug. 3 that city-hired contractors charged much more than private contractors to clear similar home sites and often hauled away far more debris than what private companies took from comparable lots.
"The city assured homeowners that they would be charged no more than their insurance allowed for demolition, which means most of the costs of the $9.4 million program will be borne by federal, state and local taxpayers..."
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
It appears SDG&E is largely to blame for fires
Click here to see the original article.
Probe of Calif. Fires Lays Most Blame on Power Lines
Downing of Poles by Santa Ana Winds Renews Debate Over Costly Option of Burying Electrical Cables
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
December 24, 2007
LOS ANGELES -- When the firestorms of October were finally extinguished and hundreds of thousands of Southern Californians returned to their homes, officials set out to understand how 21 fires erupted in the span of just three days.
Searching high and low, they found the easiest explanations at ground level: A 10-year-old boy confessed to starting one fire while playing with matches. That blaze blackened 38,000 acres north of Los Angeles, though authorities opted not to press charges against the youth, who has been described as distraught.
Two other fires were attributed to arson, something officials said happens routinely when fires erupt elsewhere. "The arsonists jump in because they have cover; there's other fires already," said Bill Peters, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
In an odd twist, a convicted arsonist was discovered among the volunteers fighting fires in San Diego County. Paroled after setting seven blazes 10 years ago, the man was not implicated in the October fires.
The leading cause of ignition appeared to be power lines.
As many as eight fires were blamed on sparks from lines blown down by the high, hot Santa Ana winds that sweep across Southern California each autumn. The Witch fire, which burned 200,000 acres and killed two people, was ignited by a power line, as was the smaller Guejito blaze with which it merged.
The findings have renewed calls for improving the safety of the power lines, either by reinforcing poles and line fasteners or, in some cases, placing cables underground in rural areas that experience the worst winds.
"We're certainly all looking at undergrounding in fire-prone rural areas -- even though that hasn't been the norm -- given the number of fires that have broken out over the last several years," said Christy Heiser, a spokeswoman for San Diego Gas & Electric. She noted that 60 percent of the utility's lines are already underground, twice the national average.
The problem is expense. Burying power lines can cost $1 million a mile. It also makes any repair a matter of digging.
"People don't understand the consequences of it," said James A. Kelly, vice president for engineering and technical services at Southern California Edison, which is less eager to bury the lines. "It's like using a 20-pound sledgehammer to kill an ant."
Edison is experimenting with less costly options, including poles made from composite materials designed to withstand winds that "are sufficient in some instances to snap wooden poles," Kelly said.
Indeed, the Santa Ana winds remain the primary reason for October's fires. The gusty, dry gales exceeded 100 mph, and blew steadily for so long that they drove fires over terrain that had been thoroughly burned four years earlier.
"As a general rule, the younger the stand, the less fuel there is," said Jon Keeley, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "But if you overlay what burned in October 2007 against earlier fire histories, what you can see is a huge portion of what burned in 2003 got re-burned. If you include the 2002 fires, it's like 100,000 acres."
Keeley said that suggests that controlled burns are relatively ineffective on Southern California's scrubby landscape. In testimony to a Senate panel last month, he urged restricting new residential development in fire-prone areas, tightening building codes on the houses that are built, and exploring the burial of power lines in the corridors that Santa Ana winds sweep through.
"Power companies aren't eager to do it because it's expensive," he said. "But given the cost of these fires, I can't believe it's not cost-effective."
And after all that, Keeley said, the public must understand that fires in Southern California are like earthquakes: inevitable.
"The thing is, everything is going to re-burn: Southern California is a fire-based ecology," said Peters. "The intangible here is, as long as people want to live on that interface between nature and man, we have to deal with that. And so that's why -- well, this happens all the time. Because that's where we live!"
Probe of Calif. Fires Lays Most Blame on Power Lines
Downing of Poles by Santa Ana Winds Renews Debate Over Costly Option of Burying Electrical Cables
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
December 24, 2007
LOS ANGELES -- When the firestorms of October were finally extinguished and hundreds of thousands of Southern Californians returned to their homes, officials set out to understand how 21 fires erupted in the span of just three days.
Searching high and low, they found the easiest explanations at ground level: A 10-year-old boy confessed to starting one fire while playing with matches. That blaze blackened 38,000 acres north of Los Angeles, though authorities opted not to press charges against the youth, who has been described as distraught.
Two other fires were attributed to arson, something officials said happens routinely when fires erupt elsewhere. "The arsonists jump in because they have cover; there's other fires already," said Bill Peters, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
In an odd twist, a convicted arsonist was discovered among the volunteers fighting fires in San Diego County. Paroled after setting seven blazes 10 years ago, the man was not implicated in the October fires.
The leading cause of ignition appeared to be power lines.
As many as eight fires were blamed on sparks from lines blown down by the high, hot Santa Ana winds that sweep across Southern California each autumn. The Witch fire, which burned 200,000 acres and killed two people, was ignited by a power line, as was the smaller Guejito blaze with which it merged.
The findings have renewed calls for improving the safety of the power lines, either by reinforcing poles and line fasteners or, in some cases, placing cables underground in rural areas that experience the worst winds.
"We're certainly all looking at undergrounding in fire-prone rural areas -- even though that hasn't been the norm -- given the number of fires that have broken out over the last several years," said Christy Heiser, a spokeswoman for San Diego Gas & Electric. She noted that 60 percent of the utility's lines are already underground, twice the national average.
The problem is expense. Burying power lines can cost $1 million a mile. It also makes any repair a matter of digging.
"People don't understand the consequences of it," said James A. Kelly, vice president for engineering and technical services at Southern California Edison, which is less eager to bury the lines. "It's like using a 20-pound sledgehammer to kill an ant."
Edison is experimenting with less costly options, including poles made from composite materials designed to withstand winds that "are sufficient in some instances to snap wooden poles," Kelly said.
Indeed, the Santa Ana winds remain the primary reason for October's fires. The gusty, dry gales exceeded 100 mph, and blew steadily for so long that they drove fires over terrain that had been thoroughly burned four years earlier.
"As a general rule, the younger the stand, the less fuel there is," said Jon Keeley, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "But if you overlay what burned in October 2007 against earlier fire histories, what you can see is a huge portion of what burned in 2003 got re-burned. If you include the 2002 fires, it's like 100,000 acres."
Keeley said that suggests that controlled burns are relatively ineffective on Southern California's scrubby landscape. In testimony to a Senate panel last month, he urged restricting new residential development in fire-prone areas, tightening building codes on the houses that are built, and exploring the burial of power lines in the corridors that Santa Ana winds sweep through.
"Power companies aren't eager to do it because it's expensive," he said. "But given the cost of these fires, I can't believe it's not cost-effective."
And after all that, Keeley said, the public must understand that fires in Southern California are like earthquakes: inevitable.
"The thing is, everything is going to re-burn: Southern California is a fire-based ecology," said Peters. "The intangible here is, as long as people want to live on that interface between nature and man, we have to deal with that. And so that's why -- well, this happens all the time. Because that's where we live!"
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