PG&E, the California utility company, is swiftly imposing third-world status on what was previously one of the world's leading economies. See Douglas MacMillan and Faiz Siddiqui, PG&E's Role in Sonoma Fire Questioned as Power Outage Frustrations Grow, WASHINGTON POST posted online on Tuesday, October 29, 2019. PG&E's policy of what we in Florida would call "rolling blackouts," meaning cut off the electricity for hours every so often, has apparently resulted in billions of dollars in damages to people and businesses in California. It has disrupted lives in ways that people living there could not previously imagine. They live without air conditioning in the heat, unable to close up their buildings to stop the smoke from getting in and choking their breathing and endangering their lives if God help them they have conditions like asthma. They have no telephone service and no cell phones and all the batteries run out of power during these blackouts. When they have no telephone service, they obviously cannot contact anyone else by telephone. They cannot even telephone for emergency assistance when they have no telephone service. So far. More to come.
Some third-world countries could do better.
PG&E says that it is doing this because it is afraid that its overhead wires may cause more fires if they come down especially if the wires cannot stand up to the fierce California winds at this time of year.
So bury the wires and stop the fires. PG&E's conduct in this affair is the greatest single advertisement for working on the infrastructure of this country. Start by burying the wires that cause the fires.
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