BEWARE! Arsonist squirrels on the loose
UCAN News
WHEN GOOD SQUIRRELS GO BAD ...
Few things are scarier than a good squirrel gone bad. Especially when those squirrels are falling out of the sky and setting the entire county on fire.
How do we know? Because apparently, anything from a squirrel to a blowing branch or a car crash can cut power at any time, says a utility expert in Saturday's San Diego Union-Tribune.
By way of explanation, SDG&E has argued that it should be allowed to shut off power to Eastern San Diego when there is a threat of fire. The reason: SDG&E's faulty power lines started some of the worst fires in California history. The PUC rejected this poorly conceived proposal.
Yet the San Diego Union-Tribune is reporting that one of SDG&E's top executives, Mike Niggli, and its PR representative, Stephanie Donovan, are warning people to be prepared, because SDG&E lines are not reliable, and could be shut off. What's more, the article suggests, squirrels could be the culprits.
Utility expert David Koepp is quoted as saying, “The branch fell down, the squirrel fell off."
Koepp, who manages Southern California sales for C&C Electric, a utility equipment manufacturer, thinks falling squirrels are a significant hazard to SDG&E's reliability in the back country.
Last week SDG&E's request for permission to shut off power to East County during times of high fire risk was rejected by the PUC.
To date, we haven't heard anything from SDG&E about shutting off power during times of "high squirrel risk," but you never know. Stranger things have happened in the energy industry. In 2007, an opossum and a raccoon took out two separate oil refineries causing massive spikes in the price of gasoline.
Investigators never revealed if the opossum and the raccoon had conspired to cause the refinery fires, but we have our suspicions. We are also suspicious of claims that squirrels could be responsible for a fire storm, but we'll let you decide. Click here to read the full San Diego Union-Tribune story by Onell Soto.
* Squirrel photo CC by Odalaigh. CC isn't your ordinary copyright. Learn more about CC, or Creative Commons at UCAN's NewMediaRights.org.
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