Posted on 08/28/2023 4:12:03 AM PDT by george76
In the first moments of the Maui fires, when high winds brought down power poles, slapping electrified wires to the dry grass below, there was a reason the flames erupted all at once in long, neat rows — those wires were bare, uninsulated metal that could spark on contact...
those wires were among miles of line that Hawaiian Electric Co. left naked to the weather and often-thick foliage, despite a recent push by utilities in other wildfire- and hurricane-prone areas to cover up their lines or bury them.
Compounding the problem is that many of the utility’s 60,000, mostly wooden power poles, which its own documents described as built to “an obsolete 1960s standard,” were leaning and near the end of their projected lifespan.
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It’s “very unlikely” a fully-insulated cable would have sparked and caused a fire in dry vegetation...
wire that was insulated would not have arced and sparked, igniting a line of flame.
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a former member of the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission confirmed many of Maui’s wooden power poles were in poor condition. Jennifer Potter lives in Lahaina
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power poles. They were skinny, bending, bowing. The power went out all the time.”
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This was a “preventable tragedy of epic proportions
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Hawaiian Electric also faces criticism for not shutting off the power amid high wind warnings and keeping it on even as dozens of poles began to topple. Maui County sued Hawaiian Electric on Thursday over this issue.
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Other utilities have been addressing the issue of bare wire. Pacific Gas & Electric was found responsible for the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California that killed 85 people.
The disaster was caused by downed power lines.
program to eliminate uninsulated wire in fire zones has covered more than 1,200 miles of line .
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Buried Utilities: Electrical Conduit is an Important Part of Protecting Power and Transmission Lines from Wind and Fire..
Look at every telephone pole you’ll see bare power wires. The folks are idiots but then again that’s 150% of journalist today.
Biden’s $700 should help everything!/s
BTTT
From the people selling the conduit…
Journo malpractice written by an ignorant person being paid under the table by a lawyer
The place is gone and will not recover
They have reduced the number of people that are unaccounted for to under 400. They refuse to give the number of children they have already found dead.
Now, I am not sure that the local government is capable of telling the truth.
Liars. They might as well said the Easter Bunny and Keebler Elves did it.
Pumping electricity in is also probably part of why the fire was so hot. After all, high voltage and current electricity is about the only thing that can generate enough heat to melt/forge aluminum and hardened steel. /a few engineering degrees under my belt
....and the police killed as many as they xould.
Oh who has not seen BARE electrical lines in their area! Give me a Effin break.
There is a reason for this. Bare lines are cooled by the surrounding air passing by increasing ampacity they can carry. If they were insulated, wire size would have to be enlarged to get same ampacity. All poles and other hardware would also have to be beefed up to handle both weights and wind load.
Liars, indeed. These AMERICANS were murdered by the ‘Green Agenda’...take a bow, Congressional Progressive Caucus.
You can but wire size would have to be increase due to losses in load capacity. Prices would be so enormous that we could put 3 times the poles in for bare conductors.
Maui Police Chief John Pelletier previously worked as incident commander during the Las Vegas massacre
Now let’s discuss sharp objects and lesser intelligence. Did you know reporters use pencils? Pencils are sharp, reporters are 🧐
"I solve problems."
Maui’s old wooden power poles were in poor condition / fallng down.. ~a former member of the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission . Jennifer Potter lives in Lahaina
The temps needed to do what happened in Maui is in more than the 3000 F degree range. Aluminum, melted and forms rivulets. Tires evaporated, leaving the steel belts. Window glass *melted*. Steering column gone. Vegetation under the incinerated auto.
This is a screen shot from a Maui video. The video depicts a small area of devestation, surrounded by pristine homes, walls, healthy trees.
Distribution lines are mostly bare as well.
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