After a utility pole fell and ignited a fire, Frank King and his family ran to escape as electrical transformers exploded around their home near the Oregon coast. A bright red glow was visible in the mirror for miles.
The fire three and a half years ago destroyed 300 homes in Otis, Ore., including the one where Mr. King, a 101-year-old World War II veteran, had lived for nearly three decades.
“A lot of the things that reminded me of the good things in my life are gone,” said Mr. King, who believes things might have turned out differently if his utility company, PacifiCorp, had shut down the power lines. power before a severe windstorm. “It takes a terrible toll on me.”
Large wildfires started by power lines and other utility equipment were, not too long ago, thought to occur primarily in California. But these disasters are increasingly happening in many more places as climate-change-supercharged forces like extreme heat and drought wreak havoc on power grids that weren’t built or upgraded to withstand them.
Xcel Energy, a Minneapolis-based utility, recently acknowledged that its equipment likely started last month’s Smokehouse Creek Fire in the Texas Panhandle. In August, Hawaiian Electric said one of its power lines had caught fire in Lahaina on the island of Maui. And this month, a court ordered PacifiCorp to pay $42 million to 10 families who lost their homes in the fire that forced Mr. King out of his home over Labor Day weekend in 2020.
In all of these cases, the utilities argued that they were not negligent and should not be penalized for the fires their equipment had caused.
Most climate experts expect global warming to make wildfires much more likely, even in places not previously considered at risk, such as rainforests and wetlands. While fires can start in many ways, utilities with their cable and transformer networks are a major source of concern.
The industry says it is working to reduce the risk of wildfires with several approaches, including burying power lines, a very expensive option, and using cheaper tools like sensors and software to cut power when fires are likely.
But critics of the industry, including homeowners and some lawmakers, say the industry is not doing enough to prevent such fires.
“There’s this reluctance in this industry to adapt,” said Cody Berne, a lawyer in Portland, Ore., who represents Mr. King and other wildfire survivors. “It’s criminal incompetence.”
Utility executives say rapidly escalating climate-induced disasters have made it difficult to manage millions of miles of towers, poles and cables in a more than 100-year-old system.
“Past risk is no longer a really good indicator of future risk,” said Scott Aaronson, senior vice president of safety and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute, a utility industry trade group. “We are seeing a rapid change in extreme weather. It’s scary.”
Electricity costs have risen sharply in recent years as utilities have responded to extreme weather and rising energy demand. The industry spends billions of dollars to bury power lines, cover cables, trim and remove trees and brush, and buy weather stations, cameras and other equipment to better monitor and control power equipment.
But not every response to climate change has to be precise. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, determined that the risk of utility-caused flare-ups could be reduced by up to 72 percent by using sensors already in many utilities and upgrading the companies’ software systems.
These changes would automatically shut down parts of the utility’s network within milliseconds when tree limbs, animals or other objects caused problems with power lines. Using this technology, known as fast travel, is much cheaper and easier than running power lines underground, an approach also taken by many large Western utilities.
It can cost $3 to $4 million per mile to bury power lines. Such projects can take years to approve, develop and complete. By comparison, fast-travel technology costs about $5,000 to $10,000 a mile, including installing equipment and sending utility crews to inspect circuits before power is restored, the Berkeley researchers said.
“There are opportunities for innovation that could continue to reduce risk,” said Duncan Callaway, a professor of energy and resources at the university.
Mr. Callaway analyzes the fire prevention efforts and costs of Pacific Gas & Electric, which has 5.5 million electric customers, more than any other utility in a single state. While PG&E and other utilities in the West use fast travel, which he calls “a mistake,” Mr. Callaway said he did not know how many others did.
Arshad Mansoor, president and CEO of the Electric Power Research Institute, agrees that fast travel is an important solution, but added that other tools, such as low-orbit satellites, could help utilities quickly identify problems and assess conditions without a power outage.
“The first thing we need to do is get this early warning system worldwide,” Mr Mansoor said.
In Oregon, neither automated tech workers nor utility workers preemptively shut off power that September 2020 weekend, even though forecasters had warned of days of gusty winds and 90-degree heat. A downed power pole ignited a fire on Echo Mountain near the coast in central Oregon. It was one of 30 wildfires that burned 1.2 million acres in the state that weekend, killing nine people and destroying 5,000 homes and businesses.
Jim Holland, a 40-year-old chef, lost the home he and his wife, Briana, had bought their first home just nine months earlier. The Hollands and Mr. King, a neighbor, have rebuilt with insurance money and other aid, but have also filed lawsuits seeking damages from PacifiCorp. Many in the community are still so traumatized that they feel upset by any smoke that falls, even if it’s just from a barbecue. The area is still scarred by mudslides, charred power poles and burnt trees with peeling bark.
“It just feels like we’re living in ruins,” Mr Holland said. “It’s not what it used to be. There are people with glazed eyes, wondering what happened to their lives.”
For many Oregonians, it was hard to understand how a state known for its rainforests became a boathouse.
Last year, a wildfire tore through a critical rainforest that includes a watershed that supplies water to a million people in the Portland metropolitan area and a hydroelectric dam.
“If you’ve been here a long time, like I have, you can see that climate change is real,” said Mingus Mapps, the Portland city commissioner who oversees water, transportation and environmental services. “It was a once-in-a-thousand-year fire. It was scary.”
A bolt of lightning ignited the fire. But Mr. Mapps, the Democratic candidate for mayor, said the city was also concerned about the fire hazard of electrical equipment.
For utilities, wildfires also pose potentially crippling financial risks from lawsuits filed by homeowners and their insurance companies. PG&E filed for bankruptcy in 2019 after accumulating billions of dollars in liability from several wildfires, including the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise, California.
Mr. Aaronson, an executive at the industry trade group, said utilities had learned from the traumatic California wildfires. However, he noted that utility equipment caused less than 10 percent of fires nationwide.
“We are working to reduce it further,” Mr. Aaronson said. “There are tens of thousands of miles of transmission infrastructure. There are millions of miles of distribution.”
Extreme weather conditions have made it difficult to ensure that every part of the electricity system is ready for climate change. One upgrade some companies are making is greater use of fast travel technology.
PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, said it began using the technology to prevent wildfires in 2021, the year after the Echo Mountain fire, although the technology has been around for years.
But using tools like fast travel or public safety blackouts, which California utilities have used when fire danger in an area is expected to be high, can be unpopular because they leave residents and businesses without power . Utilities say they prefer approaches that keep the lights on.
Allen Berreth, vice president of fire mitigation operations for PacifiCorp, said that while the company was using fast travel and other tools, it also planned to bury several more power lines.
“Grounding means there is no public safety power outage,” Mr Berreth said.
Berkshire Chairman and CEO Warren E. Buffett told investors in February that he expected fire losses at his company’s utility subsidiaries to increase in the coming years. He also warned that utilities would have to spend a lot more money on fire prevention – spending that energy experts say will drive up electricity prices.
“The bottom line for the utility industry could be ominous,” Mr. Buffett said. “When the dust settles, America’s power needs and the resulting capital expenditures will be staggering.”
