It wasn't PG&E this time.

Submitted by Nastarana on Mon, 07/12/2021 - 3:56pm

A company called Pacific Power failed to shut off electricity during the massive Labor Day fires in Oregon last year. The ENTIRE TOWN of Gates, OR was burned and residents are now suing PP. There is an excellent report on you tube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63HqASUT7BM

I don't live in OR, but I did grow up there in the 50s and 60s, and I have been across the Santiam Passes many times. It is or was beautiful, mostly wild, country with little towns and farms tucked into folds of the hills.

This is one example of many why I think--my opinion only--that if you are a leftist "influencer" or pundit or otherwise prominent in leftist media, I don't give a @#$%& about your partners or pronouns, but if you are not digging into and confronting corporate and financier malfeasance in your area, IMO, you are useless.

More and more people are being hurt and badly hurt by incidents like the above and the leadership, you should excuse the expression, of neither party has any visible interest in protecting people from predatory corporate malfeasance.

PG&E does get a mention in the video for having been slapped with multiple awards for damages to burned out communities in CA. How many of those dollars have actually been paid, who knows?

Tags:

corporations

wildfire

Vote

Comments

Submitted by snoopydawg on Mon, 07/12/2021 - 11:43pm

And I bet they paid a small fine for it

I am heartbroken thinking about the animals that are caught in the fires, drought, have their water poisoned etc just because some asshole wants to be rich. We certainly need a French Revolution here and soon to hold people accountable for destroying so much.

Submitted by Nastarana on Tue, 07/13/2021 - 9:13am

I begin to wonder if anything short of

@snoopydawg Mme. Guillotine can get through to folks at the top and their minions lower down. It is if these folks think they are a separate species from the rest of us.

It infuriates me when I hear or read the (paid, imo) ideologues of the right going on about "Antifa burned 1,000) buildings!!!". If that is even true, I don't know, but I think Paradise, CA, had more that that many buildings burn. Not to mention that Antifa themselves are paid provacateurs.

—

Mary Bennett

Submitted by humphrey on Tue, 07/13/2021 - 12:34am

This says a lot about the company.

It it is not concerned about its customers but rather the bottom line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PacifiCorp

PacifiCorp is an electric power company in the western United States.

PacifiCorp has two business units:

Pacific Power, a regulated electric utility with service territory throughout Oregon, northern California, and southeastern Washington.
Rocky Mountain Power, a regulated electric utility with service territory throughout Utah, Wyoming, and southeastern Idaho.
PacifiCorp operates one of the largest privately held transmission systems in the U.S. within the western Energy Imbalance Market.

In 2001, PacifiCorp was purchased by Scottish Power.[4] Since 2006, PacifiCorp has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Energy (formerly MidAmerican), itself an affiliate of Berkshire Hathaway.

This might interest you snoop. From the same article.

PacifiCorp was formed in 1910 from the merger of several small electric companies in eastern Oregon and Washington to form the Pacific Power & Light Company. It gradually expanded its reach to include most of Oregon, as well as portions of California, Washington and Wyoming. In 1984, it reorganized itself as a holding company, PacifiCorp, headquartered in Portland with Pacific Power as its main subsidiary.

In 1987, PacifiCorp acquired Utah Power & Light.[7] Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah Power had been formed in 1912 from the merger of four electric companies in Utah, Idaho and Wyoming. In 1881, one of those companies made Salt Lake City the fifth city in the world with central station electricity.

After the merger, Pacific Power and Utah Power operated as divisions of PacifiCorp. In a July 2006 reorganization, Pacific Power's territory in central and eastern Wyoming was merged with the Utah Power territory to form Rocky Mountain Power

Submitted by Nastarana on Tue, 07/13/2021 - 9:24am

Thank you for this.

@humphrey Notice how the company is careful to say "regulated electric utility"? Not very regulated, it would seem. Does "wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire/Hathaway" mean Warren Buffet owns PacifiCorp?

—

Mary Bennett

Submitted by Nastarana on Tue, 07/13/2021 - 9:20am

Utilities need to be publicly owned and managed.

Period. You do know that subtle, well, maybe not so subtle, racism was part of the propaganda which was used to privatize utilities in big cities--those folks are going to retire with Big Pensions paid for by us taxpayers was the mantra.

—

Mary Bennett