Parts Per Billion - California Fighting Massive Wildfires With Blackouts

California Fighting Massive Wildfires With Blackouts

08/26/20 • 15 min

California's power companies are trying to stop wildfires by imposing targeted blackouts in high risk areas. Their hope is that this will prevent a downed live wire from sparking a conflagration.

This strategy was effective a tamping down fires last year, but in the year of Covid-19, many worry the solution will be nearly as bad as the problem.

On this episode of our podcast, Parts Per Billion, California correspondent Emily C. Dooley talks about how power companies are struggling to ensure people fighting the pandemic don't lose power, and also about whether there may be a long-term solution that doesn't require ad hoc power shutoffs.

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California's power companies are trying to stop wildfires by imposing targeted blackouts in high risk areas. Their hope is that this will prevent a downed live wire from sparking a conflagration.

This strategy was effective a tamping down fires last year, but in the year of Covid-19, many worry the solution will be nearly as bad as the problem.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Parts Per Billion - California Fighting Massive Wildfires With Blackouts

Transcript

Speaker 100:00:00.160

There's never really a good time to have out of control wildfires burned hundreds of thousands of acres. But that being said, today's Parts Pervilion is about why this year's California wildfire season couldn't have come at a worse time. Hello, and welcome back once again to Parts per Billion, the environmental podcast from Bloomberg Law. I'm your host, David Schultz. As I talk right now, It's the morning of Wednesday, August in California. It's