A large tank holding gasoline exploded in Goyang, Korea.
A police spokesperson speaks during a press conference Tuesday. Another officer is holding a sky lantern that police believe caused a fire at an oil storage facility. (Yonhap)
Police detained a man in Goyang, Korea Monday for allegedly starting a fire that destroyed a tank holding 2.66 million liters of gasoline, enough to fill 250 tank trucks.
“Surveillance camera footage showed the fire started after the lantern landed on the grass,” a police official said. “We questioned people living around the area and confirmed the man launched the sky lantern.”
The police believe the sky lantern may have started the fire when it fell on the lawn of the oil storage facility, causing flames that later spread into the ventilation system of the oil tank, causing the explosion.
These dangerous devices use burning material to loft a small paper or plastic hot air balloon into the air. The perpetrator has no control over where it lands. Usually the fire goes out before it hits the ground, but not always. Sometimes the envelope catches fire while in flight. Numerous fires have been started by sky lanterns. Even if they don’t ignite a fire, they leave litter on the ground. Metal parts have been picked up by hay balers causing serious problems when fed to livestock. They are banned in most U.S. states and many countries.
This brings the total to 17 of last fall’s wildfires attributed to the company’s power lines and equipment
File photo of Silverado Fire at 12:26 p.m. September 12, 2014.
(UPDATED at 6:20 p.m. PDT October 9, 2018)
Investigators looking into the cause and origin of the large wildfires that plagued Northern California last fall have determined that a Pacific Gas and Electric power line started the Cascade Fire in Yuba County. The blaze started on the evening of October 8 and burned a total of 9,989 acres, destroyed 264 structures, and resulted in four civilian fatalities and one firefighter injury.
“A high wind event in conjunction with the power line sag on two conductors caused the lines to come into contact, which created an electrical arc”, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) said in a news release. “The electrical arc deposited hot burning or molten material onto the ground in a receptive fuel bed causing the fire. The common term for this situation is called ‘line slap’ and the power line in question was owned by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company.”
The investigative report for the Cascade Fire was forwarded to the Yuba County District Attorney, which is the usual practice. The D.A. decided that no violations of the Public Utilities Code in regard to vegetation management were found and made no other recommendations regarding criminal action, including the offense of involuntary manslaughter.
In total, the October 2017 Fire Siege involved more than 170 fires and burned at least 245,000 acres in Northern California. Approximately 11,000 firefighters from 17 states and Australia helped battle the blazes.
Earlier CAL FIRE said an additional 16 fires during the siege were attributed to PG&E equipment, alleging violations of state law in 11 of those incidents. CAL FIRE still hasn’t released its report on the Tubbs blaze, the deadliest of last year’s fires, which killed 22 people, destroyed 5,643 structures, and burned 36,807 acres.
In a news release PG&E addressed the CAL FIRE report about the Cascade Fire:
We look forward to the opportunity to carefully review the CAL FIRE report to understand the agency’s perspectives.
The safety of our customers, their families and the communities we serve is our most important job. Without question, the loss of life, homes and businesses in these extraordinary wildfires is heartbreaking and we remain focused on helping communities recover and rebuild.
In the meantime, we are continuing to focus on implementing additional precautionary measures intended to further reduce wildfire threats, such as working to remove and reduce dangerous vegetation, improving weather forecasting, upgrading emergency response warnings, making lines and poles stronger in high fire threat areas and taking other actions to make our system, and our customers and communities, even safer in the face of a growing wildfire threat.
This article was updated to include a response from PG&E.
Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite picture of smoke from Northern California wildfires, October 9, 2017.
A year ago today more than 10 large very destructive wildfires were burning in Northern California. They started on October 8 and 9 pushed by very strong winds and eventually destroyed about 8,900 structures (including homes and outbuildings), burned at least 245,000 acres, and caused the deaths of 44 people.
Map showing the perimeters of the Pocket, Tubbs, Nuns, and Atlas Fires. CAL FIRE & Wildfire Today, October 15, 2017.
The fires instantly made thousands of residents homeless, and while rebuilding has begun, some are still struggling.
Many received no warning or alert on their telephones and were awakened during the night by neighbors pounding on their doors or the sirens of first responders.
The nine largest fires in Northern California, October 2017. Wikipedia. Click to enlarge.
One year ago today, I was immersed in the most destructive fire in California history. When I watched the #tubbsfire hop Hwy 128 at Bennet Lane and roar through Franz Valley, I knew #santarosa was in trouble. This clip is from Fountaingrove. @NorthBayNews pic.twitter.com/hQqikrL4yr
During a speech in Sacramento on August 15, 2008 California Representative Kevin McCarthy claimed that fires produce more emissions than cars:
“What I have found”, Rep. McCarthy said, “because of these fires, there are studies that are showing they are producing more emissions than all of our cars are doing.”
Politifact looked into Rep. McCarthy’s statement. Here is an excerpt from their article:
Bill Stewart, a researcher at the UC Berkeley Center for Forestry, said there’s a key point missing from McCarthy’s statement. While fires emit more particulate matter, cars produce far more greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide, he said.
“Those are two important but different issues,” Stewart said.
Mike Kleeman, a UC Davis professor of environmental engineering, added that wildfires also emit some greenhouse gases.
“But burned areas also regrow during which time they act as a net carbon sink. Assuming a burned area regrows completely over a time of decades, the net CO2 emissions should be low,” Kleeman wrote in an email.
“Wildfires are a problem,” he added, “and we should be taking steps to reduce their frequency and intensity. But it isn’t an ‘apples to apples’ comparison to an every-day source like cars.”
Earlier this month, the Trump administration proposed rules that would ease vehicle emissions standards nationwide.
An S-2T air tanker comes out of the smoke to drop retardant near the communication towers on Santiago Peak August 8,2018 as the Holy Fire approaches. HPWREN image.
While fighting one of the largest wildfires in California’s recorded history, the company reduced the data rate for a fire department’s account to 1/200th of normal.
The Mendocino Complex of Fires. Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office photo.
Six weeks after the Santa Clara Fire Department said Verizon reduced their data rate for a command and control unit to 1/200th of normal while fighting a huge fire, the company has purchased time on television networks with a commercial titled “Enabling Heroes”.
The commercial which ran during a football game this weekend showing people that are represented as firefighters, has a spokesmodel saying, “In times of crisis their calls go through and they can get their jobs done”, and the company has “a dedicated lane on our network just for first responders”.
The fire department personnel staffing Santa Clara’s OES Incident Support Unit 5262 earlier this year while battling the Mendocino Complex of Fires, one of the largest blazes in the history of California, knew they had an unlimited data plan for the equipment used to track, organize, and prioritize routing of resources from around the state and country to the sites where they are most needed.
While fighting the fire the department discovered the Verizon data connection for the command and control unit was being throttled. Data rates had been reduced to 1/200th, or less, of the previous speeds. Fire Chief Anthony Bowden wrote in a court filing that the “reduced speeds severely interfered with the OES 5262’s ability to function effectively”. The County has signed on to a legal effort to overturn the Federal Communication Commission’s repeal of net neutrality rules.
While the fire was burning, the department explained to Verizon the problem and asked the company to restore their data capability, but it did not happen quickly. After going around and around for a while, eventually the department’s administrative section had to work with Verizon and sign up for a different plan.
In the last couple of years the four major cell phone providers have advertised “unlimited” data plans, but they ARE ALL LIMITED in various ways.
The department thought their plan described as “unlimited” actually meant that. Critics say they should have read the fine print in their contract, while others say Verizon should have immediately restored their data and worried about the contract issues later after the smoke cleared. A comment in one of our articles about this issue looked as if it could have been written by a lobbyist for Verizon.
