No Smoke Detectors – No Fire Sprinklers – No 24 Hour Security Patrol to Detect Fires Early – No Technology – No Security Cameras – Not Even a Webcam – there's More Security at a 7-Eleven – No Nothin' – No One Will Buy Your House Now Either – "Remember there's Another Hangar Too"!
AZUSA, Calif. (KABC) — Authorities are investigating after a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s helicopter crashed in the Angeles National Forest north of Azusa Saturday.
The incident happened near Highway 39 and East Fork Road shortly before 5 p.m., according to officials.
Officials initially said five people were aboard the aircraft at the time of the crash, but L.A. Sheriff Alex Villanueva later confirmed that a total of six people were aboard. All were taken to Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center.
Those aboard included a pilot and co-pilot, two paramedics, one crew chief, and a doctor from UCLA on a ride-along, Villanueva said. All are expected to survive, according to officials.
One person suffered critical injuries, two suffered moderate injuries, and another two suffered minor injuries, but all are currently in stable condition, officials said.
“They’re pretty banged up, some of them, and I’ll leave it at there’s some fractures, some broken ribs, and some things of that nature,” Villanueva said. “But thankfully nothing that is life-threatening at this time, and they’re in good hands here.”
Unacceptable Risk: The Troubling Medical Helicopter Safety Record
When the helicopter landed in his yard, Larry Strittmatter didn’t think about the cost. His wife Dana had accidentally burned her leg with boiling water. Instead of driving her to one of six hospitals within 15 miles of their house near Fort Worth, Texas, paramedics called a helicopter to fly Dana to the Parkland Hospital Burn Center in Dallas.
Shortly after Larry arrived, the doctors gave his wife a bandage, a prescription for Tylenol with codeine and a swift escort to the lobby. The hospital refused to admit her for such minor injuries, leaving the Strittmatters with a $17,000 flight bill. “The doctors said they were shocked and dismayed when they saw a helicopter landing,” Strittmatter says. They had been in touch with EMTs at the scene, and after hearing Dana’s injuries described had advised that she should be transported by ground ambulance.
In Arizona, 43 percent of patients transported by helicopter to hospital ERs were discharged within 24 hours, suggesting most didn’t need a helicopter at all. In Maryland, the 24-hour discharge rate for patients transported by state police helicopters was 41 percent prior to 2008.
State agencies and electric utilities are scrambling to shore up power supplies in hopes of avoiding the rolling blackouts that left 800,000 California homes and businesses without power during a record-breaking heatwave last August.
That means gas-fired power plants could be called on more, instead of less, at a time when the state is trying wean itself from fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases.
Already last year, state regulators extended the life of outdated gas-fired power generators in Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Redondo Beach and Oxnard, all of which had been scheduled to shut down at the end of 2020. And now, the state is considering a second extension for the Redondo Beach plant, which is currently scheduled to close at the end of this year.
Environmentalists are at odds with regulators and utilities over how to address the shifting energy landscape. But both sides agree that more needs to be done to meet clean energy goals at a time of when the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant and several gas-fired plants are scheduled to close, climate change is increasing summer electricity demands, and the phasing out of gasoline cars and natural-gas buildings will boost year-round electricity needs.
Legislators are also becoming increasingly aware of the steep challenge ahead if California is to meet its targets of 60% green energy by 2030 and 100% by 2045.
“To meet our state’s goals, we must build six gigawatts of new renewable and storage each year … equivalent to powering approximately 4 million homes with clean energy every year,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in a March 19 letter to California Public Utilities Commission President Marybel Batjer. Feinstein called on the commission to let her know of its priorities for possible inclusion in any future federal infrastructure package, such as the proposal now being prepared by the White House.
But the more urgent concern is getting the state through the next couple summers.
Patchwork plan
Like the deadly February power outages in Texas, California’s shortfalls last summer have been linked to more extreme weather resulting from climate change. The biggest threat to California, though, is heat rather than cold.
Another difference is the extent of the threat, with widespread agreement that California’s electrical grid is more integrated than the grid in Texas, and that California has more contingencies in place to address temporary power shortages.
But as last summer proved, that was not enough.
The state’s “Final Root Cause Analysis” found the rolling blackouts on Aug. 14 and 15 resulted from a combination of increased demand, inadequate supplies, a now-fixed software glitch, the export of power to out-of-state utilities, gas-fired plants unable to run at full capacity and out-of-state suppliers with no energy left to sell to California.
It was a problem anticipated, in part, in a state readiness report for the summer of 2020 that was written by the non-profit, quasi-governmental agency known as CAISO, which coordinates 80% of power delivery in the state. The report noted that if a heatwave extended beyond California to neighboring states that sell energy to the Golden State, there would be risk of an electricity shortage.
In an effort to shore up supplies for this summer, the state Public Utilities Commission on Thursday, March 25, will consider a proposal that, among other things, calls for a 2.5% increase in the amount of energy procured by the state’s three major utilities, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Pacific Gas and Electric.
The plan also seeks to reduce demand at critical junctures by adjusting and increasing the possible number of “critical peak pricing” periods when utilities charge the most for electricity, and by allowing large commercial customers to pay a lower rate if they allow the utility to reduce the amount of power available when there’s a threat of blackouts.
But green-power activists oppose the proposal, saying there should be more emphasis on reducing demand and less on increasing supplies from existing sources.
“All of that gas burning is what we need to get away from, but instead we’re leaning into it,” said V. John White, executive director of the non-profit Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies. Along with the Sierra Club and other environmental groups, White’s organization wants strict limits on utilities procuring additional energy from gas-fired plants.
White and other environmentalists also are calling for the commission to require utilities to offer more incentives to residential customers — particularly low-income residents — to use less energy during critical periods and an easier process for residential customers with solar panels to sell their energy to the electrical grid.
Edison, which provided recommendations to the commission and supports the proposal, said those suggested alternatives aren’t practical to get in place by summer.
“These programs take a fair amount of effort, so we are focused on what would give us the most resources quickly,” said William Walsh, Edison’s vice president of energy procurement.
And where will the additional energy come from, if needed?
“That’s the key question now,” Walsh said. “There’s only so much that exists. There’s probably very little left so we’ll probably be looking outside of the state.”
He acknowledged that there could be cost increases for customers but said he couldn’t predict how much.
Gas-fired plants
Natural-gas power plants in Huntington Beach and Long Beach fired up long-planned, new generators in 2020. Intended to replace existing units, the new generators are smaller, and get twice as much energy from the same amount of gas. Unlike the old generators, they don’t suck in ocean water for cooling and so do not harm sea life.
The units typically operate only in the evening and early morning, when solar and wind power is minimal. Unlike the old generators, which can take as much as three days to start running, the new units can start up in 20 minutes.
The last of the old generators at those two plants, as well as those in Redondo Beach and Oxnard, most built in the 1950s and 1960s, had been scheduled to shut down in 2020 as part of a state mandate to eliminate power units that harmed sea life. In Redondo Beach and Oxnard, there were no replacements built because of the transition to clean energy. As a result, the plants were scheduled to shut down entirely.
But, last year, concerns over adequate power supplies resulted in extensions for the old units. In Redondo Beach, where local opposition to the extensions was strongest, a new closure date was set for the end of 2021. At the other three sites, the approved shutdown date is 2023.
On Friday, March 26, a committee representing a host of state regulatory agencies will consider recommending a second extension of the Redondo Beach’s units, this time until 2023.
“The two heat storms in 2020 showed that the California planning margins need to be increased to account for more extreme heat events,” said Public Utilities Commission spokesperson Terrie Prosper. “Concerns for 2021 will carry over into 2022 and 2023, until sufficient new resources can be built to meet the new planning needs based on extreme weather events.”
Long-term solutions
Then there’s the longer-range energy needs, where renewable energy activists disagree with the commission on several fronts. Differences include including how much clean juice should be required by mid-decade and how carbon emissions are measured in reaching the 2030 goal of a 60% reduction.
The state was ahead of schedule in meeting its 33% reduction goal for 2020, but some environmentalists take issue with that calculation and point to the old gas-fired plants that are still operating to help buoy their case.
While Prosper said the commission has called for 8,000 megawatts of new clean energy over the next four years — including 2,000 megawatts of storage capacity by this summer that was not available last year — activists say that’s not enough. The addition over four years would be a 17% increase to the maximum amount of energy pumped out at any time last year.
One clean-energy proposal getting legislators attention is the prospect of building windmills offshore of Northern California. Unlike onshore wind farms, those offshore would produce energy around the clock because of constant winds, according to Elizabeth Nickerson of Environment California.
Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, has introduced a bill, AB 525, that would establish goals of 3,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2030 and 10,000 by 2040. Meanwhile, a climate-change executive order signed by President Biden a week after being sworn calls on a sharp increase in offshore wind initiatives and a $1 trillion-plus infrastructure proposal being developed by the White House includes clean-energy construction.
With an emphasis on the need for power then the sun isn’t shining, expanding battery storage of solar and wind power is a key priority. A particularly ambitious proposal would turn Riverside County’s abandoned Eagle Mountain iron mine into a pump-storage plant, in which water would be pumped from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir when the sun out and energy is cheap. When the sun sets, the upper reservoir would release its water to drive energy-producing turbines en route back to the lower reservoir.
The plant could deliver as much as 1,300 megawatts and has received all necessary permits. The sticking point is the $3 billion price tag for construction.
“It’s a question of investing in infrastructure at a time when the utilities are trying to provide the lowest cost energy,” said Patrick Sinclair, head of the non-profit California Alliance for Renewable Energy Solutions, which is funded in part by Eagle Mountain’s developers. “How do you move forward at a time when the emphasis is on the lowest cost options and the lowest cost option is fossil fuels?”
Edison’s Walsh said it’s not yet time to pursue the project.
“We don’t see a need for this type of long-term storage until the end of the decade or maybe the beginning of the next one, although we’re open to additional information,” he said.
But environmentalists say the commission needs to be more proactive in pursuing long-term projects, despite the expense.
“Not investing in large-scale infrastructure is going to cost us in the long run,” White said.
New York (CNN Business)Dallas resident DeAndre Upshaw said it was “very shocking” when he opened his latest electricity bill.
“While I’m trying to get gas and groceries and make sure that my pipes don’t explode, the last thing I’m thinking about is a $7,000 bill from my utility company,” Upshaw told CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield via Skype Saturday.
As Texas struggles to recover from a deep freeze that has killed dozens, some customers in Texas like Upshaw are facing unprecedented price hikes in their energy bills as a result of the recent snow storm. Texas officials say they are investigating. Texas’ utility regulator, Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT), said Saturday that it is investigating “the factors that combined with the devastating winter weather to disrupt the flow of power to millions of Texas homes.”
It’s also giving customers a way to use an emergency provider in the event their current provider is not available, but it’s likely that this program doesn’t apply to people who voluntarily changed their electricity company.
CNN reached out to PUCT for clarification but did not immediately hear back. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is convening an emergency meeting to look into the situation, he said in a statement.
“It is unacceptable for Texans who suffered through days in the freezing cold without electricity or heat to now be hit with skyrocketing energy costs,” Abbott said. “To protect families, I am actively working with the Lieutenant Governor, the Speaker of the House and members of the Legislature to develop solutions to ensure that Texans are not on the hook for unreasonable spikes in their energy bills.”
One energy company called Griddy suggested that their customers look for another provider if the prices were too high. Upshaw told CNN he attempted to switch from Griddy to another electric provider, but the new company kept pushing back his start date.
Griddy charges customers at a market rate that varies depending on current power prices. Its website says that customers “pay exactly the price we buy electricity at.” But with the winter storm wreaking havoc on Texas’ power grid, Griddy’s pricing shot up. In Texas, customers can choose to pay for a fixed plan instead, and Griddy began to encourage them to do so, in a statement on Monday.
“While we value our members, we want what is best for their wallet and family even more, even if that means helping them switch away to our competitors,” the company said. On Thursday Griddy said that it is seeking relief from Texas utility regulators and is “committed to crediting customers for any relief, dollar-for-dollar.”
For the time being, Upshaw, the Dallas resident, has switched his credit card on file with Griddy to one that has been maxed out to ensure he can’t be charged for more. Yet even as he has been conserving power, his bill continued to rise, he said. Neighbors and friends who have accounts with Griddy told Upshaw that the charges “knocked out their entire checking account, went into their savings account, they can’t pay their rent,” he said.
“We have friends who are without power for 48 hours who came (over to my house), and I said, I mean, we’re paying for this electricity, might as well have other people use it,” said Upshaw, adding that he’s thankful he’s alive and healthy. In a statement released Friday, the Railroad Commission of Texas says it is working to keep natural gas flowing into the state in an effort to “avoid situations where customers may get unusually high bills in the coming weeks.”
The state agency says that it is working with “energy producers, pipeline operators, and electric regulators to provide the support they need for natural gas deliveries.” Although established as a railroad regulator, the commission has been regulating the oil and gas industry in the state from almost 100 years, according to the group’s website. “Texans have gone through enough hardship during this winter storm without having to worry about unexpected additional energy costs,”
Commissioner Wayne Christian said in the statement. “Our agency will do everything in our power to ensure utilities have plenty of time to get caught up on these unexpected expenses, so consumers are not unduly burdened.”
CNN’s Melissa Mahtani and Adrienne Vogt contributed to this report.
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