California, wildfires, and funeral home generators

Many of you know that I live in west central Minnesota in a small community virtually equidistant between Minneapolis and Fargo, North Dakota.  Our area, over the years has had some powerful and destructive tornadoes, but they are quick and generally affect only a small destructive path.  If you happen to be in that 2-5 mile path where the tornado touches down, that is not good, but as I said, the path is small compared to the total area.  i.e. your chances of being hit are not great.

And, we have some rivers which, when the snow melts in the Spring can rise and cause serious problems, but again, they rise slow as the snow melts and many times sandbagging can save valuable structures.

The headline and crux of today’s article deals with what has been developing in California the last week or so. . . and has happened quite often over the past several years.  Evidently, as you can read in this article from USA Today, dry land in California is many times started on fire by utility poles that have tipped over due to the high winds and are still carrying electricity.  They ignite, start a fire,  and the people of California have to be prepared to evacuate their homes and businesses dependent on the way the wind is blowing.

So what the state has decided to do is to “roll” and turn off electricity in areas of high winds until the winds subside.  Part of that strategy is that power poles that fall into vegetation will not spark fires because the power is turned off on the line.  After the winds subside and the power lines are checked then the power can be turned back on. Sometimes this process can take over two days where businesses and residents do not have electric power.

Last week, according to the USA Today article, the University of California-Berkeley and CSU-East Bay were both forced to close their doors as were thousands of elementary and high school students as municipalities braced for days without power.

Critics of the “rolling blackouts” have said things such as, “Expecting the power to stay on when the wind blows isn’t that giant a leap for mankind.  Yet, here we are 50 years after the first moon landing having great inconvenience and personal or economic losses for many of our residents.”

Funeral Director Daily take:  I tried to do this basic research on why the utility companies in California have started these “rolling blackouts”.  Quite frankly, deadening the power lines at high risk times seems like a way to go about it.  I would suggest, the best way to fix the problem is to put in underground lines as we have in most places in Minnesota.  According to a source from the article, in his opinion, that has not been done because of “decades of frivolous lawsuits, bureaucracies, excessive forest protection policy and onerous regulations utilities face.”

So, to bring this to our business of funerals, death care, and cremations, what do you do with your funeral home if every so often your power is going to be shut off for 1-3 days during high winds time?  Owners of funeral homes have a certain need for consistent power at their place of business. . . .  What about the electricity that energizes your retort, what about the energy that keeps your human remains freezer cold, and what about scheduling services for families and then having to turn away people at the time of service because their is no power.

If these types of “rolling blackouts” will be the norm until the power companies have made the investment into a different type of power line then it sounds to me like funeral homes in the Golden State may have to purchase their own building and operations generators.  That is certainly not impossible, but it would require some expenses.

I took the liberty to price check generators and their installations for facilities of 10,000 square feet.  At that size you would need a commercial gas generator that would cost about $12,000 and would cost about $100 per day to operate. It is not a huge cost, but when you consider that families seem to be looking for lower costs in funeral and cremation expenses, it is just another issue going in the wrong way for funeral homes’ and crematories’ profitability.

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