The strong winds gusting across the Bay Area this week serve as a reminder about the dangers of wildfire season, further reason why PG&E continues to conduct helicopter inspections of power lines.
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Think of it as a second set of eyes — in the sky.
While the work on the ground is year round, the inspection flights overhead go up six months out of the year. The flights on Thursday checked lines in western Sonoma County, but residents will be able to see these choppers in different parts of the Bay Area and all around PG&E’s service area in the coming weeks and months.
The expeditions are all about vegetation management and preventing destructive wildfires. The inspectors' goal is to identify dead or dying trees at risk of striking power lines and sparking a fire.
"These flights are basically a second set of eyes, for dead and dying trees specifically in high fire set districts," PG&E spokesperson Deanna Contreras told KCBS Radio.
"We mitigate safety hazards by removing hazardous trees, dead, dying, defective trees," she explained. "Trees that may have become structurally compromised and could pose a safety hazard to the electric system."
The work inspecting these lines is deliberate and thorough, but shaves off weeks of the valuable time it would take to do these inspections on foot.
For example, in Sonoma County, inspectors will look at around 25 sets of lines that could take months to go through on foot. These flights compress that process into just about a week.
Once in the air, the helicopters hover above tree lines, twisting and turning to give inspectors the best possible view. Dead or dying trees within striking distance of lines are marked for ground crews to check on foot as well as for areas with heavy canopy where visibility is difficult.
Devin Sharp, PG&E's vexation program manager, said ground crews then decide whether a tree needs to be trimmed or removed.
"Once we have the coordinates down, it’s just a matter of getting to the tree," he told KCBS Radio. "It's all properties. If there's a line on the property we’ve been able to access them in the past and will be able to continue to access them in the future."
Sharp added that tree mortality has worsened due to the ongoing drought, which has only made the work more critical.
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