SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has secured two heavy-lift
helicopters as part of the company’s new Community Wildfire Safety
Program. The primary purpose of the new helicopters is to help PG&E do
day-to-day work in remote and hard to reach places across its
70,000-square mile service area.
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These new heavy-lift helicopters are part of the many steps PG&E has taken under its Community Wildfire Safety Program. (Photo: Business Wire)
“We want to be sure we are doing all we can to protect the state’s
energy infrastructure and keep our customers safe given the increased
extreme weather we’re seeing across California,” said Barry Anderson,
PG&E vice president of Wildfire Resiliency and Emergency Management.
“These new helicopters will help support critical utility work and will
be available to aid with wildfire safety efforts, if requested.”
PG&E has deployed helicopters, usually on a contract basis, for its
electric, gas and generation work for many years in support of
construction and maintenance activities.
The newly added aircraft were secured through an exclusive use agreement
with PJ Helicopters. PG&E plans to add two more heavy-lift helicopters
in 2019.
In addition to supporting utility work, PG&E will defer its use to make
the new Sikorsky UH-60 fleet available for first responder use, if
needed and requested, during wildfire events.
Community Wildfire Safety Program
These new helicopters are part of the many steps PG&E has taken under
its Community
Wildfire Safety Program, launched in March, in response to the
wildfires throughout our state last year, as additional precautionary
measures intended to reduce the risk of wildfires:
-
Established a Wildfire
Safety Operations Center to monitor potential fire threats across
the PG&E service area in real time and coordinate prevention and
response efforts.
-
Added
more than 50 new weather stations – with a total of around 200
planned in 2018 – to provide improved awareness of fire danger
conditions and better predict where a wildfire could occur.
-
Enhanced vegetation management in high fire-threat areas to meet new
state vegetation and fire safety standards and create safe space
between trees, limbs and power lines.
-
Alerted
more than 570,000 homes and businesses served by electric lines in
extreme-fire threat areas that PG&E may have to shut off power for
public safety if extreme fire danger conditions occur, as a last
resort.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E
Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas
and electric energy companies in the United States. Based in San
Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of
the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in Northern and
Central California. For more information, visit www.pge.com/
and pge.com/news.
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Pacific Gas and Electric Company
Media Relations, 415-973-5930
Source: Pacific Gas and Electric Company