 Michael Mangelsdorf here, Energy 808 D Cutting Edge. Coming to you on this day of great sadness is on what we've been witnessing on the island of Maui over the past week or so. We have a really stellar top-notch group of people with me today. We have Jenny Potter of Stratagen, former PUC Commissioner at the Hawaii PUC. We have Eric Gleason who is a retired utility executive and kind of special guest is Brianna Sacks from the Washington Post who has been on the ground there for these past handful of days and has done a bunch of really superb reporting in the post covering the various angles of the story. So thank you, all three of you, for being on today. Let's just take the immediate dive to you, please, Brianna, since you're actually there on the ground, have been on the ground. I believe you're in Lahaina right now. Is that true? Yeah, I am at the Community Run Distribution Aid Resource Center outside the Walgreens in Lahaina. Well, what are you seeing over there? What can you tell us as far as your reporting and kind of what's new as well as of today? Or what have you learned over the past 24 or 48 hours? This is unconfirmed, but apparently they're shutting down the big distribution centers here this afternoon and moving it somewhere. So there's this really firm group of locals from Lahaina and the Valley who have set up the Walgreens one. And so I guess they're going to be the main distribution hub. Because other distribution hubs kind of along around the area, but if you don't have a car, that's a bit problematic. But people are in good spirits and just helping one another and there's a lot of wonderful amazing food. Yeah, it's nice to just kind of witness. You said you got there by boat. So where did you get on the boat out of curiosity, Amal Aliyah? I don't really want to say because I don't want to like, you know, put people out here. But yeah, it's been difficult to get in, you know, for reporters to do our job, just to talk to people and find out what's going on and what they're experiencing. So we've been really having to go extra lengths, which I've never experienced at a disaster. And my seven, six, seven years of reporting on them, the level of lockdown around a disaster zone before. So we've been coming in in other ways. Well, let's let me move to you, Jenny, because you're a long time West Maui resident and just kind of get your take based on what you're hearing from from afar right now. As I know, you're anxious to get back home as well once, you know, infrastructure is improved and so forth. But what are you hearing? Thanks, Marco, I'm happy that Brianna could join us. It's really special to have her here with us today and talk about what she's saying. So thank you, Brianna, for being with us and Eric as well. And talking with my husband, who's up in Nipili, which has become one of the areas that has become a distribution center as well at Nipili market. So FEMA has staged some operations there. There's a star link up there. There are quite a few communities in Lahaina that are not in Lahainatown proper, and those areas were affected by the fire by having, you know, communications knocked out. They were trapped. Essentially, they could not leave the area. They could not get into the area. They did not have the grocery stores are all closed. There is no, like I mentioned, no communications. The power just came on a few days ago. There's some areas in the north that also that are still without power, including Hana Kauai and Kahana, and it's not clear when power will be restored to those areas. So even those that are not affected in Lahainatown proper, there are definitely communities in the West side that are being drastically, you know, impacted by by the fires and by what Brianna just said, really intense lockdown that makes it difficult for people to even go get gasoline to get food since there are no grocery stores. So there's there's definitely a need for that community that's to step up. I think we've all seen some of the photos and videos of the the community having boats, bringing stuff over and supplies and passing that along and sort of this, you know, train, you know, and then making sure that that gets to the people. There's, you know, I know a huge need for diapers and baby formula. And those items got to those communities in Northwestern Lahainat area by those boats that were bringing it in into these sort of makeshift boat boat launches, boat ramps. So and that are like just down the road from where I live. So it was it was really impressive to see that how the community was coming together to help provide those supplies when things are so locked down and the government has not had the best response time in getting to those communities and even in some ways feeling like maybe they're a little bit forgotten that they're there because there's so much of just the disaster response at this point, which of course is warranted. But there are still thousands of people that live in West Maui that are without services and without food and gasoline and without telecommunications. So reaching them, they I'm able to reach my husband, but if he has to hike up to a park next to a Starlink that they've set up in Nepele Park and he's able to call me from there. But other than that, you know, it's difficult to contact him in the first, you know, 48 hours of the fire. And, you know, just I know that so many people were just they couldn't contact loved ones on the West side because everything was down. There was no no way to know. And that that's a terrifying feeling. And, you know, and now, you know, at least we're having there's some support that's allowing us to have communications with folks on the West side. But you, Eric, you want to want to add anything from your your purchase there on the mainland? I mean, you've been very we're very closely involved with Juan Electric during the attempt of your former employer next era to purchase one like to get industries. What what if anything, would you like to to share from your perspective? Well, Mark, I just I mean, incredible sadness and concern for the the the people that, you know, have survived and also the people that are still missing. And, you know, I think when you have any sort of connection with Hawaii at all or any empathy as a human, just a feeling of powerlessness that that we can't do more to help. You know, I for the first time in a long time, I prayed. We've given money to charity and it's it's really difficult, there's not more that we can do. So our hearts go out to Hawaii and to the to the people of Maui. Brianna, Brianna, I read your piece that was posted earlier today in the post that you discussed the causes or likely probable certain somewhere in between causes of one or more of the fires there on Maui. How about if you wouldn't mind please sharing sharing what your most recent reporting has to say? Sure, I went to two days ago, the Lahaina ignition site, and I talked to six, seven, seven, so I'll move off the streets below the substation there and just like wanted to hear what their morning and afternoon experience was like. And it it's founded, you know, I spoke to one young woman who woke up at 3 a.m. to a bright flash. And then I learned I'm going to I think I'm bushing this bit off of the story, I think it's like it's like an arc flash or something, which is what happens when there's a electrical grid fault. And I got some data from Whistler Labs, amazing organization, and they had recorded about thirty four. About thirteen of them, pretty significant. Around Lahaina from eleven thirty eight p.m. Monday to five a five o'clock a.m. Tuesday. And two of those were around the time that this young woman woke up and said that she saw this flash and then she went back to bed and then the power went out. And then the power came back on briefly around six ten to six thirty nine a.m. And then after that and then it went back out again. And then after that is when the president, say, the Lahaina finer started right near the substation power lines and then the wind like looked it down. And there's some video evidence posted by resident on Facebook that shows that. But the big thing I found was in Kula, there was video taken by security camera at the bird sanctuary conservation center up there. And the footage at ten forty seven recorded this right flash like very similar to what the young woman in Lahaina stopped a few hours later. And then the woman narrating the video was I think she said like the power went out or the line fell on the tree or something or a line fell a tree. This explosion happened. Power goes out, the security camera comes back on and then there's fire. And then I got this data and I was able to see that at the exact time that the camera recorded this right flash. There was a fault on the electrical grid. So we the CEO of the company said that, you know, with great confidence, we can we can say that an electrical kid like this caused that that ignition point. And since there were so many faults on the grid, it's very possible that they were responsible for multiple ignition points. The your competitor, the New York Times reported earlier today in the definitive language that the cause of the line of fire of country, Malca, as we say here in Hawaii, was a fallen line or utility issue arc. Do you confirm that as well in your reporting? Can you say with certainty based on your reporting that the fire that started above Lahaina early that morning was from a utility down line? Yeah, that's that's what I found as well. There's going to be the forensics, of course, in great detail because a lot is at stake, but at least preliminarily, there seems to be more and more of the so-called smoking gun as far as an ignition source for one or more fires on Maui due to down power line or something having to do with the power pole or something like that. Jenny, why don't we move on to you? I mean, you've again been living on the island for for many years. Do you know of any or do we know collectively? Do you know in previous wildfires on Maui? And there was one not too long ago, 2018, whether any or many of these fires were due to a definitively known to be due to a down power line or a transformer that exploded or a substation issue or something like that. Yeah, I'm not aware of any investigation that faulted the companies or any electrical infrastructure and any previous fires. There were reports of arson, I think, that were confirmed, but nothing for the utilities. Eric, how about you? I mean, you've been living and breathing this kind of stuff for for decades, you know, based on what you understand so far, what you've been reading. You know, where do you kind of come down on this and the jury, so to speak, as far as the certainty or lack thereof the source of ignition being from a utility down line or pole or some type of utility issue? Well, I think based on what we've seen, that that seems very likely that that, you know, some of HECO's equipment caused one or more ignitions. That doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, they're they're they're at fault. I mean, you can have the best the best and the best run utility system in the world and there's still a chance that your equipment can cause a fire. So I think that that will all have to be investigated. But it was certainly a high risk environment, right? When you have when you have dry vegetation, high winds and electrical lines, that that is a very risky combination as we've learned in other places. Again, there's going to be continued ongoing detailed forensics in the days, weeks and months to come. Maybe let's move on to this really important docket, well, especially it's again greater importance over the past week or so that was started while you were on the commission, Jenny, 2022-0135, which was, I believe, initially opened by the company Swine Electric back in June of last year and in a nutshell, they were asking essentially for approval to spend somewhere close to two hundred million dollars to spend on greater grid resiliency, which included if you look at that opening document of some 500 pages, it lists in detail, well, this is how we'd be spending the money. And I mean, you you had obviously a ringside seat there while you were on the commission, why don't you if you could introduce that particular docket in that subject matter and and why it was important then and why it's doubly, triply important now. Thank you. Yeah, Marco. So the docket filing, we had asked in 2019 for the companies to prepare a wildfire mitigation plan or at least report to the commission on what what they were doing to prepare for wildfires. And this was in response to the 2018 fire that happened outside of behind that burned 27 structures. And so the companies filed at that time a one page letter that basically had four items that they were going to pursue or they they indicated that they were going to pursue in response to the wildfires that were increasing in in frequency and duration and intensity over the island over the over the years. And now, in fact, to today to now where we've seen just the most dramatic and tragic X X X display of of of fire, right, of wildfire. This is as bad as it gets. So the the companies in 2019 stated that they were going to prepare such a program that would help insulate some of the wires and help so that when they did make contact, they would prevent some of the possibility of sparking. They were going to do drone surveillance over the equipment, the infrastructure, and they were also going to install sensors on some of the poles that would be able to detect wind speeds, temperatures, smoke, any type of environmental change that needed to be noted and perhaps change the way that they're operating the grid. So there was at that time, there was no mention of any type of best practices that have been revealed out of the PG&E scenario or anything in California that was being pursued by the Commission at that time for in terms of best practices and how how to kind of get ahead at this preventative level or even how what an action plan would be in the event of a fire. So we we knew that that was an area that needed attention. And then so fast forward, we have covid, we have all these other events that really seem to prolong us digging our our heels in and really trying to find a solution to these intense climate change, you know, situations and horrible events and wildfires being one of them. You know, but how to mitigate hurricane winds and how we can make our grid more resilient. So in response to that, to to inquiries from the Commission in 2022, the company submitted an application. And as you mentioned, it's 500 pages long, but it details why it's so critical for us to approve the, you know, a two million dollar two hundred million dollar investment and hardening the grid and providing for improvements in circuits and transmission lines and wildfire mitigation, et cetera, that that in order to help, you know, basically strengthen the way that our grid manages, you know, intense climate scenarios. And so that that in that docket and there is, you know, the company's detail why it's so critical to have, you know, a wildfire protection plan, the vulnerabilities to the system and to to our to our islands. And in in in case there was a wildfire and what that would actually that the probability of a wildfire being, you know, that basically created from a utility infrastructure, those types of things were actually detailed in this application and in an argument to really persuade the Commission to to adopt, you know, this this expenditure on this sort of what we would call an exemplary or extraordinary program expense. So and they were seeking cost recovery or approval for cost recovery for for this type of investment. That docket has actually been on the record in open for the last 14 months. And it is still the last time I checked it is still in the discovery phase. They're still doing information requests. So it is several months out at this point from any type of decision making. It's not clear on when there would be decision making on that. But there there is, you know, there has been enough, I think, evidence to show at this point that we need to prioritize that and move that forward as a state and really evaluate, you know, how we are not only preventing wild, how we are going to prevent these types of wildfire events, you know, from utility infrastructure, but also action plans in the event that there is a fire, so, you know, which would include, you know, having backup generators for pumping water or, you know, moving people with medical needs into locations where there was there was electricity that they could continue to use their medical devices or providing backup power for them, batteries and locations. So there's opportunities for us to to get ahead of, you know, if in the event we find that best practices should have been de-energizing the lines, having a thorough plan for how we would behave in those situations and what kind of actions we would take in order to ensure that our response from emergency providers would be would be robust and that we were doing what we could to take care of our citizens that needed medical equipment. Those are the types of things that need to come out of the stockade where we really need to start focusing our attention as a state and moving forward in a way that gets us to a place where we're prepared, we're better prepared to handle these types of emergencies and the actions that we take when they do occur. And since it's not just about there's an ounce of prevention, you know, is better than a pound of cure, but this is we want to prevent them, but we also need to have actions that help us respond to them and get us through in a more responsive way. Thank you. Eric, from from across the ocean there, I mean, you've been very intimately involved in your course, of your career as a utility execs. And I assume you've had a chance at least to to review to some degree that this particular docket, you know, what's your take from from your perspective in terms of what one electric was asking for? Was it reasonable? Was it adequate? What's your your take from your vantage point? Yeah, so I full disclosure, I haven't read the docket or I haven't I haven't read any of the filings. I have seen a table of a list of requests for capital expenditures. I just point out in passing that just because wildfire prevention mitigation is fifth on the list doesn't mean that a lot of the money wasn't going to go to things that would help because when you harden your assets, you are fundamentally, you know, reducing the likelihood that, you know, a conductor is going to separate from a structure, for example. So so I think, you know, there there's there's potentially more to their plan in terms of wildfire mitigation that might initially meet the eye. The only thing I can contribute is, you know, I was responsible for a couple of transmission utilities in California in the wake of the campfire. And we we had to put together wildfire mitigation plans for the California Public Utilities Commission. And frankly, for ourselves and our own peace of mind that we were we were doing the right thing. And I and I would say that I don't know what echoes wildfire mitigation plan is, but I but I know what best in class looks like. And, you know, I would commend for people who are interested in this, that San Diego Gas and Electric is really the national leader and and arguably the world leader in utility wildfire risk mitigation. And they have a six hundred page plan on file with with the CPUC. And it is it is there's there's a tremendous amount of thinking, 15 years of experience of taking this very seriously. And I think California is evolving technologies and ways of, you know, planning and ways of having situational awareness. I would I would just commend it to anyone who who wants to see kind of where we're ultimately, you know, the HECO will probably want to get to. It probably looks something like what the top utilities in California are doing. Brianna, are you still there? Well, I just wanted to see whether you had were you or if you're in a position kind of background wise to comment on whatever it is that you you know, regarding this particular plan or proposed plan from a wide electric to be able to strengthen the grid, minimize wildfire or try to prevent wildfires and mitigates if they do happen. Do you have any kind of sense of kind of how Hawaiian Electric's proposal pans out or compares to what any mainland utilities have been trying to do? Well, I think in all fairness, it's not. It's hard to compare like an island with really difficult infrastructure and remoteness to a place like California. But as a Californian who is also, you know, reporting on the campfire and his blood syrup by serum of blackouts or the I mean, the public utility shut off. But I do think that it I don't have a you know, I've kind of had like a deep dive in in this last like I don't know what day it is three, four days. But I do know that some of the sources that I worked with to like analyze the. The docket was that the number, the amount was like not a ton for what needed to be done, right? Like it like hardening infrastructure and putting those lines under ground takes a ton, a ton of money and and time. And I do know that they I kind of poured through the docket a bit. They referenced California several times. They pointed to California's power. Public Power shut off program as a successful strategy for when more long term, robust processes were still in the work. So they knew it was it was a good idea. And they compared or that, you know, they analyzed PG&E and said that they acknowledge that utility could be at a great risk for starting a wildfire. I think like just the knowledge was very much there at the docket. Showed that and they didn't want to come, you know, another PG&E like who would. So I found that to be, you know, I'm sorry, 20, 20, I found that to be a bit striking, but one of the experts I spoke with said that 189 million over five years is like nothing for that kind of work. So and then they were all of them, they were spending all the money on the hardware in the system versus instrumenting the system to measure risk and creating a process that to turn the power off. I think got too dangerous. That was from Michael Wara, who is a climate wildfire expert. Stanford also analyzed the docket. So, for example, in California, like the wildfire mitigation steps are you put out water stations, then you just design a program to shut down power if the winds are strong and the fields are dry. And then you try it hard in the grid as best you can. And Hawaii Electric just went straight to number three. So that was kind of my my read on it. You mentioned the campfire which destroyed the lovely Sierra Foothills town of Paradise. So you covered that as well. Yeah, my first wildfire that I covered in my career was the Tana Rosa Tubfire. And then I covered the Thomas. There was one in Reading and then the fire actually went through my hometown is where I grew up in Malibu and it damaged part of the house I grew up in. And I reported on that while I was running around trying to like sneak people into the disaster zone in my car because I was a journalist and trying to like bring in water. So it's a very surreal experience being a reporter covering on your hometown, going through something like that. And then I flew up to Paradise to cover that fire because they occurred at the same time. Wow. Well, that's gosh, I don't know how, you know, you're a reporter certainly so you have to maintain some level of, you know, objectivity, right, and not be biased. But at the same time you're living and breathing, you know, literally and figuratively I'm I'm wondering that you've got a number of fires under your belt, so to speak, you know, what do you see that's similar to what you've been seeing and covering on Maui and what's what's different? Yeah, I mean, that's why my brain went straight to the power company because it's just I was like this several fires starting at the same time if there was no lightning and there's so the winds like I just I, you know, like I'm sure like Maui, like we're used to winds, but then there's just this switch that happens when all of a sudden the winds start to get really concerning and I've experienced that. So I went to see if they had a public safety shutoff and I saw some experts tweeting about that that kind of put me in that direction. And I think like similar to how I grew up is everyone knows fire. It's just fire happens every year. It's you evacuate, you come back, it's, you know, we did it. And then there's just this shift that happens when something changes and then that fire is not like the fire that you knew before and it's something different. And that's what happens here. And fire experts, for me, it felt like paradise by walking around in it. But some fire experts actually compared it more to the Marshall Fire in Colorado and where I also lived. Funny enough, I just fired. I had everywhere another fire. I was living there at the time when winds went through the Denver Semper of Louisville and it was a grassland fire which sparked by utility among some other man-made issues, but it took out a thousand homes in like no time. So it that that was an interesting comparison for me. I think just these grasses are becoming more and more of a problem. And I think more communities that are getting these types of dry grasses and like the winds are becoming a problem. I think we might be seeing this in communities. We haven't seen it before. And I also I have to hop off guys. I have to finish my interview before this will then leave that at three. But I'm so sorry for for cutting short. I want to pick both of all of your brains at some point off this this conversation. But yeah, so thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Well, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. We all appreciate it, Rihanna. And I'm keeping up with your reporting on a minute by minute hour by hour daily basis and really appreciate what you're contributing to educating all of us. So thank you so very much. Be safe over there and Mahalo Nui. Thank you very much. And I hope I Mahalo. I hope I can continue to report minute by minute. That would be amazing. Also a good standard. Yeah. All right. Bye, guys. We hope. So, Jenny, let's move over to you. You know, you know, better than I that the PUC has no shortage of dockets before it at any given time, right? Boku dockets and obviously when you have Boku stuff, you need to prioritize what's most important, what's less important. And that can be kind of a moving target. You know, it could depend on the commissioners. It could depend on the political wins and a whole bunch of other factors. So, you know, it's so easy now to look back at twenty twenty two dash zero one three five is how how could we not have paid more attention to this in light of the catastrophe on Maui? But I mean, which is very human nature, right? But I just wondering how how did you and how did the commission under under Jay Griffin decide kind of what rose to the highest priorities and the myth? You know, what criteria do you use or did you use to decide what really needs more immediate attention? Thank you, Marco. This is a really important question, I think, because the commission could come under fire and, you know, in in terms of how we did prioritize things. But what people I would like to people to understand is that we, you know, in 2019, when that was filed and the wildfire mitigation plan from the utilities, we went directly into twenty twenty, which was COVID. And, you know, and then with COVID, not only were we dealing with making sure that we weren't shutting off electricity to people for nonpayment because we, you know, our economy completely shut down, but we also had trouble with our young brothers, which is our inter-island transport utility utility. And they had threatened, you know, basically to go bankrupt belly up. And that would mean that we weren't getting supplies to our to our neighbor islands from unless you approved a rate increase. I remember that that was rather, you know, eyeball to eyeball there. Yeah, so please go ahead. Yeah, it was a Marco. It was one of those situations that took up all the air in the room. It wasn't it wasn't as though we had any. I mean, we had to keep the ball rolling on other things because we had statutory obligations. But when it came to prioritizing, it was how are we going to make sure that our neighbor islands have food and supplies and they're able to like subsist and that we can continue, you know, businesses were relying on getting their fruit to market and their, you know, their livestock from point A to point B and they literally the economic engine of young brothers was threatening to shut down. And it was it was absolutely tragic. We were we were all hands on deck. And that took up the majority of 2020 along with COVID. So deep prioritizing, you know, wildfires was it wasn't even a thought in our mind. It was more of we were just dealing with the emergencies at hand. I mean, we had the volcanic eruption in Kilauea. We had young brothers. We had the there's a situation with who Vanua that we were dealing with and took up a lot of bandwidth. So there was there was always seemed to be an emergency that we were that was always taking precedent, that was sucking up the air in the room. And it wasn't rate cases and it wasn't, you know, it would there was so many of things, the balls in the air that we were juggling. And as you mentioned, we have 600 dockets typically open at any given time. There's just, you know, that that we're pushing through or that we actually go through in a year. We issued decisions on about 600 dockets. So a year and that that takes up a tremendous amount of resources from our team and our staff. And literally everyone was working way more than 40 hours a week. There's that that commission staff is incredible and the amount of dedication that they had to the job and to getting, you know, these rulings out in time that were absolutely essential for the circumstances that we were dealing with. So how do you prioritize when you have emergencies that are coming at you that literally are risking other lives? I mean, people's lives are on the line and you're trying to prioritize which one do we deal with now? There was never ever a conscious decision to say, oh, wildfire mitigation is not an issue and we're not going to deal with it. That was never part of it, never part of any any decision making at all. It was always on the radar. It was always part of it. As Brianna mentioned, fires are just becoming normal and Maui, they are normal. There's wildfires all the time. And so, you know, thinking like this is not something that we should rest though and say, oh, because this happens all the time in the fire department gets it under control, like there's no responsibility that needs to come from, you know, a commission or from the utility or any that's that's not the case and we're not implying that. But truly, you know, dealing with all of the emergencies along the way. We were an emergency mitigation that that's and unfortunately that that just did not leave a lot of room for us to be thinking about planning, forethought, prevention of measures, action plans and just really that digging into two two, you know, areas that that we have to dig into now in order to ensure that these types of events don't happen next week. They don't happen next year that we're and if they do, that we're prepared to handle it in the best way possible, you know, that and that means making investments, that means creating plans. I would love to see a 600 page mitigation plan. We should be looking at PG&E for best practices and within the state, you know, and that probably involves getting people involved from the counties, from the state level, from it requires coordination among many, many entities in order to make these these plans strong and resilient and able to address the issues at hand. We can't just say, OK, the electric utilities responsible for this and only this know there's coordination across counties and about just the responders and all of that that we have to acknowledge is absolutely critical into responding to these types of tragic fires that just wipe out structures and have taken people's lives. And this is absolutely the worst situation we could possibly have imagined. The risk of being a little bit smart, I like you in this very somber situation. Maybe consider opening an emergency mitigation docket. I think that's a very good idea. Absolutely. I'm being kind of silly here because, I mean, you know, a docket on a docket, you know, how far do you want to go on that? Eric, what do you think, you know, regarding best practices on the mainland? If you could come up with kind of a master plan of however many hundreds of pages or longer, shorter to recommend to regulators here and to recommend a utility company here, what would be kind of some of the top important bullet point items that you would recommend based on your knowledge of what's being done on the mainland? Let me I'll come to that. Let me start by just kind of defending the Hawaii Commission here. I mean, it's a small commission with a lot of issues. And in California, you got a large commission that's an order of magnitude bigger in terms of staff and, you know, they were caught by surprise and weren't, you know, there was more. I think they would hopefully concede in retrospect that they could have done to prevent some of the tragedies of 2017 and 2018. So unfortunately, the pattern that I see is on, you know, and it's terrible that we have to suffer tragedy in order to learn from it and get better. And it shouldn't be that way, but it seems like it is. And, you know, and you're seeing now fires across the Western states. It's some some caused by utility infrastructure, some not. I mean, I think we all need to just recognize that. Wildfires are increasing. And this is now an essential part of being a utility and regulating a utility. It needs to be, you know, one of the top few priorities. If you're in a place that, you know, that has dry vegetation and high winds, for sure. And I don't think, you know, it's so it's not unique to Hawaii that this is sort of caught people off guard. But I think to answer your question, Marco, I can't stress enough. Having lived it in California, I can't stress enough. This became a huge priority in California for utilities and for the commission five years ago, and they have come a long way. And for San Diego Gas and Electric, they've been at this for 15 years and they've come a long way and there is so much learning to be had from there. And I'm not saying some of that hasn't already happened. I know the commissioners talk to each other and, you know, I'm sure, you know, Hawaiian Electric has a lot of peers that they, you know, interact with. But but in terms of the real learnings and understanding it, you know, at the highest levels, the commissioners, the senior leadership within the utility, I am sure that there were a lot of learnings to be borrowed there. And that doesn't cost a lot of money, right? So so I think I agree with Rihanna that, you know, some of the solutions that are proposed are around dollars. And I'll just give you a factoid. San Diego Gas and Electric has spent three billion dollars over the last 10 years on wildfire mitigation. So yeah, it it can be and they're a big utility, right? It can be expensive. But you look at that plan and they're doing a lot more than that. I'll give you give you some other fact oids. They have 220 weather stations. They have 100 high resolution cameras. They have three supercomputers that they're running. I think it's five predictive artificial intelligence driven models off of. And they've been doing these sorts of things for a long time. I mean, there's a lot of technology and intellectual capital, not just financial capital that can be brought to bear to anticipate these problems, to be ready for them and then to mitigate them when they happen. So there is no silver bullet here. And I'll give you another example. Everybody's talking about the public safety power shut off, which is a, you know, it is a it's a bit of a sledgehammer. I mean, it works if you de-energize the grid, it's not going to start a fire. That's for sure. But there is this tension. And the, you know, if you look at San Diego Gas and Electric's plan, they say this is not this is the tool we use of necessity. It's a last resort. And we are basically evolving our grid and our system so that we'll be able to use it less and less over more over time. So so I just think there's a lot and there's no one silver bullet and not all of it costs a ton of money, but it does take it does take time and effort for people to to give us the attention it deserves. And the last thing I'll say on this is, you know, it's not just about I have seen this before in Hawaii. Sometimes, you know, a plan, there's a plan and that's kind of it. Well, in California, the way it's worked is the plan gets updated every year and it has to be approved by the commission. And the plan includes action items and you have to do the action items where you're going to get called out. So I think, you know, I'm not I'm not suggesting for a second that, you know, whatever they do in California is necessarily what they have to do in Hawaii, but from my perspective, that was as a utility executive. That was very effective, right? It meant every year we really had to figure out, did we do all the things we said we did and what should we do next and what continuous improvement? Can we make in our plans? What can we learn from the other utilities that it works? And and you see, you know, fewer fires now caused by the utility. And not that I think that one boxer, Mike Tyson is any particular philosopher, but there's a line that he is. He said a number of years ago, which I think is very apropos to what we're talking about, said everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face. Everybody has a plan to get punched in the face. And this is obviously a huge monumental punch to the face of Hawaii. People on Maui, Lahaina, utility company insurers across the board government. And as I'm sure the three of you or two of you have been reading a lot in the press, like I have both local and national. I mean, that there's a lot of attention, a lot of words being written in major publications, mainly news shows. And I'd like to go back to you, Eric. And one of the things that more and more people are linking in a paragraph are Hawaiian Electric Industries or Heco and Pacific Gas and Electric that went through some real hard times after the Paradise Fire in terms of bankruptcy, involuntary manslaughter, huge financial penalties. So my question to you, Eric, is based so far preliminarily in what you are watching on a day to day basis. Now, what kind of exposure do you feel that Hawaiian Electric has right now? Well, it's existential. You know, this is while far as an existential threat for people, obviously. But I think for utilities as well. I think that's clear. I mean, I think the stock the stock market is saying that that's what investors think. There's, you know, I'm not a lawyer. I don't think we want to get into legal standards and so forth. And that California is not the same as here. And we don't know, you know, we don't know all the facts here, right? I think PG and he figured out pretty quickly that there a failure on one of their transmission towers caused the fire, the campfire that and within California law that they were going to that they were going to have massive liabilities. And so within a few months, you know, they filed for bankruptcy before even all the investigations were concluded and and any charges were brought. But that's a different set of facts. We don't we don't we don't have all the we don't have all the facts here and it's different law. And so, you know, but but there's no question. This is a this is every utility executives worth nightmare. And I'm not saying that we should we should obviously the victims, you know, the survivors and the people who are missing and the people who died are are our, you know, our sympathies are first to them. But but I don't I don't I don't envy and and really Mar goes out to the executives at HECO to who are going through, you know, just a terrible time and great uncertainty around their company. How about you, Jenny? You want to you want to opine about kind of where one of the oldest and most vulnerable companies in the state of Hawaii kind of where they how they're looking these days? Therapy. Wow, you know, I know so many good people at the Hawaiian electric companies and they're there. They truly care about their communities. They truly care about the work that they do. They're they're just outstanding individuals. And there is no doubt in my mind that that their hearts are just reeling right now with even just contemplating the possibility that there's there's responsibility from their power infrastructure. I can only imagine that the the the the uncertainty about that. And, you know, the what it could be should us, you know, that that's that's definitely I think all of us are are thinking are are at least I I'm thinking about them and and how difficult of a time this must be. And in terms of, you know, I've worked for utilities as well. And I know that, you know, how typically you do your best to try and plan for what's uncertain and it's just they I know that there was no malice or bad intent, but at the same rate, they're incredibly vulnerable right now. And I know that the executives there are are just incredibly concerned about the well-being of the company and, you know, where where things are going to land and the investigation in general. And there's a lot of a lot of the statements that have come out from the companies have, you know, defended the the the the way that they've managed the storm and the the fires and basically, you know, the down power lines. And they've discussed that. And there's been, you know, they're they're certainly on the defense right now, which is which is a really hard place to be. And, you know, hopefully we'll have some resolution in in in the near future of, you know, what causes and we can move forward and start creating plans and really trying to transition from pointing fingers to finding solutions. And and I hope that's where we'll be before too long. I want to add to that as well. I've had the pleasure and privilege for over 20 years of knowing and getting to know many people who worked for Hawaii Electric Light Company here on the island, Maui Electric Company on Maui and Oahu of Hawaii Electric Company. And I've always been at a lot of Aloha for for all of them working very, very hard to to do what they do. And like Eric was saying, I mean, this is one of the worst nightmares that can happen to any any individual, but especially if you happen to be utility tech to see a company you've dedicated years, decades, your life to to, you know, from in the period of several days to go from whole and and working relatively well to existential threat. I mean, it's just no words. No words can be adequately said to try to describe that. So, you know, I mean, we'll see, of course, as the days go by, weeks go by. And whatever emerges from Hawaiian Electric seems to me is going to be a rather different animal compared to what it is now. I mean, there's, you know, five islands and not an integrated utility as far as power lines going underwater. And it is just going to be, I think it's going to be Tera and Cognita for for many of us, for them, for regulators, for courts, the state and federal government to see how this is all going to to plan out and to kind of morph into the government aspect of it. What can or should both the state and county government, in this case, Maui County, what can or should they do to, and I'm speaking specifically regarding the electric grid and the infrastructure of the grid, what can the state and or the county do over time because this is going to take time to try to improve and make for a more secure, resilient, less dangerous grid in the event of high winds or some type of other weather event. So I think I'll put that to you first, Eric, if you have some views on that. You know, I I think California and I'm very conscious as a native California and someone who came from the mainland to Hawaii and was made very clear to me that not everything that comes from the mainland is fully appreciated. But but I will say I think California has shown the way here. I think the way they did the way they do the wildfire mitigation plans was initially overseen by the CPUC. They actually have a different arm of government now that I can't remember exactly what it's called. But like infrastructure safety or something, they now oversee the process. But it's the same high quality annual repeating process. I'm sure there will be so. So I think the utility will respond, the commission will respond. I'm sure there'll be legislation, right? How can there how can there not be, you know, telling the commission, you know, require wildfire mitigation plans, etc. But, you know, I think the commission would do that anyway, I would expect. But you'll see legislation. You may see legislation around inverse condemnation. I got to believe it will be talked about. Personally, I'm not a fan, but I think that that will be debated as it should be. Did you please explain that concept inverse condemnation? Yeah, so that that isn't that is something that's in California. And and the doctrine of inverse condemnation says that if the utility infrastructure causes a fire and there's property damage, the utility is liable regardless of whether they were at fault. So they may have done nothing wrong. You may have you may be the utility and you've got a line and it's standing proud in the wind, but the wind throws a branch into your line. And it starts a fire, you're liable. So it's lawyers call it strict liability. And there are reasons why they do it or why they did it in California, but there are some unintended consequences and so it's a long, long discussion, I guess. But but I'm sure that will be discussed as a way, you know, whether or not, whether or not, ultimately, eco equipment caused this fire, I think people, you know, I would imagine people will view this as a near best and fundamentally that wildfire risk is something that needs to be taken very seriously. And so you'll see some legislation around it. I'll let you, Jenny, if you have any any ideas of how both either the state or the county of Maui could get more involved in protecting people's right to a clean and healthful environment and their houses and their lives not being shattered based on wildfires. Yeah, thank you, Marco. One thing that I'd like to point out, you know, that I think that makes Hawaii so unique is that there is almost a decentralization of power. The counties seem to have a lot of authority over the islands. And the state sort of is there as a supporting role. But the counties make a lot of decisions and that they so that city council is very powerful in terms of compared to, you know, maybe a county in California like Sacramento County, you know, there there's something about the fact that these are isolated islands that require that, you know, we have more of a decentralized power structure. And so that authority in Maui really doesn't have to just come directly from the state, but the county has a lot of authority and ability to create. You know, they have their own energy commissioner. They have opportunities to to collaborate with first responders and the fire departments and to really come up with strategic plans that include the utility. And I think that there's probably been a little bit more sovereignty to get granted to the utilities and years on all of the respective islands of just, you know, we kind of sit back and they do what they do. But there's this is warranted now. I think we're warranted that the counties really assess how how to interact with the utility and what kind of, you know, in terms of emergency response to fires, to, you know, how to coordinate floods, to handling high wind situations. You know, I know that there's been some coordination to date, but, you know, as Eric pointed out, there's a potential to set up dedicated entities or agencies that are responsible for coordinating among all of the actors in the types of energy, you know, emergency scenarios. And so I think that because you that that Hawaii is so special that, you know, that the governor can work with each of the counties, respectively, to help establish agencies, whether that be at the state level, and then there's delegates to the county level or they are actually at the county level that could help, you know, transform essentially how our islands are dealing with these types of climate hazards and climate scenario and climate horrible tragedies and to really start looking at because a lot of, and just one thought, a lot of the infrastructure that's on Maui, you know, is in some of those poles that we have, they're wooden poles, they've been there for decades. They're old and they've been propped up by other pieces of wood. And, you know, the county has the ability to say, hey, HECO, you know, these these power poles are not, you know, up to snuff. And maybe that's that's a role that we should allow the counties to start participating in because we have a lot of county employees that are out and about and they're working in, you know, in the communities and they're able to see this infrastructure and make it make it aware to the utilities that, you know, some of this infrastructure has to be upgraded, it has, you need to submit applications, you need to work more and working more closely with the electric utility in terms of that infrastructure. And I think that there's a tremendous opportunity on Maui to do that. Not not just Maui Island, but Lanai and Molokai because all of those are part of Maui County and that that means that, you know, we really need to start thinking about those other islands as well. Well, speaking of Maui, there was a rather sobering piece in the civil beat a couple of days ago that looked at the issue of property tax bills that are coming due soon. And that's the way I don't know the exact percentage, but the county of Hawaii, county of Maui depends on property taxes for a very large bulk of its budget. And the question posed to the county of Maui now is, you know, do you expect people to pay their property taxes after their properties in their lives have been destroyed and people killed, right? And if they do kind of the right thing from the hard level, which is to give people a grace period, right? Then you end up with significantly less money coming into the coffers of the county of Maui, which affects everything that the county of Maui spends money doing, right? So it seems tragically ironic that at a time when the county will need to spend more than it ever spends, has ever spent in the past, that its tax base will be less than it's been in the past. So what do you do? Where does the money come from? Is the state appropriate money? Do you get access to FEMA, special legislation passed in Washington? By the way, Biden apparently is going to be coming soon. Not that that makes great big difference, but it's kind of interesting. And a good thing that senators, Hirono and shots, whatever, and the rest, the congressional delegation, you know, that the president of the United States sees it in his interest to come to, you know, the 50th state, which is always particularly going to vote for a Democrat. So I may be backhanded away or back to a way to say I appreciate the president doing that. So again, you know, more will be needed from Maui County at a time when even less is coming into the coffers. So that's that's quite quite the squeeze. Kind of as you know, as a final question here to you both, I mean, what what are the prospects? And this is obviously a very broad question. What are the prospects for us collectively getting our act together more? I mean, you could have whole seminars and teach a whole course on that. But let's just kind of stay focused to to the state in general and not necessarily to the United States or anywhere in the mainland. And I mean, we're all long term or quasi veterans and having both participated in observing life here on multiple levels, economic, social, political. So you being a fellow big island or a white resident like I am, Jenny, let me kind of go to you first, I guess, as far as kind of taking your temperature, so to speak, as far as pessimism versus optimism versus shoulder shrugging, kind of where are you right now on the on the hopeful index? You know, Marco, I'm an optimist. So, you know, and that's the I think the only way to live right now, in particular, in light of these tragedies is we have to know that we're going to do better and we have to actually put the effort in to do better. And that means, you know, taking, being having the resolve to really put in the work to make our grids more resilient, to make our communities more resilient, to think about doing things differently. Because, in fact, the way that we've structured our electrical infrastructure, it might be a little outdated. We might need to be thinking about different ways to structure how we deliver load and how we actually serve load and maybe smaller, smaller grids and on our small grids, you know, and there's there's so there's options that we need to like leave, they open up our minds and allow for these different opportunities to kind of sink in and think about what's going to be best for the future, holding on to, you know, the tragedies that have happened. And then looking forward, looking at that, you know, climate changes is real and it's impacting us every day and it's going to continue to impact us in more severe ways. And so how do we best transition away from what's the status quo into a new realm where we're actually thinking about action plans, mitigation plans, transforming the way that the grid is structured so that we have maybe resiliency hubs and micro grids, thinking about those as real options and real solutions rather than just saying, let's rebuild the same way that we've been doing it and continue to do what we're doing. I have high hopes for this state. I truly believe that Hawaii, if anybody can do it, it's Hawaii, the community members and just our actors in state government and local government, we have the right people in place to really make changes. I love hearing those words. How about you, Eric? Where are you on the hopeful index? So I would say my observation as an outsider and someone who's been blessed to live there for some years is that, you know, deep and rapid change is not a strength of Hawaii and the people of Hawaii. And that said, I agree with Jenny. I think on this issue, this is going to bring people together. I think one of the wonderful things about Hawaii and people there is how much they care about each other. And I think you saw this, you know, there aren't many silver clouds from this tragedy, but one of the things that really is just beautiful to see is how people put themselves in harm's way to help people that weren't even necessarily people they knew, people and their dogs. Basically, they they would do anything to help people. And I think that's Hawaii. And they're going to I think people they're going to look at it as how do we we need to do this? We need to take care of each other. So I believe change is possible and will happen. Oh, it's a it's a positive, hopeful note to end on here. I think we've covered a lot of really interesting ground here for this ever developing story. And I hope I hope we can reconvene the three of us because each of you has a lot to offer based on your your wisdom and your experience and never, never too, too little subject matter there to explore. So thank you so much. Juan Jettie Potter, joining us from Oregon today and one Eric Gleason, joining us from Chicago, Illinois, and your host here, Marco Mangostar, Hilo, so Mahalo Nui to you both. And oh, yeah, till the next time. We know how we help.