“THROUGH the fire to the limit to the wall right down to the wire”…in some case right down to their homes.
These lines from a very popular R&B love song during the 1980s, although unrelated, probably describes in a metaphor-sort-of-way the rash of fires plaguing the natives of “I Am Iloilo City” caused by dilapidated electrical poles of Panay Electric Co. or PECO.
The natives have already been suffering from high electric consumption rates, power interruptions every other day, sometimes every day, two days blackouts, and now we have “pole fires.”
No wonder “I Am Iloilo City” Mayor Geronimo is pissed. All these are making a mockery of his “level up” advocacy. We can’t blame him if he would challenge PECO’s Public Engagement and Government Affairs head Marcelo Ugarte Cacho to a few rounds of winner-take-all boxing at Sunburst Park one Friday evening.
Seriously though, pole fires are no laughing matter as they cause damage to property and endanger the lives of the natives of “I Am Iloilo City”.
Excerpts from the Jan. 6, 2020 issue of Panay News:
POLE FIRES PERSIST
BFP-Iloilo City records five more during holiday season
Electricity pole fires persist in this southern city. During the holidays there were five such incidents from Dec. 23, 2019 to Jan. 2, 2020 and according to the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) the poles belonged to Panay Electric Co. (PECO) whose power distribution franchise expired on Jan. 19, 2019 yet.
All of these electricity pole fires happened at night, according to the BFP. Fortunately there were no reported injuries or deaths.
Two months ago the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) conducted an investigation on the series of pole fires here upon the prodding of Mayor Jerry Treñas who had expressed concern over the possible threat to public safety of “inadequately-maintained lines, power outages and hazardous electric posts.”
The ERC eventually came out with its findings: PECO’s protective devices were not properly rated and designed, some of its poles were leaning and in unsafe positions, and that some electricity meters were clustered and installed in an Elevated Metering Center without securing prior ERC approval.
PECO was then ordered to explain these which ERC considered as operational lapses.
According to Iloilo City fire marshal Christopher Regencia, of the 461 fire incidents recorded here in 2019, nearly half or 218 cases were pole fires. The reasons for these police fire incidents were dilapidated and ageing wooden poles and electrical wires and overloaded transformers of the 95 years old power utility PECO, according to the BFP.
The tolerance of illegal connections or “jumper” was also a culprit to the fires caused by faulty electrical connections, it added.
BFP clarified that only electrical cables could cause fires and not telephone or cable TV wires, contrary to PECO’s justification.
There you go. The pole fires caused by inadequately-maintained lines and hazardous electric posts indeed pose a serious and existing threat to life and limb, plus the property of the natives, and must be dealt with immediately.
One very glaring drawback to solve this problem of pole fires is the fact that PECO has no longer a franchise to be the power provider of “I Am Iloilo City” as their franchise expired last Jan. 19, 2019 and was instead awarded by Congress to the new kid on the block MORE Power Corp.
As it is, PECO is operating merely by virtue of a provisional Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) issued by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) awaiting the transition to transfer to MORE Power.
And that means it would not be prudent for PECO to invest resources to upgrade these dilapidated and inadequately-maintained lines and hazardous electric posts.
Perhaps the better question is, does PECO still have enough qualified personnel to maintain and troubleshot these dilapidated and hazardous electric posts?
Of course, as expected, PECO will not take this lying down and instead washed their hands, rather shifted the blame away from them.
Excerpts from the Jan. 8, 2020 issue of Panay News:
PECO blames power pilferers for pole fires
The pole fires during the holiday season were not its own doing, according to Panay Electric Co. (PECO).
Those were caused by power pilferers, said Marcelo Cacho, PECO head of Public Engagement and Government Affairs.
He described as “unfair” and “meant to discredit” the city Bureau of Fire Protection’s (BFP) pointing to PECO the responsibility for the pole fires.
“Poles cannot cause a fire and actually 97 percent of all PECO poles are cement already. The remaining three percent are being phased out based on usability and we are applying outage management so as not to burden our customers with multiple outages,” said Cacho.
BFP attributed the pole fires to dilapidated and ageing wooden poles and electrical wires and overloaded transformers.
The tolerance of illegal connections or “jumper” was also a culprit to the fires caused by faulty electrical connections, it added.
The fact remains that there are fires caused by PECO’s electrical poles. Whether caused by “jumpers” or simply dilapidated, it is still the primary responsibility of PECO to sort this out and fix it rather than just shifting the blame. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com/PN)
