Out of control wildfires will greatly increase if HR 2289 is passed.
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If passed, HR 2289 Would Cause Overloading of Utility Poles, Causing High Risk of Wildfires
This bill is not dead, but it was pulled from a vote in the House Rules Committee because it did not have enough votes to pass. It could still be brought back, this year or next year, as this bill or another bill, so please get in touch with your representatives in Congress to let them know you are strongly opposed to efforts to remove local government control over the expanded deployment of small cells (5G) and other cell towers.
Unless you have been paying very close attention to the rollout of these small cells, you may not be aware that they can allow for small-refrigerator-size cabinets of heavy equipment, filled with highly flammable material (such as diesel, propane or lithium batteries), to be hung perilously from utility poles, or placed on the ground, closely spaced throughout our neighborhoods.
Senator Dianne Feinstein has warned about the risks of wildfires caused by overloading utility poles with these small cell installations, as she wrote in this OpEd: "Wireless companies won't bear the responsibility when things go wrong. Attaching 5G cells that are the size of mini-refrigerators to city poles will make poles less stable. When poles come down, they pose significant risk for physical harm, property damage, blackout and even wildfires in dry regions. And under FCC rules, cities and residents would be on the hook for that damage."Click Here
We already know that overloading utility poles can be the cause of a wildfire that can destroy a community, as happened in Malibu in 2007. Click Here
Those poles in Malibu didn't even contain the possibility of the ticking-time-bomb fuels that the 4G/5G installations may contain. What if there's an earthquake, car accident, or period of high winds?
Even before the rollout of these hundreds of thousands of new "mini cell towers" throughout the U.S., cell towers have often been the source of fires. You can see numerous articles about dangers of cell towers here.
https://ourweb.tech/fires-and-collapses/
Also extremely concerning re fire dangers, is the testimony by fire safety expert Susan Dana Foster, at an April 19, 2021 hearing of the Assembly Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications (concerning SB 556). This fire safety expert testified that the telecom companies have often managed to evade electrical codes at the state, county and local level.
Even more alarming, firefighters cannot even directly fight the fires using water at small cell installations, because they are electrical fires and they would risk electrocution. They have to wait for the power to be shut off, which can take from ten minutes to two hours. Would you want a small cell installation burning out of control outside a child's bedroom for up to two hours?
Add to that the very high fire risk caused by the smart meters that the telecoms quite often place on the 4G/5G installations. Here is a link to comprehensive report (50 pages long) on the fire hazards presented by smart meters. Click Here
The report describes many reasons that smart meters have led to fires. Most notably, unlike analog meters, smart meters do not have surge protectors or any connection to ground (pp. 4-5). When a power surge hits them, which often happens after PG&E re-energizes electrical lines after a power shut-off (more and more common now), these meters can explode and cause a fire (p. 6 and 8).
When worker-whistleblowers have attempted to alert the power companies to the problem of smart meters causing fires, they have been fired. At a CPUC hearing held in Santa Rosa in 2012, a former PG and E worker named Patrick Wrigley testified that he noticed frequent fires related to smart meters, when the power was turned on after it had been off for a while. When he reported this problem to his superiors, instead of acting to protect the community, they fired him. (His testimony can be seen in the excellent documentary "Take Back Your Power," available online.)
Due to periodic periods of severe drought, areas in the U.S. have been at great risk from out of control wildfires. We simply cannot afford this technology, so filled with potential danger, to be expanded with no oversight by local governments.
California's 2018 wildfires cost the US economy $148.5 billion - 0.7 percent of the country's annual GDP - of which a third was lost outside the state, according to researchers from universities including UCL.
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