SDG&E obtained excessive marks from the Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety on its first annual Safety Culture Assessment.
SDG&E’s sitting geese
The first annual Safety Culture Assessment of San Diego Gas & Electric by the state’s Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety is out, giving the native utility typically excessive marks, with a big exception being harmful armed run-ins with the public. Responding to questions on prime job dangers, SDG&E workers interviewed by state surveyors “mentioned approximately eight different hazards, including ‘lifting/strain, slips, trips, falls, working aloft, falling object.’” Other employment perils included electrical energy, sharp objects (“There’s blades everywhere”), wildfires (“If you’re on a one-way road and a fire occurs, make sure you’re pointed in the right direction”), “animals on the site (snakes, dogs),” in addition to poison oak.
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The Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety needs SDG&E to study defusing.
“Frontline workers who were interviewed indicated their second most-cited exposure (driving ranked first, tied with the hazardous nature of the work) was interactions with certain discontented members of the public. One participant reported: ‘I’ve been in this industry 37 years. If someone gets in your face, pulls a weapon on you – that happened to me in the field – you just take it. You aren’t protected the way you are in an office job. We could do better to protect field personnel. Someone assaulted me, and I had to go to anger management.’” Regarding wanted enhancements, the survey says, “although the risk posed by hostile interactions with members of the public is currently discussed at tailgate meetings, the subject deserves increased focus and visibility,” together with “a plan to anticipate, mitigate, and control this risk.”
Adds the doc, “To this end, SDG&E should track the trends in hostile interactions with the public to guide future response strategies and develop (if not already developed) and train frontline workers on a protocol to de-escalate and disengage from unsafe interactions with the public.” Among the report’s constructive findings: “91 percent of survey respondents ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat’ agreed with the statement, ‘Protecting the community from wildfire hazards is a high priority with management.’” In an accompanying letter to SDG&E dated September 2, Lucy Morgans of the Energy Infrastructure Safety workplace says, “SDG&E can satisfy the ‘good standing’ requirement” of state legislation “by agreeing to implement all of the findings (including recommendations for improvement) of its most recent” Safety Culture Assessment.
Scooters socially engineered
San Diego’s love-hate relationship with electrical scooter suppliers continues with town’s November 10 name for requests for proposals relating to what it calls Shared Mobility Devices, with an emphasis on making them handicapped-friendly. “The City of San Diego is requesting proposals to select up to four qualified operators for a three-year Shared Mobility Device Program with optional two one-year extensions,” says the doc. “It will be a priority of the City to select operators in such a way to provide the City a multitude of mobility options including: stand-up electric scooters, electric or non-electric bikes, cargo or business-supportive electric bikes, and devices geared towards those with disabilities.”
Among a bevy of kinds and studies to be required of the putative service suppliers is an outline of “how your company will reach out to underserved communities as identified by the City’s Climate Equity Index to coordinate education, programs, and deployment, that would allow for access to a mixed fleet of devices. Please include quantifiable targets for deployment in mapped communities of concern that will be complied with throughout the term of the contract.”
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Mara Elliot thinks town coffers might use a Lyft.
The metropolis needs to listen to about doable subsidies for impoverished customers, together with “any rate-based incentives or alternative ways in which persons may reserve and pay for a shared mobility device that are proposed for… underserved and low-income residents and their communities.” Whether town will get these concessions stays to be seen. An October 24 lobbying disclosure submitting exhibits that scooter supplier Lyft paid affect peddler Kimberly Miller $15,000 within the third quarter of this 12 months to “ensure streamlined permitting process and regulatory framework for micromobility.” Three weeks in the past, metropolis legal professional Mara Elliot sued Lyft and different operators to power them to choose up the prices of lawsuits introduced towards town by disability-rights partisans who say the gadgets are blocking handicapped entry…Rape was down, however fondling up in 2020, in response to San Diego State University’s 2021 Cleary Act annual report of campus crime. Three rapes had been reported, in comparison with seven the 12 months earlier than, whereas fondling instances jumped from one to 5. Robberies remained regular at three, and burglaries rose from 23 to 25. There had been two stalking instances, versus zero in 2019. Drug legislation arrests burgeoned from 33 to 60, with weapons legislation arrests rising from 5 to 9.
— Matt Potter (@sdmattpotter)
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