“This is how I secured the meters before PG&E illegally removed them using grinders and Sawzalls.” Shutoff valves to the meters were easily accessible in the event of emergency
Linda and David Brauner, landlords from San Anselmo, CA say that they have not refused to pay PG&E’s fee. They say they “opted out” via their tenants, and protected their meters from unwanted smart meter installation with bands of steel and locks, both of which were destroyed by PG$E yesterday. Following is Linda’s account:
- “Trucks came early in the morning, without prior notification at this 8-unit apartment building , and removed steel bars from gas meters. They used grinders and sawzalls to complete the job.”
Today, this morning, one of our tenants was shocked by noise behind her unit, as two PG&E workers were destroying the bands of steel and locks that we had installed, without calling us in advance, without notifying any tenant in the building. They apparently arrived in a huge truck with paraphernalia on it. It was clearly a “show of force”, intended to bully and intimidate. Our tenant told my husband David, that they looked very pleased with themselves (smiling) and remarked, “He doesn’t have a right to cover up our meters” The girl then asked them if they were going to install smart meters and they replied, “No”. Whatever that is worth.
By the time my husband arrived, the PG&E had trespassed, vandalized, invaded our privacy and violated our tenant’s right to private enjoyment, and left the scene.
While my husband was on the way to San Anselmo, I called the Independent Journal (daily newspaper in Marin County), spoke to the City Editor, Robert Sterling, who sent both a reporter and photographer to the building. David said they took over a hundred pics and interviewed him and asked for our tenants contact info.
We called the police, waited 45 minutes and finally went to the station, two houses away from the building. Although they did file an “incident report”, which entailed documenting David’s report, in their opinion, “It is a civil matter, between PG&E and you.”
PG&E making friends in San Anselmo
Astounding that these men, nothing more than a couple of thugs/bullies, are allowed to create an atmosphere of terror in our lives and the lives of our tenants, leaving a wake of destruction of our personal property behind them.
Meanwhile David has called the police to file a police report on defacing property and vandalism, trespass.
PG&E has an easement to service meters not to destroy property.
The one important thing not mentioned is that these were gas meters fitted with the 450 MHz UHF transmitters, NOT electric meters.
I am an electrician, and I don’t mess with LNG gas, that stuff is dangerous, and I am not licensed to mess with it.
If someone blocks access to an electric meter , that is a different issue than blocking access to a gas meter.
I don’t have any gas on my property, neither LNG or LPG (Propane). I know it is dangerous, but if I did have any kind of gas on my property, I would absolutely insist that any and all access would never be blocked.
In this case, the heavy handed utility did their thing without explaining the real dangers of blocking gas meters, valves and pipes.
If PG&E were more careful, more friendly, more informative and more diplomatic before their choice to send a goon squad, it would have been better for everyone concerned.
Part of the problem is the sentiment that apartment dwellers have no rights, nor do the owners of condos, town homes and/or apartment buildings.
Also, take a look at the photo, what the landlords did in no way blocked the installation of SmartMeters on the gas meters shown. The gas SmartMeters are completely different than electric SmartMeters, all PG&E does is leave the complete existing gas meters, the manifold and all the piping in place. What they do is attach a module to the existing gas meters in place of the dials. The mechanical rotor that turns the needles instead turns a digital rotary switch, and that in turn gathers the consumption data and sends it to the utility on a separate network from the radio SmartGrid that serves the electric meters (that is the way PG&E does it).
Part of the problem with some of these so called activists is they don’t really understand what is going on, and like to sensationalize things.
SAFETY FIRST!
PG$E spokeswoman Brittany McKannay said “It is a safety concern . . .”
That was the same claim and excuse made by a PG$E representative speaking before the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors last December when being grilled to defend cutting the power from several women’s houses in the area after the women had replaced Smart Meters with their own analog meters. The women, some with children, were left in the dark and cold, but not to worry, the downgrade was safe.
Same hypocrisy this time. Instead of communication and cooperation, PG$E used “grinders and sawzalls to complete the job.” Grinders notoriously generate a lot of sparks–while working on a whole bank of gas meters?!!! Because there were no leaky gas lines or explosions this time, we can rest assured the operation was safe.
In San Bruno they are intimately familiar with PG$E safety. Just ask Jacqueline Greig who lived there and worked for the CPUC’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates as the head of the natural gas section of analysts. In a morbid twist of irony, the statutory mission of the DRA is to minimize costs to ratepayers consistent with good safety and consumer protection. Grieg spent her last summer analyzing PG$E’s request for a $4.2 billion rate increase.
In a very effective analysis, the DRA under Greig’s direction pointed to so many unsubstantiated cost allegations, including inexplicable doubling of estimates after previously adjusting for wage inflation, that the DRA countered with a $1 billion over three years counter-proposal. The budgeting difference gave PG$E approximately 3.2 billion reasons not to like Jacqueline Greig.
Jacqueline Greig and her 13-year-old daughter Janessa both died in the notorious San Bruno gas explosion.
“She lived right at the spot where it blew,” commission President Michael Peevey told the Los Angeles Times. “She and a younger daughter were in the house. Her husband and the older daughter were at the daughter’s school.”
http://www.aolnews.com/2010/09/11/mother-daughter-among-the-dead-in-california-blast/
“The irony is that she worked in the gas section” (of the DRA) Peevey said.
Indeed, what an irony.
Placing a class 2b carcinogen on a property is an assault and if someone were to die from it, via heart attack or stroke, then it should be charged as a 1st degree murder.
“Class 2b” does not identify carcinogens. It identifies materials or environments for which a cancer risk is unknown. Not known to be safe, nor known to be dangerous. Why you people keep calling EMF a carcinogen, when no study has ever shown a general link, let alone specific links (different frequencies and power levels have different properties) above statistical background let alone known dangers such as sunshine or air travel is evidence of your desire to embrace rhetoric that unsubstantially supports your desire to see a risk.
To simplify things even more, lead paint is in the same category as what the smart meter emits. To say their are no studies showing harm may not be an accurate statement. Here are 2,308 studies from the Naval Medical Research Institute backing my statement.
http://www.justproveit.net/content/studies
there
>> “… lead paint is in the same category as what the smart meter emits.”
And it’s in there for the same reason: lack of evidence.
Saying it’s in the same category as lead pain just scares people, because most people think: lead paint=neurotoxin and developmental disorders, a link which is well understood.
But any link to cancer is, as yet, unsubstantiated…Hence the Group 2B classification for lead and (just as well, and just as unsubstantiated) radio frequency radiation.
Keep us posted on any new studies 🙂
I wish there was a place I could post information like this. Spread the word!
Mobile phones can cause brain tumors, court rules.
A landmark court case has ruled there is a link between using a mobile phone and brain tumors, paving the way for a flood of legal actions.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9619514/Mobile-phones-can-cause-brain-tumours-court-rules..html
(not in the USA but the case may have some good facts in it)
Thanks Jim!
They took that link down quick! Here is another.
http://rt.com/news/italy-phone-causes-tumor-840/
Enough paranoia, Paul. Nobody took the link down…Just slow down and paste the link as provided…
You were right the link wasn’t pasted properly and I jumped to the wrong conclusion.
Oh no! My paranoia has set in again….I have not been able to find any coverage from ABC, NBC, CNN, CBS, or FOX. Maybe the three trillion dollar industry was involved? I know it’s just all in my head….
Ummm –
google: abc news italy cell phone
result: several including – http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/italian-court-blames-benign-brain-tumor-phone-17516913#.UITDlIUltb5
PHEW… That was hard… No, wait; it wasn’t 🙂
Thanks Richard! I love how they chose to say that it’s in the same class as pesticides and coffee. It’s too bad they didn’t mention any of the others like lead paint. Too much of anything is a poison. That being said, chronic 24/7 exposure of cell type radiation from the smart meter would make it worse than a cell phone. Right?
Here is the story from Reuter. Notice how they mention that we should take great caution.
“ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s supreme court has upheld a ruling that said there was a link between a business executive’s brain tumor and his heavy mobile phone usage, potentially opening the door to further legal claims.
The court’s decision flies in the face of much scientific opinion, which generally says there is not enough evidence to declare a link between mobile phone use and diseases such as cancer and some experts said the Italian ruling should not be used to draw wider conclusions about the subject.
“Great caution is needed before we jump to conclusions about mobile phones and brain tumors,” said Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics and clinical engineering at Britain’s Royal Berkshire Hospital.
The Italian case concerned company director Innocenzo Marcolini who developed a tumor in the left side of his head after using his mobile phone for 5-6 hours a day for 12 years. He normally held the phone in his left hand, while taking notes with his right hand.
Marcolini developed a so-called neurinoma affecting a cranial nerve, which was apparently not cancerous but nevertheless required surgery that badly affected his quality of life.
He initially sought financial compensation from the Italian Workers’ Compensation Authority INAIL which rejected his application, saying there was no proof his illness had been caused by his work.
But a court in Brescia later ruled there was a causal link between the use of mobile and cordless telephones and tumors.
Italy’s supreme court rejected an INAIL appeal against that ruling on October 12 though its decision was only reported on Friday.
It said the lower court’s decision was justified and that scientific evidence advanced in support of the claim was reliable. Marcolini’s situation had been “different from normal, non-professional use of a mobile telephone”, it said.
The evidence was based on studies conducted between 2005-2009 by a group led by Lennart Hardell, a cancer specialist at the University Hospital in Orebro in Sweden. The court said the research was independent and “unlike some others, was not co-financed by the same companies that produce mobile telephones”.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE89I0V320121019
>> “Notice how they mention that we should take great caution.”
And notice WHAT they are urging caution about…
“Great caution is needed before we jump to conclusions about mobile phones and brain tumors,” … (your quote, not mine)
And here’s another opinion posted on the EMF Safety Network: >> If this is the same court that found their own seismologists guilty of manslaughter for not predicting a deadly earthquake, then I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in the report.
It was a sarcastic remark and I’m happy that you responded. It’s the black swan study where industry funded science can’t find one so there must be none.
It’s like a study finding that there is a problem with a certain brand of car. The problem is that the wheels fall off at high speeds and we should take great caution to warn anyone.
Maybe this makes sense to you?……I am witnessing massive health recovery from people becoming aware and limiting their exposure to wireless radiation.
>> “It was a sarcastic remark and I’m happy that you responded.”
And you say you’re not a troll.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMEe7JqBgvg
This thread was originally about how an uninformed landlord thought that by putting metal stock on gas meters would somehow stop the installation on SmartMeter modules on his building’s gas meters.
It was a waste of time , money, and resources and accomplished nothing.
That is the problem when people are uninformed , they waste things.
As for mobile phones and SmartMeters, of course they can cause cancers , just like so many other things that the corporate government allows, the list is long.
Anyone who holds a UHF transmitter to their head (like a mobile phone) is stupid and asking for trouble.
But, there are also many other corporate approved things that cause cancer like:
Breast and Colon cancer screening machines
Pharmaceutical drugs
GMO food
The use of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides
Many occupations, like painters, paving, concrete work, working on submarines and ships, oil refineries, power plants, electrical work, working in manufacturing plants making SmartMeters and other wireless junk , being a doctor or nurse, and just about every occupation.
Then there are the food additives like artificial colorants and flavors, preservatives, flavor enhancers artificial sweeteners and pink slime type meat food products.
There are cosmetics, cleaning products, deodorizers and perfumes.
All of these things can cause cancer, and it would be hard for anyone to deny it, some try, but it means nothing.
Lets face it, the cancer industry is a huge money maker, there is no way that we can easily change “the way it is”.
If we really eliminate all the industries that support the cancer industry, the economies and the world financial systems as we know it would collapse, we would have to re-think and re-do the world.
Hopefully, that will happen, but in the mean time, there are many things that people can do to avoid cancers, like only eating organic foods, moving to more rural areas, drive vehicles less (or as little as possible), opt out of having a SmartMeter (no matter the cost), not holding mobile phones to their head, don’t get any radiation medical cancer scans and reduce stress (that is the kicker).
Take a look at the top photo in this article, the 2 gas meters on the end already have SmartMeter modules fitted onto them, and in the other photo, it looks like most of the gas meters have the SmartMeter modules also. What a joke.
I wonder what this landlord did about the electric SmartMeters ?
I have a friend who lives in an apartment building, I told her to opt out of the SmartMeters. She did, and now she is the only one that did so far.
By the way, the gas SmartMeters are completely different than the electric meters, and transmit at a lower UHF frequency. A PG&E told me that the modules for the gas meters have a battery that is supposed to last at least 10 years, but the battery cannot be replaced, the module must be replaced instead. I imagine that the module is expected to fail before the battery.
I recommend building any structure as removable, lockable and with its own supports from the ground. Then it is your own free-standing thingamajig and not simply stuff hanging on their apparatus which they may well have a right to remove.
I bet the persons that called the police had a cell phone stuck to the side of there head. and did not have a care in the world about the EMFs they were recieving from the cell phone, and then went and warmed up breakfast in there microwave
You should check out through the wall surveillance with wireless routers at http://www.popsci.com. The police are using these meters to violate your privacy. They call it “intelligent surveillance”. They can also use your electrical outlets to tase you. Check out the diablo flashlight or other wirelss tasers. Its what the CIA called in book Hard Measures and “enhanced interrogation technique”. I call it torture.