ILOILO City – 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.
“Should there be an issue with the wires, we have protective devices in place to make sure power is cut to prevent damaging nearby property,” stressed Cacho.
Power pilferage remains a problem, according to Cacho. In fact, he said, the company apprehended 201 persons pilfering power from Nov. 13, 2010 to Jan. 6, 2020 and confiscated 3.8 km of illegal lines used to pilfer power.
“These personalities were caught in cooperation with the Iloilo City police and barangays,” said Cacho.
He added: “We have weekly planned operations with the police to aid in the apprehension of electricity pilferers as it is required by law to have an officer of the law present when apprehending pilferers.”
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 rest were structural fires (121), rubbish fires (37), and vehicular fires (nine), among others.
In a statement, the city BFP stated that the causes of pole fires were dilapidated and ageing wooden poles and electrical wires and overloaded transformers of the 95-year-old power utility PECO.
The tolerance of illegal connections or “jumper” was also a culprit to the fires caused by faulty electrical connections, it added.
Meanwhile, Cacho pointed out that with their current protective devices in place, the lives and properties of their consumers were never affected in all the fire incidents related to this matter, not unless the fire comes from within the consumers’ structure.
“PECO has been trying its best to abide by the rules and regulations of the ERC despite multiple external factors beyond our control. We communicated to the ERC that should they need further clarification on certain matters, we are very much willing to cooperate as we have been doing so consistently,” stressed Cacho./PN
