Posted on 03/23/2020 1:26:08 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Pacific Gas & Electric said Monday it will plead guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the 2018 fire in Northern California that killed 84 people and decimated three towns.
Pacific Gas & Electric said Monday it will plead guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the 2018 fire in Northern California that killed 84 people and decimated three towns.
The utility said in a statement it will also admit to a single count of unlawfully starting a fire.
Advertisement Under a plea agreement with the Butte County District Attorney’s office, PG&E will pay the maximum fine of about $4 million.
The company has also agreed to fund efforts to restore access to water for the next five years for residents impacted by the loss of a canal destroyed by the fire.
"Our equipment started the fire. Those are the facts, and with this plea agreement we accept responsibility for our role in the fire," PG&E CEO and President Bill Johnson said.
The blaze that destroyed the towns of Paradise, Magalia and Concow was started by sparks from a PG&E transmission line that failed on November 8, 2018, state investigators concluded.
Butte County officials have said 85 people died in the Camp Fire. It wasn’t immediately clear why PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter instead of 85.
The utility filed for bankruptcy in 2018 as it faced billions of dollars in claims from people who lost family members, homes and businesses in wildfires in 2017 and 2018.
The utility has been struggling to emerge from one of the most complex bankruptcy cases in U.S. history and a deadline has been set for it to do so by June 30.
The Nov. 8, 2018 was fanned quickly by strong winds, forcing thousands of people to quickly flee as they tried to escape in their cars as flames from the narrow canyon communities. Survivors described caravans of vehicles engulfed by flames.
The dead were found in burned-out cars, in the smoldering ruins of their homes and next to their vehicles, apparently overcome by smoke and flames before they could get inside them.
In some cases, all that remained of the dead were charred fragments of bone so small that investigators used a wire basket to sift and sort them.
This is a mistake. PG & E should not plead guilty. Every major corporation that has been sued for nonsense, political correctness etc, caves with a ‘plea deal’ and end up paying millions in the agreement. This is how the ‘state’ fills its treasury and during the Obama administration, they went after a large number of companies and got billions in fines.
This is a complex issue for me given that I lived in an area serviced by PG&E. I never understood why I would see 2 pg&e guys working on the side of the road and 3 others watching them. On the other side of the spectrum, for years the company attempted to get permission to clear out dead brush around their electrical equipment. This dead brush was fuel for potential fires. However, California bureaucrats would always block their attempts because the Sierra Club and other wacko tree huggers would threaten litigation. It was argued that clearing dead brush might disturb the mating habits of some muskrat that no one has seen for 50 years - for example. So now a once viable company and its employees are in danger of losing their jobs. With the fires not only are the muskrats gone, but just about all other wild life.
My cousin is a licensed arborist who was hired for BIG BUX by the state if California to mitigate some of the causes of this fire.
The proximate cause of the fire was that PG&E COULD NOT keep their rights-of-way clear of brush because of the environmentalist whackos “rules.”
My cousin did not tell met that the rules have been relaxed, but they must have been, because he and his crew are busy clearing brush away FRom the wires!
High winds pushed electric cables into the trees which were too close to the wires, and you know the rest.
Bottom line, it WAS NOT PG&E’s fault that those people died!
This! It is the brush management that caused these fires, not sources of ignition. Sources of ignition are invariably going to happen. A fire won't get out of control if people manage the fuel load.
The State Bureaucrats and the Enviro Wackos are the ones needing to go to jail.
You can make a corporation pay more to the state, yes. And then the corrupt state “rwgulators” just jack up the utility rates (not to offset the fines but for other unexplained and deliberately unverified costs). So what this is all about is the corrupt “regulators” are levying a further tax on the citizens —- the corporation collects it and splits it with the corrupt “regulators” and political crooks in Sacramento. No new services for the poor taxpayers. Just more taxes for the corruptoids in government. It’s all very simple really.
I would say this rounding-error fine indicates that a criminal indictment is not the best way to generate revenue.
To paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke, how does any actual competence get into this system?
Part of the problem is the state made PG&E divert money from repair and safety to renewables. But PG&E had a lot of equipment that was in terrible condition and very risky.
Even now, in the last year, they have to do planned blackouts when it gets to windy, because of the risk of fire.
But PG&E was incompetent long before that. In 2010, they blew up the town of San Bruno, and barely got their wrist slapped.
See my post at 19.
Make it a non-profit.
Then you’ll really see your rates skyrocket.
It doesn’t. No competence gets into this system. At all.
It’s pretty much a nonprofit already.
The state will take over the utilities.
Then everyone will be guaranteed safe, reliable, affordable electricity and gas.
A commie’s wet dream.
I was thinking that myself.
Sure, it’ll be great. There will never be a fire again, either. Gosh, the State is Great!
I can understand suing a company, and even maybe the judge finding the company was responsible for facts like someone dying.
But a company can't murder someone, that is a human act. To pretend that they can is another SJW distortion.
But it was the left who criticized the right when the SCOTUS ruled that a corporation can be considered a person.
Don’t let them clear the brush out from under the lines, then prosecute them when the brush catches on fire from foreseeable short-circuits, like when a squirrel chews through the insulation.
Maybe the state should have let them trim right of ways for the power lines?
Oh that would make sense, and there is no logic or sensibilities in California.
I didn’t see your name until after i listend to it
good song
i’d LOVE to try what they were on at the time :)
Yes. What some areas have done is even worse. They overlay a supposed nonprofit power purchaser on top of pge power. With promise that the bulk purchasing will lower consumer rates. It lowers them alright. For exactly one month. Then they shoot up to about 40 percent more than before!! Just another layer of ripoffs
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