California prosecutors filed multiple manslaughter and other charges against the state’s largest utility company, alleging it is criminally liable for a wildfire that burned tens of thousands of acres and killed four people last fall, including an 8-year-old.
Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett announced 31 felony and misdemeanor counts against Pacific Gas and Electric Co. on Friday, accusing it of negligence for failing to clear an area surrounding its electrical lines of injured trees that posed clear fire risks.
“We have sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is criminally liable for the reckless ignition of the Zogg fire and the deaths and destruction it caused,” Bridgett said during a press conference.
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Investigators spent the last year working to determine what caused the fire, concluding that a tree with “significant visible injuries” fell on a PG&E line along the county’s Zogg Mine Road on Sept. 27, 2020.
The 100-foot gray pine had been marked two years earlier but was never removed in accordance with legal requirements requiring utilities to clear hazardous trees from around their power lines, Bridgett said.
“They failed to perform their legal duties,” she said, calling the company’s failures “reckless and criminally negligent.”
The fire ultimately burned 56,388 acres and destroyed 204 buildings. Four people also died in the blaze.
PG&E said it accepts investigators’ conclusions that a tree struck the line but disputed that the company committed a crime.
“Though it may feel satisfying for the company of PG&E to be charged with a crime, what I know is the company of PG&E is people — 40,000 people who get up every day to make it safe and to end catastrophic wildfire and tragedies like this,” CEO Patti Poppe said in a statement.
Friday’s charges are not the first to be leveled against PG&E. The Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office filed criminal charges against the company in April over the 2019 Kincade fire. Investigators concluded the blaze was caused by a jumper cable on a transmission tower that broke in high winds, fell, and arced against the tower.
Nobody died in the fire, which burned approximately 78,000 acres and destroyed 374 structures, including 174 homes, but several firefighters were injured, and some 200,000 people were forced to evacuate.
The company also pleaded guilty to 85 counts of manslaughter after the Camp fire in 2018. That blaze, which destroyed the town of Paradize, was the deadliest wildfire in California history.
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PG&E also paid a $4 million fine for the Camp fire, and it expects to have to pay up for the Zogg fire as well.
The company estimates civil liabilities from the fire could reach $375 million, according to a July filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
