SACRAMENTO, California (AP) – A California district attorney filed 33 criminal charges on Tuesday accusing troubled Pacific Gas & Electric of accidentally injuring six firefighters and endangering public health with smoke and ash in a 2019 fire who was blamed for his equipment.
The country’s largest utility company denied having committed any crimes, even when it accepted that its transmission line caused the fire.
The Sonoma County district attorney charged the utility with five felonies and 28 felonies in the October 2019 Kincade Fire north of San Francisco, including recklessly starting a fire that seriously injured six firefighters. Among the unidentified firefighters were a member of a detained fire crew and at least two out-of-state contractors, one of whom suffered second- and third-degree burns to his legs and torso.
Firefighters said a PG&E transmission line started the fire, which destroyed 374 buildings and displaced nearly 100,000 people while burning 120 square miles (311 square kilometers). It was the largest evacuation in the county’s history, prosecutors said, including the entire towns of Healdsburg, Windsor and Geyserville.
The allegations and related improvements accuse the company of destroying inhabited buildings and emitting air pollutants “with reckless disregard for the risk of serious bodily harm” from toxic wildfire smoke and related particulate matter and ash, endangering public health. They allege that the utility failed to maintain the facilities, including transmission lines, in addition to the many related felony charges.
Prosecutor Jill Ravitch said she and other investigators went to the fire’s ignition site as soon as it was safe, and have since worked with state and independent experts to determine the cause and responsibility for the fire.
Ravitch said the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection reported to her office in July that the fire started when a cable on a transmission tower broke in high winds and created an electric arc when it hit the tower. That caused molten material to fall into the dry vegetation below and ignite a fire that took 15 days to control, she said.
She said her own investigation included interviews with dozens of witnesses, search warrants, and going through hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. Prosecutors have also consulted with other law enforcement and regulatory agencies and independent experts.
PG&E said in a statement it accepts the findings that its transmission line at the Geysers Geothermal Field northeast of Geyserville started the fire “in the spirit of working to do what’s right for the victims,” although it lacks the report or evidence. seen from state firefighters.
However, we do not believe that a crime was committed here, the company said in a statement. “We remain committed to making things right for everyone involved and are working to further reduce the risk of wildfires on our system.”
Tuesday’s allegations are the latest in a string of similar problems for the utility that serves more than 16 million people across much of Northern California.
PG & E’s alleged criminal negligence in the Sonoma County wildfire occurred while the company was in bankruptcy as a result of a series of deadly infernos ignited by the utility’s crumbling equipment in 2017 and 2018.
The deadliest, in Butte County, destroyed the entire town of Paradise in the deadliest and most devastating bushfire in recorded California history. PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter for the fire last June.
Although PG & E’s then-CEO Bill Johnson appeared in court to file the guilty pleas before some of the surviving families, none of the company went to jail. Instead, the company paid the maximum fine of $ 4 million.
PG&E got out of bankruptcy protection shortly after those guilty pleas and settlements to cover the damage caused by its ragged network. The settlements include a $ 13.5 billion fund for wildfire victims, which recently began distributing some of the money to help people rebuild their lives.
State researchers said last month that a wildfire in Northern California that killed four people and destroyed more than 200 buildings last year was sparked when tree branches came into contact with the utility’s power lines. The wind-powered Zogg fire flared up through rural communities in Shasta and Tehama provinces last September and October.
The Sonoma County wildfire also thrown the scruff of a federal judge overseeing PG & E’s ongoing criminal probation for a 2010 explosion in its natural gas pipelines that blew up a neighborhood in San Bruno, a suburb south of San Francisco. .
The US District of William Alsup, who has repeatedly criticized PG&E for shoddy maintenance of its equipment, is considering ordering changes that could force the utility company to shut down its power lines even more often during dry and windy conditions than in recent years.
Associated Press writer Michael Liedtke contributed from San Francisco.