SACRAMENTO, California (AP) – A California prosecutor on Tuesday filed 33 criminal charges accusing the troubled Pacific Gas & Electric of inadvertently injuring six firefighters and endangering public health with smoke and ash in a 2019 fire that he blamed his teams.
The nation’s greatest utility denied that it had committed any crime, even in accepting that its transmission line caused the fire.
Sonoma County District Attorney charged with five felonies and 28 felonies in the October 2019 Kincade fire in northern San Francisco, including recklessly causing a fire that seriously injured six firefighters. Among the unidentified firefighters were a member of an inmate 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 caused the fire, which destroyed 374 buildings and caused about 100,000 people to flee as they burned for 311 square kilometers. It was the largest evacuation in county history, prosecutors said, including the entire cities of Healdsburg, Windsor and Geyserville.
Related charges and improvements accuse the company of destroying inhabited structures and emitting air pollutants “with a reckless disregard for the risk of major bodily harm” due to toxic smoke from forest fires and related particles and ash, which which endangers public health. They allege that the company was unable to maintain facilities, including transmission lines, among the numerous charges related to related offenses.
District Attorney Jill Ravitch said she and other investigators went to the scene of the fire as soon as it was safe and have since been working with state and independent experts to determine the cause and effect. responsibility for the fire.
Ravitch said the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection reported to his office in July that the fire was caused when a cable in a transmission tower broke with strong winds and caused an electric arc when he touched the tower. This caused the material to fall into the dry vegetation below and ignite a fire that took 15 days to contain itself, he said.
He said his office’s investigation included interviews with dozens of witnesses, search warrants and review of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. Prosecutors also consulted with other law enforcement agencies and independent regulators and experts.
PG&E said in a statement that it accepts the findings that its transmission line to the Geysers geothermal field northeast of Geyserville caused the fire “in the spirit of working to do what is appropriate for the victims.” although he has not seen the report or evidence from state firefighters.
“However, we do not believe there was any crime here,” the company said in a statement. “We remain committed to making all those affected suitable and are working to further reduce the risk of fires in our system.”
Tuesday’s charges are the latest in a series of similar problems for the company, which serves more than 16 million people in much of northern California.
PG&E’s alleged criminal negligence in Sonoma County gunpowder occurred while the company was embroiled in a bankruptcy triggered by a series of deadly hells that were ignited by the company’s ruined equipment during the 2017 and 2018.
The deadliest, in Butte County, wiped out the entire city of Paradise in the deadliest and most destructive fire in California history. PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter for last June’s fire.
Although then-PG&E chief executive Bill Johnson appeared in court to plead guilty to some of the surviving families, no one from the company went to jail. Instead, the company paid the maximum penalty of $ 4 million.
PG&E stepped out of bank protection shortly after the guilty plea and agreements to cover the damage caused by its worn-out network. Settlements include a $ 13.5 billion fund for fire victims who recently began distributing some of the money to help people rebuild their lives.
State investigators reported last month that a forest fire in northern California that killed four people and destroyed more than 200 buildings last year was sparked when tree branches came in contact with power lines. company. The wind-driven Zogg fire passed through rural communities in Shasta and Tehama counties in late September and October.
The forest fire in Sonoma County also caused the inconvenience of a federal judge overseeing PG&E’s criminal probation for a 2010 explosion at its natural gas lines that blew up a neighborhood in San Bruno, a suburb south of San Francisco.
U.S. District William Alsup, who has repeatedly criticized PG&E for poor maintenance of its equipment, is considering it. ordering changes that could cause public equipment to be forced to shut down its power lines in windy and dry conditions even more frequently than in recent years.
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Associated Press writer Michael Liedtke collaborated from San Francisco.