Fast-moving Camp Fire results in evacuations for Northern California towns

[Keepalowprofile]

At least 11,862 structures have been destroyed, including 9,700 homes, Cal Fire said. About 15,500 structures are still threatened by the blaze.
63 confirmed dead and over 600 still missing.

 

[Keepalowprofile]

It just gets worse.
https://www.abc10.com/mobile/articl...ly-1300-unaccounted-for-updates/103-615494567

.
has killed at least 76 people.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said Saturday that deputies have located hundreds of people, but nearly 1,300 people remain unaccounted for.

It's 55% contained. But there is wind gusts tonight.

Honestly, I need to get the fuck out of here. I've been evacuated 3 times in 3 years and then there was Oroville dam evacuation. I wasn't evacuated then because I'm above the dam. But everyone I know ended up at my house because they had no where else to go.

 

[Keepalowprofile]

https://www.google.com/amp/www.lati...ire-tictoc-20181118-story.html?outputType=amp

 

[Satanica]

It just gets worse.
https://www.abc10.com/mobile/articl...ly-1300-unaccounted-for-updates/103-615494567



It's 55% contained. But there is wind gusts tonight.

Honestly, I need to get the fuck out of here. I've been evacuated 3 times in 3 years and then there was Oroville dam evacuation. I wasn't evacuated then because I'm above the dam. But everyone I know ended up at my house because they had no where else to go.

Do it. I believe it's only going to get worse over time. Start checking information about places you might want to live.

 

[Victoria]

I've been watching the fires of hell leaving complete pain, misery, utter destruction and devastation in their wake as the wind whips the blaze down hill and canyon. A bestial monster whose flames consume all indiscriminately and without pity even as prayers go up.

It wasn't until I saw pictures of the animals, wild and domesticated, with their fur melted into the flesh beneath that I began to weep.

 

[Keepalowprofile]

My daughter's friends home.

 

[Keepalowprofile]

Even for the people that didn't lose their house. They have no power and water.

 

[Dead Stephanie]

Tragic all the way around

 

[Muriel Schwenck]

https://www-m.cnn.com/2018/11/21/us/california-fires-wednesday/index.html

series of storms set to bring some relief to firefighters Wednesday in Northern California has thousands of people afraid that flash flooding and mudslides could crush what's left of the towns charred by the devastating Camp Fire.
Almost 1 million people are under flash flood watch in that part of California, where 4 to 6 inches of rain are expected to fall through Friday.
[...]

 

[Satanica]

The temporary housing situation needs to be sorted out quickly. Walmart is tired of the encampment in their parking lot, people are sick, and now all this rain is coming.

 

[Satanica]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...rnia-wildfire-camp-fire-contained/2107829002/

[....]
The Camp Fire – the nation's deadliest in a century – was contained within 153,336 acres, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.

The wildfire, which ignited in a rural area Nov. 8 before consuming the town of Paradise and roaring through nearby communities, has left a staggering toll. At least 85 people have been killed; 249 are listed as missing. Nearly 19,000 buildings, most of them homes, have been destroyed.

Thousands of people packing emergency shelters, hotels and campsites have lives in limbo, uncertain whether they will have communities to return to. The blaze has destroyed more structures than the state's other seven worst wildfires combined.

Fire crews battling the blaze got a boost last week in the form of the first winter storm to hit the state this year. About 7 inches of rain fell over the burn area for three days without causing major mudslides, said Hannah Chandler-Cooley of the National Weather Service.

The wet weather helped extinguish hot spots and enabled responders to ramp up the search for additional victims, particularly in Paradise, a retirement community with a population of 27,000.

Sunday, crews continued sifting through muddy ash for human remains in and around the devastated town. Fire officials fear the death toll will climb as evacuees returning home find bodies in the singed-out shells of their homes.

Search crews pressed on despite the grim task. "The guys will never say it's hard," crew member David Kang said. "But it is."

In Southern California, more residents returned to areas evacuated because of another wildfire as crews repaired power, telephone and gas utilities.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials were in the last phase of repopulating Malibu and unincorporated areas of the county. At the height of the fire, 250,000 fled their homes.

Three people died, and 1,643 buildings, most of them homes, were destroyed.

 

[Satanica]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/04/us/camp-fire-insurance-company-liquidation/index.html

[....]
A state judge ruled that Merced Property & Casualty Co. can't meet its obligations after last month's Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history.

Merced's assets are about $23 million, but it faced about $64 million in outstanding liabilities just in the city of Paradise, court filings show.

Judge Brian McCabe's decision allows the California Department of Insurance to take control of Merced. According to court documents, the state's Conservation & Liquidation Office will start liquidating what's left of the company.

Unlike with bankruptcy, where a business or individual can start over, liquidation means there is no hope for a company's recovery.

Fortunately for Merced's policyholders, they are covered by the California Insurance Guarantee Association, which "protects resident claimants in the event of an insurance company insolvency."

But the association has maximum benefit limitations, according to Merced.

"If it ends up that you have a claim in excess of CIGA's limits," the company said, "the excess will be a claim against the assets of Merced."

 

[Keepalowprofile]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/04/us/camp-fire-insurance-company-liquidation/index.html

I think we'll see more of this before it's over.

Lots of insurance companies are scrambling.
My stepmoms best friends house was insured for 800 thousand and contents 700 thousand. They offered her a deal for immediate payment (agreeing not to make me do an itemized list of the contents if she would accept 500 thousand on contents.)
She took the deal because she found another house to buy and she would lose the house if she didn't have immediate buying power.
There is thousands of people looking to rent something so they can get out of tents they are living in.

Post automatically merged: Dec 5, 2018

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/04/us/camp-fire-insurance-company-liquidation/index.html

I think we'll see more of this before it's over.

Lots of insurance companies are scrambling.
My stepmoms best friends house was insured for 800 thousand and contents 700 thousand. They offered her a deal for immediate payment (agreeing not to make me do an itemized list of the contents if she would accept 500 thousand on contents.)
She took the deal because she found another house to buy and she would lose the house if she didn't have immediate buying power.
There is thousands of people looking to rent something so they can get out of tents they are living in.

 

[Satanica]

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/loc...d-as-Cause-of-Deadly-Camp-Fire-502035081.html

NBC Bay Area has learned that authorities investigating the deadly Camp Fire have tied its origin to the failure of a single steel hook that held up a high voltage line on a nearly 100-year-old PG&E transmission tower.

The fire began at the base of a transposition tower, which serves to redistribute the electricity on the system to balance the load and assure safety. The tower has two arms holding out the “jumper,” a part of the line that’s being shifted to another point at the top of the tower.

The arms each hold electrical insulators, which resemble a series of white discs. Authorities believe the fire started with the fracturing of a steel hook that holds up the insulators to the arms above. It is one of those hooks, sources with knowledge of the investigation say, that failed in high winds the morning of Nov. 8.

“PG&E failed to maintain the tower, and they have an obligation to do that -- and it means they are liable for this disaster,’’ said attorney Dario de Ghetaldi, who is suing the utility over the fire.
[....]
PG&E would not address our information on the apparent cause, instead sending us a statement saying, “The cause of the Camp Fire is still under investigation. We continue to focus on assessing infrastructure, safely restoring power where possible and helping our customers recover and rebuild.”

But Frank Pitre, another attorney who has sued over both wildfires and the San Bruno gas explosion, worries the hook failure is just more evidence that PG&E is simply not able to deal with the risk posed by its system.

“That’s a red flag,” he said, a warning that parts of the system could fail due to corrosion and fatigue from decades of service.

“You have to a have a rigorous system of inspection, particularly when you have systems that are 50 years old or more. You can’t just visually inspect these things.’’

De Ghetaldi says PG&E should have done those detailed inspections after 2012, when five towers collapsed during a winter wind storm. “They should have taken a serious look at the entire circuit,” he said, “after those five towers collapsed in 2012, and it appears they didn’t do that. That’s a big problem for PG&E. And it’s a big problem for the people who were killed, who were made homeless, and who were harmed in many ways.”

 

[Satanica]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/13/us/pge-camp-fire-report-outages/index.html

[....]
More than a month after the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the state's history broke out, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. released a more detailed account of outages it experienced that day.

In a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission, PG&E said one of its employees called 911 on November 8 -- the day the deadly wildfire began -- after spotting flames in the vicinity of a high-voltage tower near the town of Pulga in Butte County.

That fire was reported almost 15 minutes after the utility experienced a transmission line outage at the same location, the company said. It was also around the same time the Camp Fire broke out.

The electric utility had disclosed in a regulatory filing last month that it "experienced an outage" on a transmission line in Butte County about 15 minutes before the wildfire began but had not released additional details.

PG&E said in its Tuesday letter that inspectors later discovered that a hook connecting part of the transmission line and the transmission tower was broken. They also found a flash mark on the tower.

The company also detailed a second outage at another location. That incident was reported a few miles away from the first outage and about 15 minutes after the wildfire started.

When crews went to check the outage a day later, the letter states, they "observed that the pole and other equipment was on the ground with bullets and bullet holes at the break point of the pole and on the equipment."
[....]
"The cause of these incidents has not been determined and may not be fully understood until additional information becomes available, including information that can only be obtained through examination and testing of the equipment retained by CAL FIRE," Allen wrote to regulators.
[....]
PG&E made its findings public weeks after a federal judge ordered the company to explain any potential role it played in causing the deadly Camp Fire and any other major wildfires in the state.

The company has until Dec. 31 to submit written answers to federal officials, according to court documents.

 

[Satanica]

@Sugar Cookie

FFS, are these idiots sociopaths?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...er-posted-joke-pictures-California-fires.html

Police say they will pursue criminal charges against a man who posted pictures of himself on Facebook posing in the wreckage of the California wildfires.

Rob Freestone and two other men were pictured making jokes and posing with burned out vehicles and trampolines after the deadly blaze which killed 86 people.

Officials in the devastated town of Paradise said Saturday that the photos and accompanying captions by Rob Freestone are 'unacceptable and reprehensible.'
[....]

The three men were fired by their crane company, Bigge Crane and Rigging, for the photos after Freestone's posts went viral on Facebook.

'Mr. Freestone has been removed from the Camp Fire recovery effort and we are working with International Union of Operating Engineers regarding his actions,' the construction firm posted to Facebook on Saturday.

The Facebook page for the town of Paradise shared another user's post of Freestone's pictures, explaining that the town leadership contacted his employers and stating that the police would look into criminal charges.

According to KRCR News, the Paradise Police Department confirmed that they will be consulting with the district attorney's office before opening an investigation.

One of Freestone's posts shows two workers in safety vests smiling in the skeletal remains of a motor home with Freestone's caption reading, 'They're off on a fun filled vacation to unknown destinations in their new RV. '

A more disturbing photograph appears to show the charred remains of a house cat with a dusty beer bottle placed near the mouth.

'Dude... I was just chilling with my homies, having a couple of cold ones, and BAM... damn fire breaks out,' the callous words read above the picture.

The images were posted over time from the middle of November into December according to the time stamps.

'We have identified three participants in this abhorrent event and their employment has been terminated, ' Bigge Crane and Rigging Co. posted on Facebook. 'Bigge expects its employees and contractors to work with the utmost integrity and professionalism.'
[....]

 

[Keepalowprofile]

More bad news.

Paradise, California, fire poisoned the water with 'toxic cocktail'

Gases in burning homes got sucked into the water pipes in last November's deadly wildfire, officials say.

www.nbcnews.com

.
PARADISE, Calif. — The drinking water in Paradise, California, where 85 people died in the worst wildfire in state history, is contaminated with the cancer-causing chemical benzene, water officials said.

Officials said they believe the contamination occurred when the November firestorm created a "toxic cocktail" of gases in burning homes that got sucked into the water pipes as residents and firefighters drew water heavily, causing a vacuum in the system that sucked in the toxic fumes, the Sacramento Bee reported Thursday.
[•••]
Paradise Irrigation District officials say they have taken about 500 water samples around town, and they have found benzene 30 percent of the time.
[•••]
Those who have assessed the problem say the water district may be able to clean pipes to some homes later this year, but it will take two years and up to $300 million before all hillside residents can safely drink, cook or bathe in the water from their taps.

I've been working 2-3 days a week there and it's a horrible sight. Every direction you look, everything is totally destroyed.

 

[Keepalowprofile]

I don't know if there will ever be true statistics on this because the people that were burned out are now scattered all over the place.

I now know 2 people who survived the horrific evacuation, lost everything they owned in the fire and committed suicide.

One friend Danny and his wife relocated about 35 miles away from their property. His wife Angie works everyday. Danny would drive to the property and just sit amongst the debris doing nothing all day. Last week he killed himself.

Last night, my boyfriend's son called.
His mother (my boyfriend's ex wife) killed herself.

So fucking sad.

 

[Satanica]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A California utility agreed Tuesday to pay $1 billion to 14 local governments to cover damages from a series of deadly wildfires caused by its downed power lines.

The settlement is a sliver of the more than $30 billion in potential damages Pacific Gas & Electric is facing in lawsuits filed by local governments, insurance companies and private property owners.

More than half of the $1 billion in the agreement would go to four governments impacted by a 2018 fire that killed 85 people and destroyed nearly 14,000 homes in Northern California.

A total of $270 million would go to Paradise, which was mostly destroyed in the blaze. The town had 26,000 residents before the fire and now has less than 3,000 people. It has lost more than 90% of its tax revenue.
[....]
The settlement also covers a 2015 fire in Calaveras County and a series of 2017 fires in wine country.

PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January. The agreement would resolve claims from some local governments, but it still must be approved by a bankruptcy court. That likely won’t happen until lawsuits by insurance companies and private property owners are resolved.

“The bankruptcy court approval is not trivial,” said Mike Danko, part of a group of attorneys who represent about 2,800 wildfire victims in a lawsuit against PG&E. Danko said they are “definitely not” close to resolving the lawsuit.

PG&E spokesman Paul Doherty called the settlement “an important first step toward an orderly, fair and expeditious resolution of wildfire claims.”

“We remain focused on supporting our customers and communities impacted by wildfires and helping them recover and rebuild,” he said.
[....]
Last month, regulators agreed to let utilities temporarily cut off electricity to possibly hundreds of thousands of customers during peak fire conditions to avoid starting more wildfires.

The outages could mean multiday blackouts for cities as large as San Francisco and San Jose, Northern California’s major power provider warned in a recent filing with the utilities commission.

“Nobody who lives in the wildfire zone should consider themselves to have reliable electricity. They should prepare accordingly,” Mike Picker, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, told the Sacramento Press Club on Tuesday.

California’s other two investor-owned utilities have also warned that wildfire liabilities could force rate increases later this year.

State lawmakers are considering legislation that would set up a fund to help utility companies pay damages related to wildfires caused by their equipment.

California state Sen. Bill Dodd, a Democrat from Napa, said the fund could total anywhere between $24 billion and $50 billion, mostly paid for by utilities and their shareholders.

“It’s important that we put together a program that ratepayers aren’t the victims once again,” he said.

PG&E to pay $1 billion to governments for wildfire damage

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A California utility agreed Tuesday to pay $1 billion to 14 local governments to cover damages from a series of deadly wildfires caused by its downed power lines.

www.apnews.com

 

[Satanica]

Utility company PG&E said on Friday it has reached an $11 billion settlement agreement with entities representing about 85 percent of insurance subrogation claims relating to 2017 and 2018 wildfires.
[....]
The company said these claims were based on payments made by insurance companies to individuals and businesses with insurance coverage for wildfire damages.

PG&E filed for bankruptcy earlier this year citing billions of dollars in expected losses, mostly from lawsuits filed by individual fire victims, businesses and insurance companies.

Shares in PG&E were up 10 percent in premarket trading on Friday.

PG&E reaches $11 billion settlement relating to wildfire claims

The utility company was blamed for downed power lines that killed dozens and destroyed thousands of homes.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[Satanica]

[....]
The Caribou-Palermo transmission line was identified as the cause of the Camp Fire last year, which virtually incinerated the Northern California town of Paradise and stands as the state’s most lethal blaze.

“PG&E failed to maintain an effective inspection and maintenance program to identify and correct hazardous conditions on its transmission lines ... as are necessary to promote the safety and health of its patrons and the public,” a 700-page report by the California Public Utilities Commission said.
[....]
The probe concluded that PG&E’s inspection shortcomings were part of a pattern of ‘inadequate’ execution of those tasks.

In response to the report, PG&E acknowledged the role of its equipment in the fire and apologized.

“We remain deeply sorry about the role our equipment had in this tragedy, and we apologize to all those impacted by the devastating Camp Fire,” the company told Reuters in an emailed statement, adding that it accepted the probe’s conclusion that the company’s electrical transmission lines caused that fire.
[....]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-wildfire-pg-e-us/pge-failed-to-inspect-transmission-lines-that-caused-deadly-2018-wildfire-state-probe-idUSKBN1Y70N8https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-wildfire-pg-e-us/pge-failed-to-inspect-transmission-lines-that-caused-deadly-2018-wildfire-state-probe-idUSKBN1Y70N8

 

[Satanica]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal bankruptcy judge on Tuesday approved two Pacific Gas & Electric settlements totaling $24.5 billion to help pay the losses suffered by homeowners, businesses and insurers in the aftermath of catastrophic Northern California wildfires that sent the nation’s largest utility into a financial morass.

The decision by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali at the end of a five-hour court hearing bolsters PG&E’s chances of following its preferred path for getting out of bankruptcy by a make-or-break June 30 deadline. Montali also handed the utility another victory by rejecting attempts by a competing group to offer an alternative proposal to steer PG&E out of bankruptcy instead of the company’s plan.
[....]
PG&E still faces huge obstacles.

The most significant is California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent conclusion that PG&E’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy doesn’t comply with state law, which the company must do to qualify for coverage in a wildfire fund approved by the California Legislature.

The company’s plan relies on coverage from the fund created last summer to insulate PG&E and other utilities from losses caused by future wildfires that could be ignited by their transmission lines. That specter looms large, given that PG&E’s outdated equipment and managerial negligence has been blamed for the series of deadly wildfires that raged through Northern California in 2017 and 2018, killing dozens.

PG&E sought refuge in bankruptcy in January as it grappled with $36 billion in claims from people who lost homes, businesses and family members in those fires. Those claims will now be settled as part of a $13.5 billion deal that PG&E worked out earlier this month with lawyers representing uninsured and underinsured victims of the past fires. Insurers had been threatening to try to recover the roughly $20 billion in policyholder claims that they believe they will end up paying for losses in those fires. PG&E settled with the insurers for $11 billion.

Newsom’s rejection of PG&E’s current plan late last week had threatened to blow up PG&E’s deal with the fire victims because it initially required his approval. But the company and attorneys for the fire victims got around that problem by revising their agreement late Monday so the settlement no longer relied on Newsom’s blessing.

PG&E must still find a way to gain Newsom’s support for its overall plan, but the judge’s approval of the fire victims settlement buys the company more time to win him over. Among other things, Newsom is demanding PG&E replace its entire 14-member board of directors, including CEO Bill Johnson, and make it easier for state and local governments to launch a bid to take over the company and turn it into a customer-owned cooperative if it continues to operate in an unsafe or unreliable manner.

If the company can’t placate Newsom ahead of the June 30 bankruptcy deadline, the settlements with both the fire victims and insurers could still fall apart.

Nancy Mitchell, an attorney representing Newsom at Tuesday’s hearing, told Montali that PG&E seems determined to retool its plan to the governor’s satisfaction.

“They have been tremendous on getting the plan closer” to meet Newsom’s approval, she said. “We are not there.” She said ensuring the fire victims get paid for their losses is one of the governor’s “north stars.”

PG&E considered Montali’s decision on the settlements “a crossroads in the case,” the utility’s lawyer, Stephen Karotkin, told Montali. Without the settlements, Karotkin warned that PG&E would have been stuck in a litigation quagmire that would have eliminated any hope the company had of getting out of bankruptcy next summer.

Several other key issues still have to be worked out, including how the trust for the fire victims will be managed and the process for submitting claims. Attorneys for the victims told Montali Tuesday they hope to have those details ironed out by Jan. 20.

It wasn’t all good new for PG&E on Tuesday, though. California regulators announced a proposed $1.7 billion settlement that will punish the utility for sparking the fires in 2017 and 2018. The terms will stick the utility’s shareholders with the responsibility for paying for the company’s efforts to provide “safe and reliable service.” It also figures to undercut PG&E’s profits while sparing the utility’s customers the indignity of further raising their prices for electricity, which already are among the highest in the U.S.

The agreement with the California Public Utilities Commission still needs Montali’s approval. Besides preventing PG&E from billing customers for recovering the $1.625 billion it expects to incur in legal costs from the fires, it requires the company to earmark an additional $50 million to improve operations.

The settlement comes after the commission found the utility failed to sufficiently identify dead and dying trees, remove brush and dead trees that can spark wildfires, failed to patrol and maintain its electrical systems and disposed of maintenance evidence needed in the investigations.

In another development Tuesday, Montali gave approval for another group of victims to move forward with a civil trial against PG&E to determine its liability in the December 2016 “Ghost Ship” warehouse fire in Oakland, California, that killed 36 people.

Montali ruled that their lawsuits against PG&E can proceed, with the caveat that any damages would be capped at the amount of coverage remaining from the utility’s 2016 insurance policies so the company won’t have to drain its depleted finances even further. Attorneys for the fire victims suggested in court that as much as $900 million could still be available under PG&E’s 2016 insurance policies.
[....]

Judge OKs nearly $25 billion for PG&E fire victims, insurers

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal bankruptcy judge on Tuesday approved two Pacific Gas & Electric settlements totaling $24.5 billion to help pay the losses suffered by homeowners, businesses and insurers in the aftermath of catastrophic Northern California wildfires that sent the nation’s largest utili

apnews.com

 

[Satanica]

SAN RAMON, Calif. (AP) — Pacific Gas & Electric is expected to plead guilty Tuesday to 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter during a court hearing in which the nation’s largest utility will be confronted with its history of neglect and greed that culminated in a wildfire that killed 85 people and wiped out most of a Northern California town.

The hearing before Butte County Superior Court Judge Michael Deems comes nearly three months after PG&E reached a plea agreement in the November 2018 fire that was ignited by its rickety electrical grid that destroyed Paradise, about 170 miles (275 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco. The fire killed 85 people, but prosecutors weren’t certain they could prove PG&E was responsible for one of the deaths.

The proceeding will unfold as PG&E approaches the end of a complicated bankruptcy case that the company used to work out $25.5 billion in settlements to pay for the damages from the fire and others that torched wide swaths of Northern California and killed dozens of others in 2017. The bankruptcy deals include $13.5 billion earmarked for wildfire victims. A federal judge plans to approve or reject PG&E’s plan for getting out of bankruptcy by June 30.

“We want this to be impactful because this can’t go on any longer,” Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey told The Associated Press. “There is going to have to be a sea change in PG&E’s method of operation.”

The hearing will start with a recitation of each felony count while the pictures of all the people who died in the 2018 fire are shown on a large screen, according to Ramsey.

The proceedings will continue Wednesday when surviving relatives of those who died in the 2018 wildfire that was dubbed the Camp Fire will be allowed to make statements. More than 20 people plan to appear in the court while others have sent in statements that Ramsey plans to read aloud. The judge will formally sentence PG&E on Thursday or Friday, according to Ramsey.
[....]
Besides the mass killings, PG&E also will plead to one felony count of unlawfully causing a fire. No executives will be charged, leaving no one to imprison for the crimes. PG&E instead will pay a maximum fine of $3.5 million in addition to $500,000 to cover the county’s costs of the criminal investigation.

The plea agreement also spares PG&E from being placed on criminal probation for a second time. The company is in the midst of a five-year probation under the withering supervision of U.S. District Judge William Alsup for a 2010 explosion in its natural gas lines that blew up a neighborhood in San Bruno and killed eight people. The probation lasts until January 2022.
[....]
The company says it is being more vigilant about trimming trees around its power lines and replacing outdated equipment before it crumbles, although Alsup has repeatedly scolded PG&E for not doing even more to ensure its grid doesn’t cause more tragedy. As part of a deal with California power regulators, PG&E will replace 11 of its 14 board members. CEO Bill Johnson will step down June 30.

Despite PG&E’s pledge, critics fear more danger looms during an upcoming wildfire season after an unusually dry winter in Northern California.

PG&E confesses to killing 84 people in 2018 California fire

Pacific Gas & Electric confessed Tuesday to killing 84 people in one of the most devastating wildfires in recent U.S. history during a dramatic court hearing punctuated by a promise from the company's outgoing CEO that the nation's largest utility will never again put profits ahead of safety.

apnews.com

 

[Keepalowprofile]

Such greedy assholes.

Years of having the mentality "if it aint broke dont fix it." All their equipment is old and falling apart.
When a hot line goes down in dry grass there is sure to be a fire. When its windy out, the lines a old and vulnerable to going down so their precautionary measure is to turn the power off.


How about fix your shit PG&E.

 

[Satanica]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — After pleading guilty to 84 felony manslaughter charges and another felony for sparking the Camp Fire through its own criminal negligence, the electric monopoly PG&E is funding a lawsuit to keep part of the record secret.
[....]
The lawsuit seeks to black out the names of 22 anonymous PG&E employees who testified in the criminal case. An ABC10 investigation revealed the PG&E-funded lawsuit makes a false claim to a California appeals court about who those 22 employees truly are.

ABC10 plans to enter the case to oppose the suit. Our newsroom believes the public has a right to know the full story of how a state-licensed monopoly over 16 million Californians committed manslaughter and burned down a town.

PG&E’s guilty pleas to 85 felonies for starting the Camp Fire are just the beginning.

The company is guilty of a felony for illegally starting the fire and 84 counts of felony involuntary manslaughter for the people it killed. (An 85th victim is believed to have taken their own life before the flames overtook them.)

The full story of those crimes remains hidden, but it’s supposed to come out. There was no trial, but PG&E employees did talk.

Witnesses testified for hours on end in secret, but under oath, before a special grand jury in Butte County.

“I want to know who’s responsible for killing my father. And I have the right to know,” said Phil Binstock, whose father, then 88-year-old Julian Binstock, was one of PG&E’s 84 manslaughter victims.

“This is a crime. They pled guilty,” Phil Binstock said. “This is not the place for [PG&E] to go hiding more information.”

At the trial court, PG&E argued for redacting the name of every employee from the record — including then-CEO Geisha William’s name. More than 200 PG&E employees are named in the transcripts.

“There is no new fact or understanding to be gained from having the names of the employees included in the transcripts,” PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo wrote in an email.

Prosecutors disagree.

“It would be extraordinarily difficult” to understand the full story of PG&E’s crimes if those names were blacked out, Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey said in an interview.

Ramsey’s office did agree to black out the names of local Butte County PG&E employees named in the criminal case to protect them from potential reprisals in the community. Ramsey characterized them as line-level employees doing their jobs as instructed.

His office opposes redacting any more names than that.

“The redaction of even more names from the transcript would make understanding the proceedings and evidence nearly unintelligible,” the district attorney’s brief argues.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of 22 current and former PG&E employees, all of whom are suing as John and Jane Does.

The names of all 22 appear blacked out in the legal papers filed, but the suit tells California’s 3rd district Court of Appeal they “are low- and mid-level employees.”

That isn’t true.

Our investigation uncovered the list of all 22 names. We found at least 16 of them held manager positions with titles containing the words “senior,” “director,” “manager,” or “supervisor” in their job titles.

On his LinkedIn profile, one describes leading “over 400 employees and contractors” at PG&E.

More to the point: two of the names of these supposed “low- and mid-level employees” appear on PG&E’s own list of high-level employees. PG&E was required to submit the list (after a federal judge asked twice) as part of its community service punishment for its previous felonies.

PG&E is still serving a sentence of federal probation for willfully breaking safety laws and obstructing the federal investigation into the San Bruno gas pipeline explosion, which killed eight people in 2010.

Asked to comment on the falsehood about its employees in the lawsuit it is paying for, PG&E did not address the issue.

ABC10 has chosen not to publish the 22 PG&E employee names at this time because when we name people, we want to tell you how they’re involved in the story.

With the transcripts on hold, that’s tough to do.

“We believe that in order to ensure employees’ safety and security, the names of all employees — not only those who live in Butte county and the immediately surrounding areas — should be redacted,” PG&E spokesperson Paulo said in an email.

This same reasoning is used to justify PG&E’s funding of the suit. “Shareholders are paying these wildfire-related costs,” Paulo wrote.

Phil Binstock disagrees with the reasoning. He thinks the suit is more about protecting PG&E officials from the court of public opinion.

“They need to suffer the consequences of their actions and part of that is that the world recognizes who they are and what they did,” Binstock said. “The corporation is basically a fictitious entity that is made up of people. And if these people are responsible for the crimes of the corporation, then these people are criminals.”

The PG&E-funded suit lists five purported examples of “recent threats and violence have targeted PG&E employees outside of the Butte County area,” but the examples are blacked out in the public version of the lawsuit.

Our investigation uncovered the full text. None are an example of a direct threat against any specific PG&E employee as retribution for the Camp Fire

They include a Facebook comment “that every PG&E building should be burned and that PG&E employees should go to prison for everyone who died in the Camp Fire.”

This supports District Attorney Ramsey’s claim that most of PG&E’s examples are free speech protected by the First Amendment.

The broad outlines of PG&E's crimes have already been shared by the district attorney.

Prosecutors say their investigation found PG&E systematically cut back on maintenance and diverted funds away from safety projects, risking people’s lives to turn a bigger profit.

But the 92-page report summarizing the case to which PG&E pleaded guilty only includes a handful of quotes from its employees. It does not include their full testimony or names.

For the relatives of PG&E’s homicide victims, the lawsuit threatens to create more unknowns on top of some painful lingering questions.
[....]

Investigation: PG&E funds lawsuit to hide details of its Camp Fire crimes

After pleading guilty to 84 felony manslaughter charges related to the 2018 Camp Fire, PG&E is funding a new lawsuit to hide details of their crimes.

www.abc10.com

 

[Satanica]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A trust approved by a federal judge to help compensate victims of deadly Northern California wildfires sparked by PG&E equipment paid survivors just $7 million while racking up $51 million in operating costs in its first year of operation, KQED News reported.

The Fire Victim Trust was set up to compensate 67,000 victims as part of a bankruptcy settlement. Attorneys for the fire victims negotiated the deal on behalf of survivors, and it was funded half with cash and half with foundering PG&E stock.
[....]
The investigation by KQED found that in its first year of operation, the trust spent nearly 90% of its funds on operating costs while fire victims, many of whom lost their homes, waited for reimbursement.
[....]
An unidentified spokesman for the Fire Victim Trust told KQED the fund has now increased its payments to families, putting $195.2 million into the hands of those who lost loved ones, homes and businesses to fires caused by PG&E. He said the trust had begun to make partial payments to about 9,500 of the 67,170 victims. The payments average approximately $13,000.

Bill Cook, a retired U.S. foreign service officer, lost his Paradise home in the Camp Fire, which was the deadliest and most destructive fire in California history.

Cook, who is 70, and his family are scraping by, living in a rented home 100 miles away in Davis, where he shares a three-bedroom rental with his 68-year-old wife, Leslie, their four adult children and three grandchildren. He said his rent is triple what he paid for his mortgage in Paradise.

Officials for the trust declined to provide KQED with a list of companies it is working with and what it has paid them. But KQED’s review of documents identified more than half a dozen law firms and financial institutions that have profited from the Fire Victim Trust.

In a letter to fire victims in April, fund trustee John Trotter said it had retained Richmond, Virginia-based BrownGreer to process claims and that the firm has 300 staff members “committed to this project, including attorneys, project managers, analysts, claim reviewers, and software developers.”

“My goal is to keep the cost of administration below or as close to 1% as possible,” Trotter wrote of the Fire Victim Trust.

Trotter, a retired California Appeals Court judge, charges $1,500 an hour, according to court filings, while claims administrator Cathy Yanni bills $1,250 an hour.

Scott McNutt, a former California State Bar governor and veteran bankruptcy attorney, told KQED the amounts charged are excessive for the meager results obtained so far and that the trust “has been completely non-transparent about what it’s doing for this money.”

Northern California fire victims see little payout from PG&E settlement

A trust approved by a federal judge to help compensate victims of deadly Northern California wildfires sparked by PG&E equipment paid survivors just $7 million while racking up $51 million in operating costs in its first year of operation, KQED News reported. The Fire Victim Trust was set up to...

krcrtv.com

[/quote]

 

[cubby]

All the folks making money out of this while the victims are still living hand to mouth and waiting for something that definitely is not gonna do too much for them. $13,000 is a drop in the bucket for what these people went thru and they just keep on getting royally fucked.