On April 11, Pacific Gas and Electric announced that they will be paying a $55 million settlement due to the 2019 Kincade Fire and the 2021 Dixie Fire. According to a release made by PG&E themselves, both fires were caused by faulty equipment. In the settlement, PG&E will have their criminal charges for the Kincade Fire dismissed, as well as no criminal charges handed out for the Dixie Fire. This deal was negotiated over many months, specifically by the district attorneys of the counties that were affected by the fires.
“I look at [the settlement] as doing the best that we could under the circumstances,” said Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch, via abc10.com. “Governor Newsom has decided that PG&E is going to continue, and so we are going to have to deal with PG&E in our community.”
When she says that Newsom has ‘decided PG&E will be sticking around’, Ravitch is referring to a 2019 law that was drafted in response to the fires, which offers PG&E financial protection from the cost of wildfire damage. The state law was advanced by Newsom and was drafted by the same law firm (O’Melveny and Myers) who represented PG&E for years, until about five months before the Camp Fire in 2018. The lawyers were paid $9.6 million for drafting this new law, according to abc10.com.
In exchange for the $55 million settlement, PG&E will have to strengthen their wildfire protection plans and will be forced to not only pay the residents affected by these wildfires, but also the six counties that were affected by them. These counties will include Butte, Lassen, Plumas, Shasta, Sonoma, and Tehama, via CNN.
$35 million of the settlement will go to nonprofit organizations affected by the wildfires, such as schools, volunteer fire departments, and community groups, according to PG&E and the Sonoma County district attorney’s office. Sonoma County will receive $7.5 million in civil penalties, and the other five counties will get $1 million each.
The recent settlement does not include the Zogg Fire that spread across Shasta County in 2020, as those involved are still unable to come to a consensus. Prosecutors charged PG&E with four counts of felony manslaughter for each person that was killed in the fire.
“In the Zogg case, PG&E’s actions caused the deaths of four people,” said Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett, via abc10.com. “ A civil settlement alone, such as the one reached in the Dixie Fire case, would not be sufficient to hold PG&E accountable for their actions.”
Under the terms of the new settlement, PG&E does not admit to any wrongdoing causing the Dixie and Kincade Fires. Prosecutors chose to settle rather than continue prosecuting, in an effort to “…maximize the return to the fire victims rather than seek criminal penalties,” according to abc10.com. With this recent news, the public must now wait on the ruling for the four counts of felony manslaughter charged to PG&E in response to the Zogg fire.
