PG&E is escaping wildfire prosecutions by paying a relative pittance. That’s outrageous

PG&E faced dozens of criminal charges, including multiple felony counts, and the possibility of further legal jeopardy for starting two catastrophic wildfires, including the second-largest in California history. Instead, it was afforded an opportunity available to few other recidivist criminals accused of such serious violations of the law: paying its way out of prosecution.

The district attorneys of six Northern California counties announced Monday that a settlement with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. would allow it to avoid acknowledging any wrongdoing in the Kincade and Dixie fires, which together destroyed or damaged nearly 2,000 homes and other structures, burned over a million acres, and led to the death of one firefighter and injured several others. In exchange for this invaluable gift to what remains of its corporate credibility, the utility will pay a relatively paltry sum.

The Dixie Fire started in the Feather River Canyon in Plumas County last summer when a tree fell into PG&E power lines that the company failed to shut off for nearly 10 hours. It burned nearly a million acres across five counties, destroyed the historic town of Greenville and became the first wildfire on record to summit the Sierra Nevada. Prosecutors in Plumas, Butte, Tehama, Shasta and Lassen counties all opened criminal inquiries into the fire that were closed by the settlement.

The Kincade Fire, started in the fall of 2019 by a broken PG&E cable in Sonoma County, burned over 75,000 acres and forced evacuations affecting about a third of the county’s population. The county’s district attorney had charged the company with 33 felony and misdemeanor counts related to the fire. The California Public Utilities Commission levied a $125 million fine against the utility after finding that the cable had been abandoned years earlier but not de-energized.

To settle the cases, the utility agreed to pay a $7.5 million fine to Sonoma County, a $1 million fine to each to the five counties affected by the Dixie Fire and $35 million to fire departments, safety councils and other nonprofits. It also agreed to cover investigation costs, expedite payments to victims, fund monitoring by an independent consultant, hire up to 200 more workers to bolster safety and subsidize fire safety programs at community colleges. In all, the settlement is expected to cost PG&E $55 million over five years, which is less than 0.3% of the company’s annual revenue and only a few million more than it paid its chief executive, Patti Poppe, last year.

PG&E previously pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in the 2018 Camp Fire, which laid waste to the Butte County town of Paradise and was the deadliest in state history. In January, the company exited criminal probation stemming from its conviction on felony charges for a 2010 gas explosion that leveled a Bay Area neighborhood and killed eight. Noting that PG&E started more than 30 wildfires that killed 113 people during its five-year probationary term, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said the company had gone “on a crime spree and will emerge from probation as a continuing menace to California.” Indeed, it still faces a prospect of real accountability in the form of a federal investigation of the Dixie Fire, as well as unresolved manslaughter and other charges for the 2020 Zogg Fire, which killed four in Shasta County.

This settlement, by contrast, conforms to a broader pattern of unearned dispensation for a company that has proved it should not continue to exist in its current form. Prosecutors defended the settlement as yielding greater benefits than criminal fines, which are subject to legal limits. But prosecutors aren’t supposed to be bean counters: They’re elected to seek justice, not tribute.

In this case, they have settled for the latter at the expense of the former.