There are tons of news stories on PG&E if you look, many unrelated to the fires. They spent millions to lie to voters when Yolo County considered switching to SMUD. They routinely backdated maintenance reports to the government. They've had explosions in gas lines, and then there's the Diablo Canyon mess.
This is the answer no one wants to hear.
For example almost 10 years ago Paradise almost burned. There was a grand jury review afterwards(that you can find online if you're willing to search some) that pointed out that the place was a tinderbox deathtrap and major changes needed to be implemented for safety.
The problem is populations in these places, along with most humans in general, like trees and shade and the idyllic beauty of nature. People would rather have a pine tree and bushes around their house, rather than a 100 foot cleared defensive parameter.
If you were that driver and charged with manslaughter I’m sure you would feel pretty upset at the injustice.
Exactly one of those is a non-anthropogenic source, lightning strike. Those tend not to occur during dry, windy conditions because of shear and needing to have enough moisture for cloud formation. Exception: when there already is a fire, pyrocumulus lightning strikes can add more ignition locations.
So far as the anthropogenic sources, we're in control of those by definition. We should try to prevent those as much as possible outside of prescribed burns. Everything burns sooner or later, but it doesn't have to go up all at once.
Much of the ecosystem depends on fire, but wildfires that do not do as much damage as the fires California has seen recently. But hey, the fires in Paradise shouldn't really be seen as a forest management problem, but rather as an intense urban conflagration. In much of Paradise, the trees survived, but fires jumped from house to house by wind-borne sparks. That was a disaster of urban planning, where evacuation routes had been made narrower in the past 10 years as population increased.
So we can't blame PG&E for all of that. But we can blame them for crappy maintenance in an area that regularly sees 100mph winds.
PG&E lines setting 1,500 fires was definitely a way to, uh, jump start whatever process might have happened anyway. One should remember that 60 people died that, many trapped by fire on the road out (where inadequate roads were another problem). So a big fire starting but simply more slowly, might have stopped this particular tragedy. Given that a few year back, a PG&E gas line exploded killing around 30 people, this is an organization I feel zero inclination to give a pass on "inevitability".
It's a weird psychology that wants to pardon resourceful corporations while continuing to fault private citizens.
My job was to—at no cost to the occupant—install home weatherization measures into low-income housing. This ranges from new doors and seals to full attic, wall, and floor insulation. We provided this service to literally dozens of homes every working day of the year.
If PG&E fails, not only are all of the contractors out of jobs, but people in need will be denied a valuable service.
California provides a similar service (LiHEAP) with substantially less funding and far fewer benefits to the resident, and much of that funding has been eliminated in the past couple of years as I understand it.
The point is that issues aren’t generally as binary as you may think. PG&E isn’t a perfect company, but asserting that nobody would be harmed by their bankruptcy is a bit naive.
Dissolving PG&E wouldn't remove the CPUC program funding, nor would it remove the work. Contracts would need to be renegotiated, but whatever utility springs up in PG&E's place (publicly or privately owned) will still need to comply with the CPUC mandates for energy efficiency, and the state funding will continue, so that work will still happen.
What about the large number of taxpaying vendors who rely on PG&E's business?
Then there are all the taxes paid by the employees, PG&E itself, and their suppliers.
[1] https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/fires/article22...
I wouldn't blame PG&E if somebody damages their equipment and causes a fire that day or sometime soon after. But if it's been months and the equipment is still lying on the ground with bullet holes in it that proves PG&E didn't inspect it or repair it for a long time.
Not one person I knew chose PG&E instead of SMUD.
The Yolo County stuff makes me sick, just like banning municipal wi-fi.
PGE clearly isn't the only entity to blame for the disastrous destruction of the town of Paradise but it certainly seems to carry considerable blame.
I don't think that implies that then PG&E should have taken the route of ignoring fire safety and imposing electrically activated "uncontrolled burn policy" here.
I mean, PG&E lines starting, say, 15 fires rather than 1,500 in a given high-wind, low-moisture night might have given some of the 60 people who died a bit more time to escape.
Based on this a PG&E caused fire could be caused by someone running into a power pole or anything else that causes downed lines. Fires from power lines dont sound like a huge deal, and those 1500 fires are spread over PG&E's whole service area too
They initiated the shift from low pressure to high pressure without proper testing inspection or notice. I assure you that any reasonable person tasked with doing that safely would have done better. The fact that it was done so poorly indicates a critical failing of internal process.
This would have happened whether or not PG&E was private. People want a scapegoat and PG&E is California's.