Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is facing a new test of its culpability for wildfires started by its power lines: Is the company criminally responsible for the harm people suffer from smoke?
Sonoma County prosecutors say pollution from the Kincade Fire, the most destructive fire statewide in 2019, contributed to the death of one man and serious cardiac or respiratory injuries to four other people — and that PG&E should be held criminally responsible.
The arguments were outlined in a court brief filed in advance of a preliminary hearing that started Tuesday in Sonoma County Superior Court, the latest arena for PG&E’s ongoing battles to defend its conduct in the aftermath of destructive wildfires.
Last month the company was released from five years of criminal probation in federal court, oversight triggered by the deadly 2010 San Bruno gasline explosion that killed eight people. By the end the federal probation judge focused almost exclusively on wildfire safety because PG&E equipment kept igniting fires — 31 wildfires that burned nearly 1.5 million acres, destroyed nearly 24,000 structures and killed 113 Californians from the time its probation began in 2017 through 2021.
Those include the Kincade, a 77,758-acre fire that ignited Oct. 23, 2019, in the Mayacamas Mountains near Geyserville — a menacing blaze that forced nearly 200,000 people to flee their homes.
PG&E has denied it committed any crimes related to the Kincade Fire, accusing prosecutors of misreading and misusing environmental laws “never intended to apply in this context and have never been applied in such a case,” according to a brief filed by the company Friday.
Prosecutors claim PG&E kept energy flowing through an unused end of a high-voltage transmission line — in a windy, mountainous area prone to fire — for 13 years after the company learned it served no purpose.
State fire investigators said the jumper, a cable connecting spans of transmission lines, appeared to have been worn after dangling from the tower for all that time. It broke, investigators said, contacting the steel tower, sending sparks and molten metal to the tinder-dry ground.
That conclusion is not expected to be disputed in court. But while prosecutors argue the company was reckless by allowing that energized line to swing in the wind for 13 years, PG&E claims its conduct was appropriate and met industry standards.
The utility said the charges were “a misguided attempt to criminalize conduct that involved employees’ good-faith judgment calls” in his brief for the judge.
In court Tuesday, former Cal Fire Investigator Gary Uboldi testified that when he got to the fire’s origin in the Geysers geothermal region the night it started, he saw the cable, encased in a piece of equipment called an insulator string, swinging wildly in the wind .
The fire front had already moved on from the remote area near the transmission tower, and he donned night vision goggles to find the origin of the fire. The wind was so strong, he said, it rocked their trucks, swayed massive trees and forced he and a colleague to cling to a chain-link fence to keep from being swept off a ridge as they examined the area.
Looking up, Uboldi said it looked like a “spaghetti mess of wires” flapping in the wind, including 8-foot-long insulators dangling from one end.
“The ends were loose, and there was nothing securing them,” said Uboldi, noting he had not seen power equipment dangle from a transmission tower like that before.
Uboldi was the first to testify in the preliminary hearing among potentially two dozen witnesses expected to testify, including a district attorney investigator who will discuss the cases of five people harmed by smoke.
It’s the closest PG&E has come so far to being tried in a criminal court for reckless conduct leading to burned homes, businesses and forests. The company avoided trial in the for 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County, the most deadly wildfire in state history, by pleading guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaugther and one count of illegally setting a fire. It is facing similar criminal charges for the deaths of four people killed in the 2020 Zogg Fire in Shasta and Tehama counties.
Sonoma County prosecutors are seeking to hold the company responsible for the environmental fallout. Two of the five felonies and 23 of the 28 misdemeanor crimes PG&E faces are for environmental crimes for causing smoke, ash and other pollution that endangered people.
Dave Owen, an environmental law professor at UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, said it’s a novel approach for a local District Attorney’s Office to use environmental law geared toward entities like industrial polluters in a utility-sparked wildfire case. Studies show wildfires smoke is hazardous to human health, especially when those fires burn into residential areas.
Owen said using existing laws to address new scenarios is “part of the craft.”
“The Sonoma County district attorney is saying this is air pollution, and we should treat it accordingly,” Owen said.
Last year, PG&E agreed to pay Sonoma County local governments $31 million to resolve civil claims over the Kincade Fire.
And the company has already been fined $125 million for its role starting the Kincade Fire in an agreement with the California Public Utilities Commission. That amount includes a $40 million contribution the utility must make to the state’s general fund plus a commitment to spend $85 million — without raising electricity rates — removing about 70 transmission lines it is no longer using.
PG&E denied its actions amounted to recklessness because the line could potentially have been used again and “had not been permanently abandoned,” adding that its equipment “met and exceeded” industry standards.
Before going to jury trial, prosecutors must convince a judge there is enough evidence to go to trial. The proceedings are expected to continue Wednesday and then resume Feb. 22, and take an estimated 15 days.
PG&E said it will defend itself against the charges and “looks forward to showing that the criminal charges brought by the people are without merit.”
Julie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: julie.johnson@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @juliejohnson.
source https://www.bisayanews.com/2022/02/09/smoke-from-pge-sparked-kincade-fire-caused-health-problems-1-death/
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