Updated 4:20 p.m. Wednesday
District attorneys for four Northern California counties, including two in the Bay Area, announced Tuesday they will not file charges against PG&E in connection with a series of electrically sparked wildfires during the October 2017 fire siege that swept the region.
The prosecutors in Sonoma, Napa, Lake and Humboldt counties said that there was not enough evidence to win convictions against the electrical utility for violating state laws that require specified clearances between power lines and nearby trees and brush.
Cal Fire announced last year that PG&E equipment played a role in 18 of the more than 170 blazes that broke out beginning the evening of Oct. 8, 2017. Cal Fire referred 11 of those PG&E-related incidents to district attorneys in half a dozen counties for possible prosecution.
Those fires did not include the deadliest of the October 2017 disasters: the Tubbs Fire, which started just outside the northern Napa Valley town of Calistoga and burned across the hills to the west to ravage whole neighborhoods in Santa Rosa. The blaze killed 22 people.