PG&E Target of Grand Jury Probe for Role in Camp Fire, Victims' Lawyer Says

Already enmeshed in a tangle of legal cases arising from recent wildfires and the 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline explosion, PG&E is now said to be the subject of a new criminal investigation in Butte County arising from last November's Camp Fire.

Dario de Ghetaldi, a lawyer representing victims of a series of wildfire and pipeline incidents involving PG&E, told U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Dennis Montali in San Francisco on Tuesday that a Butte County grand jury is looking into whether the utility broke the law in connection with the start of the devastating blaze.

De Ghetaldi made his courtroom disclosure as Montali considered a PG&E motion to allow it to spend $235 million on employee bonuses this year as it works its way through bankruptcy proceedings. Montali put off a ruling on the request until later this month.

"It (the grand jury proceeding) is something that I know and something I thought this bankruptcy judge should know about," de Ghetaldi said in a brief interview after court. "So I said it. You would not believe -- I do not believe -- how many people have emailed or called me to find out more."

But he said he could offer no further details about the proceeding and did not know how far it has progressed.

Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey said he could not comment on de Ghetaldi's statements, citing laws governing grand jury secrecy.

In a statement, PG&E said, "We have been open and transparent since the Camp Fire occurred and have been proactive in supplying information about our infrastructure to the CPUC, Cal Fire and the Butte County district attorney."

The Camp Fire broke out just before dawn Nov. 8, burned nearly 14,000 homes in the communities of Paradise, Magalia and Concow, and killed 85 people.

Cal Fire has been investigating PG&E's role in starting the inferno since the day after it erupted -- a probe that is continuing, said agency spokesman Capt. Scott McLean on Tuesday.

PG&E flagged its potential role in the fire when it filed a report saying it had experienced a problem on a high-voltage transmission line at about the same time and place the blaze began.

PG&E has since acknowledged that it is "probable" that investigators will determine that its equipment caused the fire.

Last December, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing PG&E's probation for the company's felony conviction related to the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline disaster, asked the office of the state attorney general to weigh in on the company's potential criminal liability for fires it may have started.

Alsup said he wanted to know "the extent to which, if at all, the reckless operation or maintenance of PG&E power lines would constitute a crime under California law."

The attorney general's office replied that PG&E's criminal liability would depend on just how reckless the company was found to be. If the company's operations, maintenance or safety practices were shown to be so deficient that the company was acting in disregard for human life, the AG's office said, it could face murder charges.

Alsup ruled in January that PG&E had violated its probation in the pipeline case by failing to notify court officials it was under criminal investigation for a Butte County fire that broke out in October 2017. The company settled that case with District Attorney Ramsey for $1.5 million in October 2018 -- just a month before the start of the Camp Fire.

In addition to the criminal cases, PG&E has faced hundreds of lawsuits from thousands of individual plaintiffs stemming from fires in 2015, 2017 and 2018.

Many of the earlier cases have been settled. But those from the last two devastating fire seasons -- including actions filed in the wake of the Northern California fire siege of October 2017 -- are on hold during the company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.