PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter over that blaze, which was linked to a badly maintained and aging transmission tower.
PG&E emerged from bankruptcy last summer and negotiated a $13.5 billion settlement with wildfire victims. But it still faces both civil and criminal actions in connection with subsequent fires.
In April, the Sonoma County District Attorney’s office filed charges over the October 2019 Kincade Fire. Like the Camp and Zogg fires, the blaze started during an autumn windstorm. It burned hundreds of homes and prompted authorities to order nearly 200,000 people from their homes.
Cal Fire is currently investigating the role of the utility’s equipment in sparking the Dixie Fire, which started July 13 in the Feather River Canyon, about 5 miles from where the Camp Fire began.
Cal Fire now lists the blaze, which has charred 240,595 acres as of Friday morning, as the 11th largest in California’s modern history. The fire has burned through heavily forested stretches of the northern Sierra, destroying about 40 homes and forcing the evacuation of small communities in Plumas County.
In response to the news that it was under scrutiny once again by Cal Fire investigators, PG&E last week announced an initiative to reduce fire risk by burying 10,000 miles of power lines.
Company officials conceded that they don’t have a firm cost estimate or timeline for the massive project, which they compared to the Marshall Plan, the U.S. program that helped rebuild much of Western Europe after World War II.