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"title": "Two Years After the Dixie Fire, Towns That Relied on Pacific Crest Trail Hikers Are Still Struggling",
"headTitle": "Two Years After the Dixie Fire, Towns That Relied on Pacific Crest Trail Hikers Are Still Struggling | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>When Brenda and Laurie Braaten were preparing to retire, they knew they wanted to live closer to California’s iconic long-distance hiking trail — the Pacific Crest Trail, known fondly as the PCT. It runs the length of California, 2,650 miles, from Canada to Mexico. After sussing out a few different properties, they settled on one in Belden, about a mile up the road from the trail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Belden is a small town on the western edge of Plumas County, nestled in the northern Sierras. It was first constructed as a railroad town and is now known for its recreational opportunities, including fishing and, of course, hiking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the Braatens moved in, they became “trail angels” — that is, people living near the trail who help thru-hikers with things like rides to the post office, meals and sometimes even shelter. They helped sick and injured hikers and have treated everything from trench foot to giardia. They loved it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I find kindred spirits much more readily in the hiking community than I would in any other social venue,” Brenda said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11961428\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/fg_belden_pct_2023_09_14_fg30135-kqed/\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11961428\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30135-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"an older woman in long pants, a t-shirt, and a hat, hikes up a trail\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1305\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30135-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30135-KQED-800x522.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30135-KQED-1020x666.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30135-KQED-160x104.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30135-KQED-1536x1002.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30135-KQED-1920x1253.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brenda Braaten hikes along the Pacific Crest Trail near where she lives in Belden, California, on Sept. 13, 2023. \u003ccite>(Fred Greaves for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then came the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/dixie-fire\">Dixie Fire\u003c/a>, which burned \u003ca href=\"https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2021/7/13/dixie-fire/\">nearly a million acres in northern California in 2021\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Braatens remember staying up all night, watching from their living room as the fire came over the mountain and dropped down closer and closer to their house. Finally, they decided to evacuate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a miracle that Cal Fire kept this house standing because everything along that road burnt to a cinder,” Brenda said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After three weeks, they returned to their home and a transformed canyon. Instead of lush, green forest, the land was charred black with dead trees as far as the eye could see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=forum_2010101890826]“It’s always in your face that, yeah, that tree is dead, that’s dead,” Brenda said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And they’ve hardly seen any hikers in the two years since the fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This will not be on anybody’s radar, particularly after people post on Facebook, TikTok or whatever social media, ‘Oh, this was a burned-out section. It was hot. It was nasty.’ Who’s going to want to come here?” Brenda said. “When Laurie and I hiked this section in 2004, it was the prettiest place in the universe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Dixie Fire nearly wiped this section of the PCT off the map. But with a lot of work, the trail has mostly been repaired and reopened within a year—even if many of the trees around it are still dead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their town of Belden, though, hasn’t been so lucky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Hikers increasingly ‘cherry-pick’ the PCT\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Braatens are two of only a handful of people who live in Belden full-time. It’s a tiny town made up of a motel and bar, an abandoned schoolhouse and an RV park. Despite the charred landscape, the area is still stunning. The North Fork Feather River flows through the center of town, carving a canyon, and train tracks run along the mountainside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The PCT trail also cuts through town, making it an easy place for multi-day hikers to stop for a rest and to resupply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a normal summer, the sole bar in town would be full of PCT hikers, stocking up on supplies and fueling up on burgers and tater tots. On the day I’m visiting, I’m lucky to encounter three of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I could almost smell them before I saw them. They plopped down their big backpacks and settled in at the bar, where they eagerly ordered three cheeseburgers and a round of beers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Scott Wilkinson, Pacific Crest Trail Association\"]‘We are now saying, really for the first time in our history, that doing a continuous thru-hike of every mile of the trail from beginning to end is almost impossible.’[/pullquote]The trio met in Canada at the beginning of their hike. They split off, hiked solo for about 600 miles, and met again before hiking through the Dixie Fire burn scar. Those 100 or so miles were rough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s quite miserable,” said Jonathan Horwitz, one of the hikers. “For one, there’s no shade, so on days like today, when it’s very hot and you’re sweaty, there’s no place to take a break and have a rest. Every time you want to sit down, it’s ashy and your hands just get black and your clothes just get black. And when you set up camp, you get everything — your jackets, your tent — dirty with ash.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of hikers aren’t willing to put up with those conditions. In fact, Horwitz said they started up in Canada with a group of about 30 hikers, and now there are only five. The rest skipped over the burn scar section.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This type of hiking — skipping over burned-out or inconvenient sections of the trail — is called “cherry picking.” And it’s becoming increasingly common, necessary even, along the PCT.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11968249\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2023/11/29/two-years-after-the-dixie-fire-towns-that-relied-on-pacific-crest-trail-hikers-are-still-struggling/fg_beldin_pct_drone_2023_09_13_0265-qut/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11968249\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11968249\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/11/FG_Beldin_PCT_drone_2023_09_13_0265-qut.jpg\" alt=\"looking down from above on an exposed part of a trail with burned trees in the background\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1319\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/11/FG_Beldin_PCT_drone_2023_09_13_0265-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/11/FG_Beldin_PCT_drone_2023_09_13_0265-qut-800x550.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/11/FG_Beldin_PCT_drone_2023_09_13_0265-qut-1020x701.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/11/FG_Beldin_PCT_drone_2023_09_13_0265-qut-160x110.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/11/FG_Beldin_PCT_drone_2023_09_13_0265-qut-1536x1055.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hikers are increasingly skipping burned sections of the Pacific Crest Trail, like this one outside Belden, California. \u003ccite>(Fred Greaves for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We are now saying, really for the first time in our history, that doing a continuous thru-hike of every mile of the trail from beginning to end is almost impossible,” said Scott Wilkinson, content development director with \u003ca href=\"https://www.pcta.org/\">the Pacific Crest Trail Association\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just in the last year, sections of the trail have been closed due to \u003ca href=\"https://www.postholer.com/trail-fires/Pacific-Crest-Trail/1\">fires\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11945598/californias-snowpack-one-of-the-largest-ever\">record snowpack\u003c/a> in the Sierras and even a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11958698/hurricane-hilary-leaves-socal-drenched\">hurricane\u003c/a> in southern California. These disasters, fueled by climate change, are transforming California’s iconic trail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For years, that’s been the famous journey that people from all over the world come here to do,” Wilkinson said — hike the entire length of the trail. “People plan for years of their lives. It’s a very big deal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11961430\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/fg_belden_pct_2023_09_14_fg30251-kqed/\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11961430\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30251-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"a burned log across a small river\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1270\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30251-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30251-KQED-800x508.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30251-KQED-1020x648.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30251-KQED-160x102.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30251-KQED-1536x975.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30251-KQED-1920x1219.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The charred remains of the Indian Creek Bridge, which was burned by the Dixie Fire. \u003ccite>(Fred Greaves for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Knowing how to survive as ‘Canyon people’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Now, with more hikers skipping over the burn scar, Belden is struggling to survive. The rural town only has so many revenue streams, and people here depend on the annual flood of thru-hikers each summer to sustain them throughout the year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not always a money-making proposition; sometimes it’s a losing proposition,” said Ivan Coffman, owner of Belden Town Resort and Lodge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Tabetha Burton\"]‘It’s a lot of money going out the window.’[/pullquote]Coffman estimates that he sees an average of about 3,000 hikers each year. However, this year, he’s only seen about 500.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We certainly did have to cut down on our hours,” he said. “Normally, we would have two bartenders and two waitresses and a cook. And right now, we have one or two people doing all that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reduced hours have been hard on the employees that remain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a lot of money going out the window,” said Tabetha Burton, the bartender, waitress and cook. “I work seven days a week now; I have no days off. I’m a single mom, I got to make sure that I have everything paid for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is not the first time Burton has faced wildfire-related hardship. In 2020 — one year before the Dixie Fire — her house burned down in \u003ca href=\"https://wildfiretoday.com/tag/bear-fire/\">the Bear Fire\u003c/a>. So, she bought a trailer and set up at the RV park in Belden. The Dixie Fire displaced her again. But she said she’s determined to stay, in part because she loves the community here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s its own entity, that’s for sure,” she said. “It definitely welcomes anybody.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burton calls herself a “canyon person.” She said it’s nice to be away from crowded cities, to have more freedom and bask in the natural beauty. Plus, she enjoys meeting hikers who come from all over the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11961432\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/fg_belden_pct_2023_09_14_fg30332-kqed/\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11961432\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30332-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"a building with a red roof sits among trees alongside a river\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1306\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30332-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30332-KQED-800x522.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30332-KQED-1020x666.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30332-KQED-160x104.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30332-KQED-1536x1003.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30332-KQED-1920x1254.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Belden Town Hotel and Resort on the south side of the North Fork Feather River. \u003ccite>(Fred Greaves for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Despite the dwindling number of hikers coming through and the corresponding decline in income, Belden is figuring out a way through. Construction workers fixing Highway 70 through the canyon keep the motel in business. The road was damaged in a series of landslides caused by intense rain after the fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Belden also hosts music festivals throughout the summer. These are not small-town, intimate folk festivals — they are big electronic dance music raves where thousands of visitors descend on the tiny town and camp out for days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Economically, it’s a good thing for the whole county,” motel owner Ivan Coffman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Forging on, despite setbacks, is what it means to be a “canyon person,” Brenda Braaten said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To me, a canyon person is somebody who is of a mindset of ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,’ kind of independent,” she said. “The community will come together, and we will solve our problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Hikers traversing the Pacific Crest Trail are the lifeblood of many rural California towns. But with wildfires and climate change, many of them are skipping sections — leaving behind an economic toll. ",
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"description": "Hikers traversing the Pacific Crest Trail are the lifeblood of many rural California towns. But with wildfires and climate change, many of them are skipping sections — leaving behind an economic toll. ",
"title": "Two Years After the Dixie Fire, Towns That Relied on Pacific Crest Trail Hikers Are Still Struggling | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When Brenda and Laurie Braaten were preparing to retire, they knew they wanted to live closer to California’s iconic long-distance hiking trail — the Pacific Crest Trail, known fondly as the PCT. It runs the length of California, 2,650 miles, from Canada to Mexico. After sussing out a few different properties, they settled on one in Belden, about a mile up the road from the trail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Belden is a small town on the western edge of Plumas County, nestled in the northern Sierras. It was first constructed as a railroad town and is now known for its recreational opportunities, including fishing and, of course, hiking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the Braatens moved in, they became “trail angels” — that is, people living near the trail who help thru-hikers with things like rides to the post office, meals and sometimes even shelter. They helped sick and injured hikers and have treated everything from trench foot to giardia. They loved it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I find kindred spirits much more readily in the hiking community than I would in any other social venue,” Brenda said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11961428\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/fg_belden_pct_2023_09_14_fg30135-kqed/\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11961428\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30135-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"an older woman in long pants, a t-shirt, and a hat, hikes up a trail\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1305\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30135-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30135-KQED-800x522.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30135-KQED-1020x666.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30135-KQED-160x104.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30135-KQED-1536x1002.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30135-KQED-1920x1253.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brenda Braaten hikes along the Pacific Crest Trail near where she lives in Belden, California, on Sept. 13, 2023. \u003ccite>(Fred Greaves for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then came the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/dixie-fire\">Dixie Fire\u003c/a>, which burned \u003ca href=\"https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2021/7/13/dixie-fire/\">nearly a million acres in northern California in 2021\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Braatens remember staying up all night, watching from their living room as the fire came over the mountain and dropped down closer and closer to their house. Finally, they decided to evacuate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a miracle that Cal Fire kept this house standing because everything along that road burnt to a cinder,” Brenda said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After three weeks, they returned to their home and a transformed canyon. Instead of lush, green forest, the land was charred black with dead trees as far as the eye could see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“It’s always in your face that, yeah, that tree is dead, that’s dead,” Brenda said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And they’ve hardly seen any hikers in the two years since the fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This will not be on anybody’s radar, particularly after people post on Facebook, TikTok or whatever social media, ‘Oh, this was a burned-out section. It was hot. It was nasty.’ Who’s going to want to come here?” Brenda said. “When Laurie and I hiked this section in 2004, it was the prettiest place in the universe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Dixie Fire nearly wiped this section of the PCT off the map. But with a lot of work, the trail has mostly been repaired and reopened within a year—even if many of the trees around it are still dead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their town of Belden, though, hasn’t been so lucky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Hikers increasingly ‘cherry-pick’ the PCT\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Braatens are two of only a handful of people who live in Belden full-time. It’s a tiny town made up of a motel and bar, an abandoned schoolhouse and an RV park. Despite the charred landscape, the area is still stunning. The North Fork Feather River flows through the center of town, carving a canyon, and train tracks run along the mountainside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The PCT trail also cuts through town, making it an easy place for multi-day hikers to stop for a rest and to resupply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a normal summer, the sole bar in town would be full of PCT hikers, stocking up on supplies and fueling up on burgers and tater tots. On the day I’m visiting, I’m lucky to encounter three of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I could almost smell them before I saw them. They plopped down their big backpacks and settled in at the bar, where they eagerly ordered three cheeseburgers and a round of beers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The trio met in Canada at the beginning of their hike. They split off, hiked solo for about 600 miles, and met again before hiking through the Dixie Fire burn scar. Those 100 or so miles were rough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s quite miserable,” said Jonathan Horwitz, one of the hikers. “For one, there’s no shade, so on days like today, when it’s very hot and you’re sweaty, there’s no place to take a break and have a rest. Every time you want to sit down, it’s ashy and your hands just get black and your clothes just get black. And when you set up camp, you get everything — your jackets, your tent — dirty with ash.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of hikers aren’t willing to put up with those conditions. In fact, Horwitz said they started up in Canada with a group of about 30 hikers, and now there are only five. The rest skipped over the burn scar section.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This type of hiking — skipping over burned-out or inconvenient sections of the trail — is called “cherry picking.” And it’s becoming increasingly common, necessary even, along the PCT.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11968249\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2023/11/29/two-years-after-the-dixie-fire-towns-that-relied-on-pacific-crest-trail-hikers-are-still-struggling/fg_beldin_pct_drone_2023_09_13_0265-qut/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11968249\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11968249\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/11/FG_Beldin_PCT_drone_2023_09_13_0265-qut.jpg\" alt=\"looking down from above on an exposed part of a trail with burned trees in the background\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1319\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/11/FG_Beldin_PCT_drone_2023_09_13_0265-qut.jpg 1920w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/11/FG_Beldin_PCT_drone_2023_09_13_0265-qut-800x550.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/11/FG_Beldin_PCT_drone_2023_09_13_0265-qut-1020x701.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/11/FG_Beldin_PCT_drone_2023_09_13_0265-qut-160x110.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/11/FG_Beldin_PCT_drone_2023_09_13_0265-qut-1536x1055.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hikers are increasingly skipping burned sections of the Pacific Crest Trail, like this one outside Belden, California. \u003ccite>(Fred Greaves for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We are now saying, really for the first time in our history, that doing a continuous thru-hike of every mile of the trail from beginning to end is almost impossible,” said Scott Wilkinson, content development director with \u003ca href=\"https://www.pcta.org/\">the Pacific Crest Trail Association\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just in the last year, sections of the trail have been closed due to \u003ca href=\"https://www.postholer.com/trail-fires/Pacific-Crest-Trail/1\">fires\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11945598/californias-snowpack-one-of-the-largest-ever\">record snowpack\u003c/a> in the Sierras and even a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11958698/hurricane-hilary-leaves-socal-drenched\">hurricane\u003c/a> in southern California. These disasters, fueled by climate change, are transforming California’s iconic trail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For years, that’s been the famous journey that people from all over the world come here to do,” Wilkinson said — hike the entire length of the trail. “People plan for years of their lives. It’s a very big deal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11961430\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/fg_belden_pct_2023_09_14_fg30251-kqed/\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11961430\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30251-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"a burned log across a small river\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1270\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30251-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30251-KQED-800x508.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30251-KQED-1020x648.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30251-KQED-160x102.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30251-KQED-1536x975.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30251-KQED-1920x1219.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The charred remains of the Indian Creek Bridge, which was burned by the Dixie Fire. \u003ccite>(Fred Greaves for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Knowing how to survive as ‘Canyon people’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Now, with more hikers skipping over the burn scar, Belden is struggling to survive. The rural town only has so many revenue streams, and people here depend on the annual flood of thru-hikers each summer to sustain them throughout the year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not always a money-making proposition; sometimes it’s a losing proposition,” said Ivan Coffman, owner of Belden Town Resort and Lodge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Coffman estimates that he sees an average of about 3,000 hikers each year. However, this year, he’s only seen about 500.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We certainly did have to cut down on our hours,” he said. “Normally, we would have two bartenders and two waitresses and a cook. And right now, we have one or two people doing all that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reduced hours have been hard on the employees that remain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a lot of money going out the window,” said Tabetha Burton, the bartender, waitress and cook. “I work seven days a week now; I have no days off. I’m a single mom, I got to make sure that I have everything paid for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is not the first time Burton has faced wildfire-related hardship. In 2020 — one year before the Dixie Fire — her house burned down in \u003ca href=\"https://wildfiretoday.com/tag/bear-fire/\">the Bear Fire\u003c/a>. So, she bought a trailer and set up at the RV park in Belden. The Dixie Fire displaced her again. But she said she’s determined to stay, in part because she loves the community here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s its own entity, that’s for sure,” she said. “It definitely welcomes anybody.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burton calls herself a “canyon person.” She said it’s nice to be away from crowded cities, to have more freedom and bask in the natural beauty. Plus, she enjoys meeting hikers who come from all over the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11961432\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/fg_belden_pct_2023_09_14_fg30332-kqed/\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11961432\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30332-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"a building with a red roof sits among trees alongside a river\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1306\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30332-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30332-KQED-800x522.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30332-KQED-1020x666.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30332-KQED-160x104.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30332-KQED-1536x1003.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/FG_Belden_PCT_2023_09_14_FG30332-KQED-1920x1254.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Belden Town Hotel and Resort on the south side of the North Fork Feather River. \u003ccite>(Fred Greaves for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Despite the dwindling number of hikers coming through and the corresponding decline in income, Belden is figuring out a way through. Construction workers fixing Highway 70 through the canyon keep the motel in business. The road was damaged in a series of landslides caused by intense rain after the fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Belden also hosts music festivals throughout the summer. These are not small-town, intimate folk festivals — they are big electronic dance music raves where thousands of visitors descend on the tiny town and camp out for days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Economically, it’s a good thing for the whole county,” motel owner Ivan Coffman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Forging on, despite setbacks, is what it means to be a “canyon person,” Brenda Braaten said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To me, a canyon person is somebody who is of a mindset of ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,’ kind of independent,” she said. “The community will come together, and we will solve our problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The Western U.S. on Monday marked another day of hot, dry and windy weather as crews from California to New Mexico battled wildfires that had forced hundreds of people to leave their homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several hundred homes on the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona, were evacuated and the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort was closed as a precaution because of a wildfire — the second to hit the area this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crews were expecting gusts of up to 50 mph as they battled the blaze that has burned through parts of the footprint left by another springtime fire that destroyed more than two dozen homes. No homes have been lost in the fire that started Sunday and has burned about 8 square miles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s literally like déjà vu,” said Coconino County sheriff’s spokesperson Jon Paxton. “We are in the same exact spot doing the same exact thing as we were a month and a half ago. People are tired.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wildfires broke out early this spring in multiple states in the Western U.S., where climate change and an enduring drought are fanning the frequency and intensity of forest and grassland fires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The number of square miles burned so far this year is more than double the 10-year national average, and states like New Mexico already have set records with devastating blazes that have destroyed hundreds of homes while causing environmental damage that is expected to effect future water supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nationally, more than 6,200 wildland firefighters were battling nearly three dozen uncontained fires that had charred over 1 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"More Wildfire Coverage\" tag=\"wildfire\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even in Alaska, forecasters have warned that many fires in the southwest corner of that state have experienced exceptional growth over the last week, which is unusual for that area. Southwest Alaska normally experiences shorter periods of high fire danger since intermittent rain can provide relief, but since mid-May the region has been hot and windy, helping to dry out vegetation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A tundra wildfire has moved closer to the Alaska Native community of St. Mary’s, but mandatory evacuations have not been ordered. Firefighters are working to strengthen primary and secondary fire lines protecting St. Mary’s and other nearby communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California, evacuation orders were in place Monday for remote homes near a wildfire that flared up over the weekend northeast of Los Angeles near the Pacific Crest Trail in the San Gabriel Mountains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The blaze saw renewed growth Sunday afternoon and by nighttime had scorched about 1.5 square miles of pine trees and dry brush, officials said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aside from mandatory evacuations for some residents, the remainder of the mountain town of Wrightwood, with about 4,500 residents, was under an evacuation warning. Several roads also were closed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To the west in Los Angeles County, firefighters quickly corralled a wildfire that erupted Sunday in the foothills above Duarte. No homes were threatened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fire conditions were elevated because of warm and dry weekend weather across Southern California. Monday was expected to be cooler, but another heat wave was expected at midweek, the National Weather Service said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Northern California, a 50-mile stretch of State Route 70 was closed indefinitely on Monday after mud, boulders and dead trees inundated lanes during flash floods along a wildfire burn scar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several drivers were rescued Sunday evening from debris flowing on the highway in Butte and Plumas counties when hillsides burned bare by last year’s enormous Dixie Fire came loose. No injuries were reported. There was no estimate for when the mountain route might reopen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cause of the latest California fires were under investigation, while U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers in Arizona arrested and charged a 57-year-old man with sparking the Arizona blaze by lighting toilet paper on fire and placing it under a rock while camping. The man told authorities he had tried to use his sleeping bag to stamp out the fire but was unsuccessful.[pullquote size='medium' align='left' citation=\"Janetta Kathleen, Flagstaff resident\"]‘I need to know what’s going on because I have decisions to make for my family.’[/pullquote]Flagstaff resident Janetta Kathleen rode her horse, Squish, up a hill to get a better look at the wildfire Sunday evening and watched it creep toward homes in the shadow of the mountain. Her home isn’t directly in the fire’s path, but her family, two bulldogs and horses are ready to go at a moment’s notice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I need to know what’s going on because I have decisions to make for my family,” she said. “If the winds shift, we’ll be in trouble.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Euelda King and her family of 11 evacuated Sunday, still not settled back in from the earlier springtime wildfire. This time, she was able to grab photographs and clothing she didn’t get earlier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Here we go again,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hikers, campers and others who were out enjoying the forest also had to leave Sunday. A shelter was set up at a middle school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Strong winds sent embers across U.S. Route 89, the main route to the turnoff for the Grand Canyon’s east rim entrance, through the Navajo Nation and up into Utah. Many people commute between the reservation and Flagstaff for work. Parts of the highway remained closed Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not working directly on suppressing the fire to get the whole thing out right now,” said Coconino National Forest spokesperson Brady Smith. “That’s not our focus and it’s not possible right now. Right now, it’s going to be focused on protecting life and property.”[pullquote size='medium' align='right' citation=\"Brady Smith, spokesperson, Coconino National Forest\"]‘We’re not working directly on suppressing the fire to get the whole thing out right now. That’s not our focus and it’s not possible right now.’[/pullquote]Smoke from the fire near Flagstaff caused hazy skies in Colorado on Monday, obscuring views of the Rocky Mountains from Denver and other cities along the state’s Front Range.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, firefighters worked to contain a small wildfire burning in juniper and pinion pine that briefly caused evacuation orders Sunday in the San Luis Valley’s Rio Grande National Forest in southern Colorado.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The National Weather Service issued red flag warnings for high fire danger in central and southern parts of Colorado as well as parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Associated Press writers Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska; Jim Anderson in Denver; and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The Western U.S. on Monday marked another day of hot, dry and windy weather as crews from California to New Mexico battled wildfires that had forced hundreds of people to leave their homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several hundred homes on the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona, were evacuated and the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort was closed as a precaution because of a wildfire — the second to hit the area this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crews were expecting gusts of up to 50 mph as they battled the blaze that has burned through parts of the footprint left by another springtime fire that destroyed more than two dozen homes. No homes have been lost in the fire that started Sunday and has burned about 8 square miles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s literally like déjà vu,” said Coconino County sheriff’s spokesperson Jon Paxton. “We are in the same exact spot doing the same exact thing as we were a month and a half ago. People are tired.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wildfires broke out early this spring in multiple states in the Western U.S., where climate change and an enduring drought are fanning the frequency and intensity of forest and grassland fires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The number of square miles burned so far this year is more than double the 10-year national average, and states like New Mexico already have set records with devastating blazes that have destroyed hundreds of homes while causing environmental damage that is expected to effect future water supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nationally, more than 6,200 wildland firefighters were battling nearly three dozen uncontained fires that had charred over 1 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even in Alaska, forecasters have warned that many fires in the southwest corner of that state have experienced exceptional growth over the last week, which is unusual for that area. Southwest Alaska normally experiences shorter periods of high fire danger since intermittent rain can provide relief, but since mid-May the region has been hot and windy, helping to dry out vegetation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A tundra wildfire has moved closer to the Alaska Native community of St. Mary’s, but mandatory evacuations have not been ordered. Firefighters are working to strengthen primary and secondary fire lines protecting St. Mary’s and other nearby communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California, evacuation orders were in place Monday for remote homes near a wildfire that flared up over the weekend northeast of Los Angeles near the Pacific Crest Trail in the San Gabriel Mountains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The blaze saw renewed growth Sunday afternoon and by nighttime had scorched about 1.5 square miles of pine trees and dry brush, officials said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aside from mandatory evacuations for some residents, the remainder of the mountain town of Wrightwood, with about 4,500 residents, was under an evacuation warning. Several roads also were closed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To the west in Los Angeles County, firefighters quickly corralled a wildfire that erupted Sunday in the foothills above Duarte. No homes were threatened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fire conditions were elevated because of warm and dry weekend weather across Southern California. Monday was expected to be cooler, but another heat wave was expected at midweek, the National Weather Service said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Northern California, a 50-mile stretch of State Route 70 was closed indefinitely on Monday after mud, boulders and dead trees inundated lanes during flash floods along a wildfire burn scar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several drivers were rescued Sunday evening from debris flowing on the highway in Butte and Plumas counties when hillsides burned bare by last year’s enormous Dixie Fire came loose. No injuries were reported. There was no estimate for when the mountain route might reopen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cause of the latest California fires were under investigation, while U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers in Arizona arrested and charged a 57-year-old man with sparking the Arizona blaze by lighting toilet paper on fire and placing it under a rock while camping. The man told authorities he had tried to use his sleeping bag to stamp out the fire but was unsuccessful.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Flagstaff resident Janetta Kathleen rode her horse, Squish, up a hill to get a better look at the wildfire Sunday evening and watched it creep toward homes in the shadow of the mountain. Her home isn’t directly in the fire’s path, but her family, two bulldogs and horses are ready to go at a moment’s notice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I need to know what’s going on because I have decisions to make for my family,” she said. “If the winds shift, we’ll be in trouble.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Euelda King and her family of 11 evacuated Sunday, still not settled back in from the earlier springtime wildfire. This time, she was able to grab photographs and clothing she didn’t get earlier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Here we go again,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hikers, campers and others who were out enjoying the forest also had to leave Sunday. A shelter was set up at a middle school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Strong winds sent embers across U.S. Route 89, the main route to the turnoff for the Grand Canyon’s east rim entrance, through the Navajo Nation and up into Utah. Many people commute between the reservation and Flagstaff for work. Parts of the highway remained closed Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not working directly on suppressing the fire to get the whole thing out right now,” said Coconino National Forest spokesperson Brady Smith. “That’s not our focus and it’s not possible right now. Right now, it’s going to be focused on protecting life and property.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Smoke from the fire near Flagstaff caused hazy skies in Colorado on Monday, obscuring views of the Rocky Mountains from Denver and other cities along the state’s Front Range.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, firefighters worked to contain a small wildfire burning in juniper and pinion pine that briefly caused evacuation orders Sunday in the San Luis Valley’s Rio Grande National Forest in southern Colorado.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The National Weather Service issued red flag warnings for high fire danger in central and southern parts of Colorado as well as parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "pge-reaches-55-million-deal-to-avoid-criminal-prosecution-in-counties-ravaged-by-recent-wildfires",
"title": "PG&E Reaches $55 Million Deal to Avoid Criminal Charges in Counties Ravaged by Recent Wildfires",
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"headTitle": "PG&E Reaches $55 Million Deal to Avoid Criminal Charges in Counties Ravaged by Recent Wildfires | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Pacific Gas & Electric, the nation’s largest utility, has agreed to pay more than $55 million to avoid criminal prosecution for two major wildfires sparked by its aging Northern California power lines, and submit to five years of oversight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company didn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing in the deals announced Monday with prosecutors in six counties ravaged by \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/business-fires-crime-courts-california-e9bcc9168b7dd3f0094432833e20858a\">last year’s Dixie Fire\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-pacific-gas-and-electric-charged-2019-wildfire-77dae62e3429dcbf20513d0af7d4972c\">the 2019 Kincade Fire\u003c/a>. The utility still faces criminal charges for the 2020 Zogg Fire in Shasta County that killed four people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two civil settlements are designed to accelerate payments to hundreds of people whose homes were destroyed so they can start rebuilding more quickly than those who suffered devastating losses in 2017 and 2018 blazes that also were ignited by PG&E’s equipment. Those fires prompted the utility to negotiate settlements that included $13.5 billion earmarked for victims — \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-environment-and-nature-business-da3aa5f0c4831a613181bc3821c506a8\">money that still hasn’t been completely distributed\u003c/a>.[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Jill Ravitch, Sonoma County district attorney\"]‘There are those who will say that PG&E bought its way out of a criminal prosecution. I look at it as doing the best that we could under the circumstances. … If I had a magic wand and I could wave it, maybe PG&E wouldn’t exist anymore.’[/pullquote]The deal also thrusts the utility back into five years of independent oversight, similar to the \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-business-fires-crime-california-367cb44acf704920a0c2a72d60890bc5\">criminal probation\u003c/a> it faced after being \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11287618/pge-gets-3m-fine-for-san-bruno-blast-must-advertise-its-conviction-on-tv\">convicted in 2016 of six felony crimes\u003c/a> linked to a 2010 natural gas explosion that blew up a San Bruno neighborhood and killed eight people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch said the oversight was the biggest accomplishment to come from the deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have limited tools and criminal law to deal with corporations, and what we were able to do here was to get a five-year agreement that they will be overseen, that there will be an independent monitor, and that they will have to meet certain benchmarks,” she said Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All told, PG&E has been blamed for more than 30 wildfires since 2017 that have destroyed more than 23,000 homes and businesses and killed upward of 100 people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-business-fires-crime-california-367cb44acf704920a0c2a72d60890bc5\">PG&E’s federal probation ended in late January\u003c/a>, prompting concerns from the federal judge who tried to force the utility to reduce fire risks by requiring more maintenance and reporting. U.S. District Judge William Alsup warned that PG&E remained a “continuing menace to California” and urged state prosecutors to try to rein in the company that provides power to 16 million people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a joint statement covering five of the six counties that settled, prosecutors said PG&E will be “essentially on a five-year probation” to be overseen by Filsinger Energy Partners, which already acts as a safety monitor for California power regulators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E will have to underwrite the federal monitor’s costs, up to $15 million annually, in addition to the $55 million in other payments and penalties that the utility expects to incur in the settlements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Like Ronald Reagan said many years ago, trust but verify,” said Butte County DA Mike Ramsey. “This is our verification tool, that independent safety monitor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of the separate million Sonoma County deal, Ravitch agreed to drop the 33 criminal charges she filed last year that accused PG&E of inadvertently injuring six firefighters and endangering public health with smoke and ash from the Kincade Fire that began in October 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fire officials said a PG&E transmission line sparked the fire, which destroyed 374 buildings in wine country and caused nearly 200,000 people to flee, the largest evacuation in the county’s history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ravitch said state laws that limit punishment against a corporation to probation and fines helped motivate the settlements. She said if PG&E had been successfully prosecuted in the Sonoma County case, it would have paid a fine of just $9.4 million, most of which would have gone to the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, the county will now receive $20.25 million earmarked for nonprofits that help people affected by wildfires and for Santa Rosa Junior College so that it can expand fire safety and vegetation management programs. It also will reimburse the DA’s office for the costs of investigating and litigating the case, Ravitch said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are those who will say that PG&E bought its way out of a criminal prosecution,” she said. “I look at it as doing the best that we could under the circumstances. I’m just a prosecutor in Sonoma County. If I had a magic wand and I could wave it, maybe PG&E wouldn’t exist anymore.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prosecutors in the other five counties were exploring criminal charges in last year’s Dixie Fire — the second largest blaze in California’s history — before cutting the deal they said would yield far larger payouts than would a courtroom trial. Because there were no deaths in the Dixie Fire, prosecutors said the utility would have paid a maximum penalty of about $330,000 if it had been found guilty in a criminal case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The settlement for the Dixie Fire was made by district attorneys in Plumas, Lassen, Tehama, Shasta and Butte counties, which will collectively receive nearly $30 million.[aside label=\"related coverage\" tag=\"pacific-gas-and-electric\"]Even when PG&E pleaded \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/bill-johnson-fires-us-news-courts-paradise-67810cb4d9b6b90e451415b76215d6c9\">guilty to 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter \u003c/a>for those killed in the 2018 Camp Fire, the company was fined just $3.5 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, PG&E CEO Patti Poppe said the utility welcomed the chance to be more transparent — and ultimately more accountable — for its operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are committed to doing our part, and we look forward to a long partnership with these communities to make it right and make it safe,” Poppe said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The money that PG&E will pay as part of the settlements will account for just a sliver of its anticipated liabilities in the Kincade, Zogg and Dixie fires. As of Dec. 31, PG&E estimated it likely will be held responsible for at least $2.3 billion in losses stemming from those wildfires. Some of the estimated $1.15 billion in damages caused by the Dixie Fire may be paid by a state-backed insurance fund that California lawmakers created after PG&E filed for bankruptcy in 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year’s Dixie Fire burned nearly 1 million acres in Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Shasta and Tehama counties and destroyed more than 1,300 homes and other buildings. The blaze started on July 13, 2021, when a tree hit electrical distribution lines west of a dam in the Sierra Nevada, according to investigators with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although her office participated in the Dixie Fire settlement, Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett said she will continue to pursue a criminal case related to the 2020 Zogg Fire, which killed four people in her county.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s Alex Emslie contributed reporting to this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Under the settlement, made with prosecutors in six counties ravaged by last year's Dixie Fire and the 2019 Kincade Fire, the company didn't acknowledge any wrongdoing and will avoid criminal prosecution. But it must submit to five years of independent oversight in an effort to prevent more deadly blazes.",
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"description": "Under the settlement, made with prosecutors in six counties ravaged by last year's Dixie Fire and the 2019 Kincade Fire, the company didn't acknowledge any wrongdoing and will avoid criminal prosecution. But it must submit to five years of independent oversight in an effort to prevent more deadly blazes.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Pacific Gas & Electric, the nation’s largest utility, has agreed to pay more than $55 million to avoid criminal prosecution for two major wildfires sparked by its aging Northern California power lines, and submit to five years of oversight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company didn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing in the deals announced Monday with prosecutors in six counties ravaged by \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/business-fires-crime-courts-california-e9bcc9168b7dd3f0094432833e20858a\">last year’s Dixie Fire\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-pacific-gas-and-electric-charged-2019-wildfire-77dae62e3429dcbf20513d0af7d4972c\">the 2019 Kincade Fire\u003c/a>. The utility still faces criminal charges for the 2020 Zogg Fire in Shasta County that killed four people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two civil settlements are designed to accelerate payments to hundreds of people whose homes were destroyed so they can start rebuilding more quickly than those who suffered devastating losses in 2017 and 2018 blazes that also were ignited by PG&E’s equipment. Those fires prompted the utility to negotiate settlements that included $13.5 billion earmarked for victims — \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-environment-and-nature-business-da3aa5f0c4831a613181bc3821c506a8\">money that still hasn’t been completely distributed\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘There are those who will say that PG&E bought its way out of a criminal prosecution. I look at it as doing the best that we could under the circumstances. … If I had a magic wand and I could wave it, maybe PG&E wouldn’t exist anymore.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The deal also thrusts the utility back into five years of independent oversight, similar to the \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-business-fires-crime-california-367cb44acf704920a0c2a72d60890bc5\">criminal probation\u003c/a> it faced after being \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11287618/pge-gets-3m-fine-for-san-bruno-blast-must-advertise-its-conviction-on-tv\">convicted in 2016 of six felony crimes\u003c/a> linked to a 2010 natural gas explosion that blew up a San Bruno neighborhood and killed eight people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch said the oversight was the biggest accomplishment to come from the deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have limited tools and criminal law to deal with corporations, and what we were able to do here was to get a five-year agreement that they will be overseen, that there will be an independent monitor, and that they will have to meet certain benchmarks,” she said Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All told, PG&E has been blamed for more than 30 wildfires since 2017 that have destroyed more than 23,000 homes and businesses and killed upward of 100 people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-business-fires-crime-california-367cb44acf704920a0c2a72d60890bc5\">PG&E’s federal probation ended in late January\u003c/a>, prompting concerns from the federal judge who tried to force the utility to reduce fire risks by requiring more maintenance and reporting. U.S. District Judge William Alsup warned that PG&E remained a “continuing menace to California” and urged state prosecutors to try to rein in the company that provides power to 16 million people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a joint statement covering five of the six counties that settled, prosecutors said PG&E will be “essentially on a five-year probation” to be overseen by Filsinger Energy Partners, which already acts as a safety monitor for California power regulators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E will have to underwrite the federal monitor’s costs, up to $15 million annually, in addition to the $55 million in other payments and penalties that the utility expects to incur in the settlements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Like Ronald Reagan said many years ago, trust but verify,” said Butte County DA Mike Ramsey. “This is our verification tool, that independent safety monitor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of the separate million Sonoma County deal, Ravitch agreed to drop the 33 criminal charges she filed last year that accused PG&E of inadvertently injuring six firefighters and endangering public health with smoke and ash from the Kincade Fire that began in October 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fire officials said a PG&E transmission line sparked the fire, which destroyed 374 buildings in wine country and caused nearly 200,000 people to flee, the largest evacuation in the county’s history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ravitch said state laws that limit punishment against a corporation to probation and fines helped motivate the settlements. She said if PG&E had been successfully prosecuted in the Sonoma County case, it would have paid a fine of just $9.4 million, most of which would have gone to the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, the county will now receive $20.25 million earmarked for nonprofits that help people affected by wildfires and for Santa Rosa Junior College so that it can expand fire safety and vegetation management programs. It also will reimburse the DA’s office for the costs of investigating and litigating the case, Ravitch said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are those who will say that PG&E bought its way out of a criminal prosecution,” she said. “I look at it as doing the best that we could under the circumstances. I’m just a prosecutor in Sonoma County. If I had a magic wand and I could wave it, maybe PG&E wouldn’t exist anymore.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prosecutors in the other five counties were exploring criminal charges in last year’s Dixie Fire — the second largest blaze in California’s history — before cutting the deal they said would yield far larger payouts than would a courtroom trial. Because there were no deaths in the Dixie Fire, prosecutors said the utility would have paid a maximum penalty of about $330,000 if it had been found guilty in a criminal case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The settlement for the Dixie Fire was made by district attorneys in Plumas, Lassen, Tehama, Shasta and Butte counties, which will collectively receive nearly $30 million.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Even when PG&E pleaded \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/bill-johnson-fires-us-news-courts-paradise-67810cb4d9b6b90e451415b76215d6c9\">guilty to 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter \u003c/a>for those killed in the 2018 Camp Fire, the company was fined just $3.5 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, PG&E CEO Patti Poppe said the utility welcomed the chance to be more transparent — and ultimately more accountable — for its operations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are committed to doing our part, and we look forward to a long partnership with these communities to make it right and make it safe,” Poppe said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The money that PG&E will pay as part of the settlements will account for just a sliver of its anticipated liabilities in the Kincade, Zogg and Dixie fires. As of Dec. 31, PG&E estimated it likely will be held responsible for at least $2.3 billion in losses stemming from those wildfires. Some of the estimated $1.15 billion in damages caused by the Dixie Fire may be paid by a state-backed insurance fund that California lawmakers created after PG&E filed for bankruptcy in 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year’s Dixie Fire burned nearly 1 million acres in Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Shasta and Tehama counties and destroyed more than 1,300 homes and other buildings. The blaze started on July 13, 2021, when a tree hit electrical distribution lines west of a dam in the Sierra Nevada, according to investigators with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although her office participated in the Dixie Fire settlement, Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett said she will continue to pursue a criminal case related to the 2020 Zogg Fire, which killed four people in her county.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s Alex Emslie contributed reporting to this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Pacific Gas & Electric power lines sparked last summer’s Dixie Fire in Northern California that swept through five counties and burned more than 1,300 homes and other buildings, state fire officials said Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The blaze was caused by a tree hitting electrical distribution lines west of a dam in the Sierra Nevada, where the blaze began on July 13, according to investigators with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The finding was no surprise. PG&E already had indicated its equipment may have been involved in the Dixie Fire, which burned nearly 1 million acres in Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Shasta and Tehama counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was the second-largest fire in state history and the latest of several of California’s largest and deadliest blazes to be blamed on PG&E equipment over the last decade.[aside postID=\"news_11888364,news_11885591,news_11881837\" label=\"Related Posts\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This tree was one of more than 8 million trees within strike distance to PG&E lines,” PG&E said in a statement. “Regardless of today’s finding, we will continue to be tenacious in our efforts to stop fire ignitions from our equipment and to ensure that everyone and everything is always safe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E also touted its plan, \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/business-government-and-politics-527e93e58c6ac7736488d8cd60003f86\">announced in July\u003c/a>, to bury about 10,000 miles of its distribution and transmission lines at a projected cost of $15 billion to $30 billion. CEO Patti Poppe’s announcement came just days after the utility alerted regulators to the company’s possible involvement in the Dixie Fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Previous PG&E administrations have staunchly resisted plans to bury long stretches of power lines because of the massive expense, most of which will be shouldered by customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E said only that burying the lines will take several years, but getting the job done within the next decade would require a quantum leap. In the few areas where PG&E has already been burying power lines, it has completed about 70 miles annually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the shorter term, the utility has taken to preemptively shutting off power to thousands — in one case, millions — of customers during periods of hot, dry weather coupled with high winds that can knock down trees or hurl branches into power lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E equipment has been blamed for several of California’s deadliest wildfires in recent years at the same time drought and heat waves tied to climate change have made wildfires fiercer and harder to fight in the West.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last September, PG&E was charged with involuntary manslaughter and other crimes because its equipment sparked the Zogg Fire in September 2020 that killed four people and burned about 200 homes west of Redding. Investigators blamed a pine tree that fell onto a PG&E distribution line. The company could be heavily fined if convicted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shasta and Tehama counties have sued the utility, alleging negligence, saying PG&E had failed to remove the tree even though it had been marked for removal two years earlier. The utility said the tree was subsequently cleared to stay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was one in a slew of \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-environment-and-nature-business-da3aa5f0c4831a613181bc3821c506a8\">legal actions\u003c/a> against the nation’s largest utility, which has an estimated 16 million customers in central and Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The utility pleaded guilty in 2019 to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for a 2018 blaze ignited by its long-neglected electrical grid that nearly destroyed the town of Paradise and became the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E also filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019 after that blaze and others were blamed on its aging equipment. The utility emerged from bankruptcy in 2020 and negotiated a $13.5 billion settlement with some wildfire victims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it still faces both civil and criminal actions from other fires. The company has pleaded not guilty to Sonoma County criminal charges over the 2019 Kincade Fire, which injured six firefighters, choked local skies for two weeks and forced nearly 200,000 residents from their homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last fall, PG&E reached a $125 million settlement agreement with the California Public Utilities Commission over that fire. Cal Fire said Tuesday that its investigative report on the Dixie Fire was sent to the Butte County district attorney’s office, which will determine whether criminal charges should be filed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Pacific Gas & Electric power lines sparked last summer’s Dixie Fire in Northern California that swept through five counties and burned more than 1,300 homes and other buildings, state fire officials said Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The blaze was caused by a tree hitting electrical distribution lines west of a dam in the Sierra Nevada, where the blaze began on July 13, according to investigators with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The finding was no surprise. PG&E already had indicated its equipment may have been involved in the Dixie Fire, which burned nearly 1 million acres in Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Shasta and Tehama counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was the second-largest fire in state history and the latest of several of California’s largest and deadliest blazes to be blamed on PG&E equipment over the last decade.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This tree was one of more than 8 million trees within strike distance to PG&E lines,” PG&E said in a statement. “Regardless of today’s finding, we will continue to be tenacious in our efforts to stop fire ignitions from our equipment and to ensure that everyone and everything is always safe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E also touted its plan, \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/business-government-and-politics-527e93e58c6ac7736488d8cd60003f86\">announced in July\u003c/a>, to bury about 10,000 miles of its distribution and transmission lines at a projected cost of $15 billion to $30 billion. CEO Patti Poppe’s announcement came just days after the utility alerted regulators to the company’s possible involvement in the Dixie Fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Previous PG&E administrations have staunchly resisted plans to bury long stretches of power lines because of the massive expense, most of which will be shouldered by customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E said only that burying the lines will take several years, but getting the job done within the next decade would require a quantum leap. In the few areas where PG&E has already been burying power lines, it has completed about 70 miles annually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the shorter term, the utility has taken to preemptively shutting off power to thousands — in one case, millions — of customers during periods of hot, dry weather coupled with high winds that can knock down trees or hurl branches into power lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E equipment has been blamed for several of California’s deadliest wildfires in recent years at the same time drought and heat waves tied to climate change have made wildfires fiercer and harder to fight in the West.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last September, PG&E was charged with involuntary manslaughter and other crimes because its equipment sparked the Zogg Fire in September 2020 that killed four people and burned about 200 homes west of Redding. Investigators blamed a pine tree that fell onto a PG&E distribution line. The company could be heavily fined if convicted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shasta and Tehama counties have sued the utility, alleging negligence, saying PG&E had failed to remove the tree even though it had been marked for removal two years earlier. The utility said the tree was subsequently cleared to stay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was one in a slew of \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-environment-and-nature-business-da3aa5f0c4831a613181bc3821c506a8\">legal actions\u003c/a> against the nation’s largest utility, which has an estimated 16 million customers in central and Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The utility pleaded guilty in 2019 to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for a 2018 blaze ignited by its long-neglected electrical grid that nearly destroyed the town of Paradise and became the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E also filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019 after that blaze and others were blamed on its aging equipment. The utility emerged from bankruptcy in 2020 and negotiated a $13.5 billion settlement with some wildfire victims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it still faces both civil and criminal actions from other fires. The company has pleaded not guilty to Sonoma County criminal charges over the 2019 Kincade Fire, which injured six firefighters, choked local skies for two weeks and forced nearly 200,000 residents from their homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last fall, PG&E reached a $125 million settlement agreement with the California Public Utilities Commission over that fire. Cal Fire said Tuesday that its investigative report on the Dixie Fire was sent to the Butte County district attorney’s office, which will determine whether criminal charges should be filed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "hedge-funds-cash-out-billions-in-pge-stock-fire-survivors-suffer-and-wait",
"title": "Hedge Funds Cash Out Billions in PG&E Stock. Fire Survivors Suffer and Wait",
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"headTitle": "Hedge Funds Cash Out Billions in PG&E Stock. Fire Survivors Suffer and Wait | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Pacific Gas & Electric Company has been called a “terror” to the people of California. Its \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11873113/help-us-investigate-pges-power-lines#:~:text=Note%3A%20If%20you%20smell%20natural,%2D800%2D743%2D5000.\">electric grid has sparked wildfires\u003c/a> each of the last four years and is suspected of igniting this year’s Dixie Fire, the second largest blaze in the state’s history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company is mired in debt. Electricity rates are skyrocketing. Tens of thousands of survivors of fires sparked by the utility’s equipment are waiting for promised compensation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amid all this pain, there’s one group that’s simply walking away: Wall Street hedge funds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A KQED/California Newsroom analysis of documents on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, found that 20 Wall Street hedge funds have collectively dumped 250 million PG&E shares — two-thirds of their collective holdings in the company — since PG&E emerged from bankruptcy protection last year. Those hedge funds grossed at least $2 billion dumping the stock, our analysis found. At least seven funds have sold off their entire PG&E stake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s more: Many of these same hedge funds got an extraordinary amount of PG&E stock without paying a cent for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That gigantic stock giveaway, which handed $1.5 billion worth of PG&E stock to the hedge funds, is widely acknowledged to be the largest of its kind in the history of corporate bankruptcy. Under the agreement, known as an equity backstop, PG&E gave the hedge funds 169 million shares in the company in exchange for a guarantee the hedge funds would buy more stock if no one else stepped forward as the company prepared to leave bankruptcy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11891639 size-full aligncenter\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/major-hedge-funds-updated.jpg\" alt=\"A graphic shows various hedge funds dumping PG&E shares, including Appaloosa Management, Anchorage Capital Group, and others.\" width=\"1240\" height=\"1576\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/major-hedge-funds-updated.jpg 1240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/major-hedge-funds-updated-800x1017.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/major-hedge-funds-updated-1020x1296.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/major-hedge-funds-updated-160x203.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/major-hedge-funds-updated-1209x1536.jpg 1209w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1240px) 100vw, 1240px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That didn’t happen, but the hedge funds nevertheless collected their payout.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an interview, Nora Mead Brownell, PG&E’s board chair during most of its recent bankruptcy, described the deal as a cost of doing business in a high-risk, politically charged environment. Without the guarantee from the hedge funds, the company could not have left bankruptcy by the deadline mandated by Gov. Gavin Newsom, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everybody can hate hedge funds,” she said but “the hedge funds were the people who were there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That they ended up not having to buy more stock was immaterial, she added: “Hedge funds get paid for taking risk, and that’s what they got paid for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the current hedge fund sell-off of PG&E shares has direct consequences for approximately 70,000 fire survivors who lost loved ones, homes and businesses to blazes sparked by PG&E’s equipment between 2015 and 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks to \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-pg-e-fire-victims-weigh-settlement-lawyers-role-attracts-scrutiny-11589198405\">a legal settlement engineered by these same hedge funds\u003c/a> during the bankruptcy, these fire survivors now hold nearly 500 million shares representing nearly a quarter of the company’s stock through a special trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But with the hedge fund stock dump putting downward pressure on PG&E’s share price, fire survivors — whose Fire Victim Trust has held onto its shares — face a return dramatically lower than what they were promised by \u003ca href=\"https://www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/newsdetails/index.page?title=20200620_pge_achieves_bankruptcy_court_confirmation_of_its_plan_of_reorganization\">both PG&E\u003c/a> and their \u003ca href=\"https://firesettlementfacts.com/\">own lawyers\u003c/a>. The value of the fire survivors’ stock has never achieved the $6.75 billion figure survivors were promised and so, while hedge funds are moving on, fire survivors have been left holding the bag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11891637 size-full aligncenter\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/hedge-funds-v-fire-victims-2.jpg\" alt=\"A graphic describes statistics for hedge funds that profited $2.1 billion in gross income while fire victims had $0 in gross income. Hedge funds sold 250 million shares of PG&E whereas fire victims kept 480 million shares. \" width=\"1433\" height=\"1071\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/hedge-funds-v-fire-victims-2.jpg 1433w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/hedge-funds-v-fire-victims-2-800x598.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/hedge-funds-v-fire-victims-2-1020x762.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/hedge-funds-v-fire-victims-2-160x120.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1433px) 100vw, 1433px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s nothing but a con, isn’t it? How can they do that?” said Terry McBride, 61, who lost her Calaveras County home in a fire that PG&E caused in 2015. Since then, she’s shared a trailer with her 25-year-old daughter. They live on the same lot where their home burned down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“How can they look in the mirror and put together an agreement like that?” McBride said. “What part of humanity do they belong to? It’s not the humanity I belong to where I actually care about my brothers and sisters and my fellow citizens.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED and The California Newsroom reached out to eight of the hedge funds dumping stock. None would comment on the record for this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fire survivors, UC Hastings College of the Law professor Jared Ellias noted, “are not the bankruptcy experts that the hedge funds were” and so the hedge funds “left the fire victims with the risk of the shares and the risk of the deal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hedge funds’ maneuverings have had dire consequences not only for fire survivors, but also for \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/california-divide/debt/2021/03/california-high-electricity-prices/\">PG&E’s 16 million ratepayers, who spend about 80% more on power than the national average\u003c/a>, according to a recent study. And \u003ca href=\"https://sjvsun.com/business/merced-joins-opposition-to-pges-proposed-rate-increases/\">PG&E wants to increase rates by an average of 19%\u003c/a> going forward. Experts say that’s in part because of all the debt the company took on while the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11755807/how-hedge-funds-are-shaping-pges-future\">hedge funds exerted control over the company\u003c/a> — having \u003ca href=\"https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/75488/000095015719000433/form8k.htm\">replaced nearly the entire board of directors\u003c/a> in early 2019 with new arrivals half of whom had investing or corporate restructuring backgrounds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though companies usually use the bankruptcy process to get on surer financial footing, PG&E’s debt load has exploded from $22 billion before the bankruptcy to $38 billion when it ended in mid-2020. That debt has escalated further since it left Chapter 11 last year, rising to $42.5 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have to pay debt back,” said John Geesman, a former member of the California Energy Commission, who said the impacts will only become more extreme with time as the company attempts to repair its long-neglected system. PG&E’s precarious financial state coming out of bankruptcy “impacts the ability of the company to finance necessary infrastructure improvements and necessary fire mitigation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Geesman said the company’s fragile financial state means it is more likely to spark wildfires and even enter another bankruptcy — an outcome, he said, engineered by the hedge funds but also hardly a surprise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a little bit like complaining when sharks bite people,” Geesman said. “You have to ask yourself, why did we agree to this?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Hedge funds dumping stock\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The sell-offs run counter to the hedge funds’ public pronouncements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last April, while fire survivors were voting on their settlement, the head of one large fund rejected the notion that there would be a stock dump that would depress the value of the victims’ shares.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The idea that everybody will suddenly turn around and sell all of their stock at the same time is inconsistent with how these investors approach the situation over a long period of time and certainly inconsistent with selling something at well below fair value,” Tom Wagner, the head of Knighthead Capital Management, said in \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2020-04-09/knighthead-s-wagner-on-pg-e-restructuring-credit-markets-amid-virus-video\">an April 2020 interview with Bloomberg TV\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11891638 size-full aligncenter\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/knighthead-1-2.jpg\" alt=\"A graphic shows PG&E shares owned by Knighthead Capital Management from 2017 to 2021, with shares peaking after PG&E exits bankruptcy, particularly in August 2020.\" width=\"1508\" height=\"1141\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/knighthead-1-2.jpg 1508w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/knighthead-1-2-800x605.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/knighthead-1-2-1020x772.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/knighthead-1-2-160x121.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1508px) 100vw, 1508px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hedge funds dumping stock run the gamut from the relatively obscure to some of the most celebrated names on Wall Street. They include one founded by nonagenarian billionaire George Soros, and another started by famed Wall Street investor David Tepper, who was once profiled in a New York Magazine article titled “\u003ca href=\"https://nymag.com/news/features/establishments/68513/\">Ready to Be Rich\u003c/a>” and whose name now graces the business school of his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11887723/sharks-are-circling-again-with-wildfires-come-lawyers-and-previous-survivors-have-a-warning\">Reporting by KQED\u003c/a> has shown that another fund, Centerbridge Partners, was part of a group of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11887723/sharks-are-circling-again-with-wildfires-come-lawyers-and-previous-survivors-have-a-warning\">investors that bankrolled mass tort lawyer Mikal Watts\u003c/a> with a massive line of credit. \u003ca href=\"https://pgelawsuit.com/\">Watts had bragged\u003c/a> about scoring a $13.5 billion settlement for fire survivors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Critics say \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11814494/wall-street-ties-of-lawyer-for-pge-fire-victims-have-some-survivors-querying-settlement-vote\">the line of credit represents a potential conflict of interest\u003c/a>, since Centerbridge stood to benefit if fire survivors got a smaller settlement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, the settlement has never been worth the $13.5 billion Watts claims. The December 2019 deal between PG&E and fire survivors was composed of $6.75 billion in cash and PG&E stock that was said to be worth\u003ca href=\"https://www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/newsdetails/index.page?title=20200620_pge_achieves_bankruptcy_court_confirmation_of_its_plan_of_reorganization\"> an equal amount\u003c/a>. But when PG&E funded the stock at the market price of about $9, the stock component ended up falling more than $2 billion short.[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Terry McBride, fire victim\"]‘The justice system thoroughly failed the survivors of these fires. They thoroughly failed us. That’s a fact.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The stock has ticked up this month, reaching $10.70 on October 8 after lagging for much of the summer. But shares would have to top $14 for the settlement to be worth $13.5 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The filings reviewed by KQED and The California Newsroom reflect stock holdings by these hedge funds through June 30. Two weeks after that date, the Dixie Fire erupted, burning down the historic town of Greenville on its path to destroying nearly a million acres and becoming the second largest fire in California history. PG&E has indicated that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11887723/sharks-are-circling-again-with-wildfires-come-lawyers-and-previous-survivors-have-a-warning\">its equipment may have played a role in sparking the catastrophic blaze\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E also now faces manslaughter charges in the 2020 Zogg Fire, which killed four people in Shasta County. It’s the second time PG&E has faced manslaughter charges in as many years. Last year, the company pleaded guilty to 84 involuntary manslaughter counts stemming from the 2018 Camp Fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement to KQED and The California Newsroom, PG&E said state regulators closely monitor the utility’s “financial health” to ensure it “can continue to make important safety, reliability and clean energy improvements.” The company said that it was moving forward with a plan to improve wildfire mitigation and the resilience of the grid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network (TURN), said that while PG&E is improving when it comes to wildfire safety, the legacy of the hedge funds is clear: “The high debt makes it hard for the company to invest in infrastructure,” Toney said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11891646\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11891646\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Terry-in-front-of-storage-shed.jpg\" alt=\"A woman in a tank top stands in front of a storage shed, with a slight smile and eyes closed in the bright sun.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Terry-in-front-of-storage-shed.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Terry-in-front-of-storage-shed-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Terry-in-front-of-storage-shed-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Terry-in-front-of-storage-shed-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Terry-in-front-of-storage-shed-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Terry McBride, 61, who lost her Calaveras County home in a fire that PG&E caused in 2015. Since then, she’s shared a trailer with her 25-year-old daughter. They live in a trailer on the same lot where their home burned down. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Terry McBride)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>A bet gone wrong\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In conducting our analysis, KQED and The California Newsroom reviewed hundreds of securities filings, known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.sec.gov/divisions/investment/13ffaq.htm\">13Fs\u003c/a>, which large institutional investors must submit to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission every three months. The documents offer a snapshot of a hedge fund’s portfolio, showing how much stock it holds in various companies at the end of each quarter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The filings tell the story: Hedge funds saw an opportunity to profit by buying low when PG&E’s stock price plunged after a series of fires tore through the North Bay in 2017. The firestorm killed 44 people and destroyed thousands of homes. PG&E shares fell from $70 to $45 within weeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But PG&E’s share price had much further to fall. The following year, the 2018 Camp Fire sent shares plummeting to $25 in the days after PG&E equipment sparked the blaze before plummeting to $7 when PG&E chose to enter Chapter 11 a few weeks later. The fire killed 85 people and displaced tens of thousands in and around the town of Paradise. It remains the deadliest and most destructive fire in California history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As shares sank, many hedge funds that had scooped up shares after the 2017 fires watched their big bet on PG&E turn sour. [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Terry McBride, fire victim\"]“How can they look in the mirror and put together an agreement like that? … What part of humanity do they belong to? It’s not the humanity I belong to where I actually care about my brothers and sisters and my fellow citizens.”[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At that point, some of the funds decided to dramatically increase their purchases of PG&E shares, filings show. Knighthead joined forces with two other funds — Abrams Capital Management and Redwood Capital Management. This \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-15/new-pg-e-investor-group-is-said-to-push-for-management-shakeup\">trio emerged as leaders of a group of hedge funds\u003c/a> that would go on to exert control of the bankruptcy of PG&E, using its leverage to remake PG&E’s board on the heels of the company’s decision to enter Chapter 11. Wagner would serve as the public face of the group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time the bankruptcy was finalized last summer, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1512397/000101297520000693/0001012975-20-000693-index.htm\">Wagner’s fund held 22.3 million shares of PG&E\u003c/a>, at least a quarter of which had been received at no cost as part of the backstop, valued at almost $200 million, according to its 13F filings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But though Wagner dismissed the idea that investors would quickly dump their stock on Bloomberg TV, Knighthead has since sold off more than half its PG&E shares, our analysis of filings shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another hedge fund, Anchorage Capital Group, held as many as 45 million shares worth $425 million last year. 13F filings show Anchorage had sold off its entire stake by this past March. Anchorage also participated in the backstop and received an estimated 8 million shares, worth at least $68 million, in the giveaway\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>GoldenTree Asset Management, Stonehill Capital Management and the SteelMill Master Fund are among the slew of other hedge funds who have completely exited the stock. Before the bankruptcy ended, each of these funds held more than $100 million worth of PG&E shares.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But these sales pale in comparison to the sell-off by David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management. Tepper has long kept tabs on PG&E.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Of course California will bail out Pacific Gas & Electric Company, because it’s not going to let the state not have power,” reporter Jessica Pressler wrote of Tepper’s philosophy in her 2010 New York Magazine article “\u003ca href=\"https://nymag.com/news/features/establishments/68513/\">Ready to Be Rich.\u003c/a>” Tepper is invested in being “a regular guy,” she wrote. Appaloosa was also part of a foursome of \u003ca href=\"https://investor.pgecorp.com/news-events/press-releases/press-release-details/2020/PGE-Corporation-Announces-325-Billion-Common-Stock-Investment-from-Multiple-Investors/default.aspx\">private investors that purchased PG&E shares at a discount\u003c/a> as the company raised money in preparation to leave bankruptcy protection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Filings show that Appaloosa owned nearly 81 million shares of PG&E worth $760 million as of last September. An estimated 10 million shares, worth at least $82 million, likely were provided by the backstop. By June, however, Appaloosa had slashed its stake in PG&E by around 80%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Appaloosa did not respond to our inquiries about its decision to sell off while fire survivors struggled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Centerbridge Partners, the hedge fund that helped bankroll attorney Mikal Watts, sold 1.8 million shares — a fifth of its stake — in the year after PG&E’s left Chapter 11 bankruptcy. KQED and The California Newsroom estimate that Centerbridge was given around 3.5 million shares, worth at least $29 million, at no cost through the special backstop arrangement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Centerbridge was co-founded by Mark Gallogly, who was appointed as an adviser to President Joe Biden’s climate team earlier this year. \u003ca href=\"https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/attn-john-kerry-mark-gallogly-is-loyal-to-profit-not-climate/\">Gallogly’s appointment immediately drew rebukes from environmental advocacy groups\u003c/a>, who said he had profited from climate emergencies in both California and Puerto Rico. Gallogly departed Biden’s climate team a few months later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not every hedge fund with significant PG&E holdings has dumped the stock. Baupost owned about 30 million shares of PG&E as of June. The fund got most of that, around 21 million shares worth at least $174 million, at no cost in the equity backstop deal. That’s more than any other hedge fund.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, a Baupost spokesperson said it participated in the backstop after being asked by several parties in the bankruptcy — including representatives of fire survivors — to “support the company’s emergence from bankruptcy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/klarmans-baupost-poised-to-cash-in-on-pg-e-insurance-bet-11568387840\">Baupost salvaged a badly timed investment in PG&E stock\u003c/a> by buying PG&E insurance claims for cheap. In the bankruptcy, this insurance group shared $11 billion in cash, far more than fire survivors.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The great risk shift\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Through it all, the special trust for PG&E’s 70,000 fire survivors continues to hold onto stock in the company that sparked fires that destroyed their homes or killed their loved ones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many fire survivors want to be rid of the emotional burden that comes with this, and receive cash that would come with the stock’s sale, but the stock has continued to lag well below the level needed to make fire victims whole. In June, John Trotter, the court-appointed trustee of the Fire Victim Trust, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XDLml9GEyg&t=270s\">signaled in a YouTube video\u003c/a> that he planned to hold off on selling any of the 478 million shares it owns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The story of the stock is not a good one,” Trotter said in the video, without indicating a timeline of when he might sell the shares. Fire survivors “should want PG&E to do well,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11884610/will-pges-fire-victims-ever-be-made-whole-never-says-trustee-overseeing-compensation\">It’s such quicksand\u003c/a>,” Trotter told KQED and the California Newsroom in a subsequent interview. Trotter said he expects that there may only be enough to provide survivors 60% of what they are owed. They will “never be made whole,” Trotter said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11891642\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11891642\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Kathleen_in_her_craft_shed.jpg\" alt=\"A woman bends over some crafting work in a shed, with a lamp hovering over her work.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Kathleen_in_her_craft_shed.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Kathleen_in_her_craft_shed-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Kathleen_in_her_craft_shed-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Kathleen_in_her_craft_shed-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Kathleen_in_her_craft_shed-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kathleen McBride, 25, in her craft shed in Calaveras County. The McBride family lost their Calaveras County home in a fire that PG&E caused in 2015. They live in a trailer on the same lot where their home burned down. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Terry McBride)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As Terry McBride and her daughter wait for compensation from the Fire Victim Trust, they’ve had to brave a combination of extreme heat and wildfire smoke that leaves them with persistent headaches. The temperature in their trailer regularly spikes higher than 100 degrees. They’ve covered their trailer, which Terry refers to as “a tin can,” with reflective paint to try to lower the temperature inside by a few degrees on the hottest days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They live modestly while they wait. Terry spends much of her time gardening while her daughter spends hours doing crafts each day. Terry says she has grown increasingly dependent on her daughter as her eyes start to fail her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have zero doubt that Wall Street was behind this. We’re not of value to them. We have no value to them,” McBride said. “The justice system thoroughly failed the survivors of these fires. They thoroughly failed us. That’s a fact.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McBride is among the vast majority of fire survivors who have yet to receive any money from the Fire Victim Trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wall Street analysts have taken notice that fire survivors appear stuck with the stock, because that means a quarter of PG&E’s stock remains off the market, providing stability to the stock price.[aside tag=\"wildfire\" label=\"More wildfire coverage\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In June, when Trotter indicated his willingness to wait on selling the stock, analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith of Bank of America called the announcement a “de-risking factor,” or a reassuring sign for investors in the face of the company’s other risks — such as the fact that the company continues to be linked to new wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Critically trustee Justice John Trotter indicated in recent days that no imminent sales are planned as the Trust continues to work through issues of taxable gains on any share sales,” he wrote in a research note this summer. “We see this as potentially serving as [an] offsetting de-risking factor against otherwise elevated near-term fire risks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another analyst, Jonathan Arnold of Vertical Research Partners, referred to the trustee’s comments as “the glass-half-full headline takeaway for the market.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>‘Who is responsible for this?’\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Some fire survivors say they are caught in the middle of a Wall Street game that they never wanted to play. Their settlement has shifted PG&E’s myriad risks onto them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regardless of what happens to the stock now, Camp Fire survivor Tony Dunn wants to understand why PG&E was permitted to fund an amount of stock that ended up being worth $4.5 billion — not the promised $6.75 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It looks like they cut themselves a 33% discount. Where’s the oversight on this to say, ‘You can’t do that’?” Dunn told KQED by phone from his home near Asheville, North Carolina, where he and his wife, Jhan, moved about a year after they were displaced from Paradise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Did PG&E save money in this process? Was this PG&E’s lawyers? The hedge funds? This math was never right,” Dunn continued. “This is egregious and there’s absolutely no excuse for it. My biggest question now is, who is responsible for this? Who knew and let it happen anyway?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we asked PG&E to answer Dunn’s question about why the stock funding came in at billions of dollars less than promised, the company declined to answer. It provided a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We continue to honor the victims of the Camp Fire and previous fires, and all that was lost, by continuing the important work to reduce wildfire and other risk across our energy systems. We funded the trust in accordance with our plan of reorganization,” PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lily Jamali is a correspondent for KQED in San Francisco. She produced this investigation for The California Newsroom. Aaron Glantz, senior investigations editor for the Newsroom, edited this story together with Managing Editor Adriene Hill. It was copyedited by Jenny Pritchett of KQED.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The California Newsroom is a collaboration of NPR and 17 public radio stations across the state, from San Diego to the Oregon border.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "A California Newsroom analysis of federal filings found that 20 Wall Street hedge funds collectively dumped 250 million PG&E shares, and grossed at least $2 billion, after the utility emerged from bankruptcy protection last year.",
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"title": "Hedge Funds Cash Out Billions in PG&E Stock. Fire Survivors Suffer and Wait | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Pacific Gas & Electric Company has been called a “terror” to the people of California. Its \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11873113/help-us-investigate-pges-power-lines#:~:text=Note%3A%20If%20you%20smell%20natural,%2D800%2D743%2D5000.\">electric grid has sparked wildfires\u003c/a> each of the last four years and is suspected of igniting this year’s Dixie Fire, the second largest blaze in the state’s history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company is mired in debt. Electricity rates are skyrocketing. Tens of thousands of survivors of fires sparked by the utility’s equipment are waiting for promised compensation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amid all this pain, there’s one group that’s simply walking away: Wall Street hedge funds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A KQED/California Newsroom analysis of documents on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, found that 20 Wall Street hedge funds have collectively dumped 250 million PG&E shares — two-thirds of their collective holdings in the company — since PG&E emerged from bankruptcy protection last year. Those hedge funds grossed at least $2 billion dumping the stock, our analysis found. At least seven funds have sold off their entire PG&E stake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s more: Many of these same hedge funds got an extraordinary amount of PG&E stock without paying a cent for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That gigantic stock giveaway, which handed $1.5 billion worth of PG&E stock to the hedge funds, is widely acknowledged to be the largest of its kind in the history of corporate bankruptcy. Under the agreement, known as an equity backstop, PG&E gave the hedge funds 169 million shares in the company in exchange for a guarantee the hedge funds would buy more stock if no one else stepped forward as the company prepared to leave bankruptcy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11891639 size-full aligncenter\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/major-hedge-funds-updated.jpg\" alt=\"A graphic shows various hedge funds dumping PG&E shares, including Appaloosa Management, Anchorage Capital Group, and others.\" width=\"1240\" height=\"1576\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/major-hedge-funds-updated.jpg 1240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/major-hedge-funds-updated-800x1017.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/major-hedge-funds-updated-1020x1296.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/major-hedge-funds-updated-160x203.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/major-hedge-funds-updated-1209x1536.jpg 1209w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1240px) 100vw, 1240px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That didn’t happen, but the hedge funds nevertheless collected their payout.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an interview, Nora Mead Brownell, PG&E’s board chair during most of its recent bankruptcy, described the deal as a cost of doing business in a high-risk, politically charged environment. Without the guarantee from the hedge funds, the company could not have left bankruptcy by the deadline mandated by Gov. Gavin Newsom, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everybody can hate hedge funds,” she said but “the hedge funds were the people who were there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That they ended up not having to buy more stock was immaterial, she added: “Hedge funds get paid for taking risk, and that’s what they got paid for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the current hedge fund sell-off of PG&E shares has direct consequences for approximately 70,000 fire survivors who lost loved ones, homes and businesses to blazes sparked by PG&E’s equipment between 2015 and 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks to \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-pg-e-fire-victims-weigh-settlement-lawyers-role-attracts-scrutiny-11589198405\">a legal settlement engineered by these same hedge funds\u003c/a> during the bankruptcy, these fire survivors now hold nearly 500 million shares representing nearly a quarter of the company’s stock through a special trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But with the hedge fund stock dump putting downward pressure on PG&E’s share price, fire survivors — whose Fire Victim Trust has held onto its shares — face a return dramatically lower than what they were promised by \u003ca href=\"https://www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/newsdetails/index.page?title=20200620_pge_achieves_bankruptcy_court_confirmation_of_its_plan_of_reorganization\">both PG&E\u003c/a> and their \u003ca href=\"https://firesettlementfacts.com/\">own lawyers\u003c/a>. The value of the fire survivors’ stock has never achieved the $6.75 billion figure survivors were promised and so, while hedge funds are moving on, fire survivors have been left holding the bag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11891637 size-full aligncenter\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/hedge-funds-v-fire-victims-2.jpg\" alt=\"A graphic describes statistics for hedge funds that profited $2.1 billion in gross income while fire victims had $0 in gross income. Hedge funds sold 250 million shares of PG&E whereas fire victims kept 480 million shares. \" width=\"1433\" height=\"1071\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/hedge-funds-v-fire-victims-2.jpg 1433w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/hedge-funds-v-fire-victims-2-800x598.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/hedge-funds-v-fire-victims-2-1020x762.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/hedge-funds-v-fire-victims-2-160x120.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1433px) 100vw, 1433px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s nothing but a con, isn’t it? How can they do that?” said Terry McBride, 61, who lost her Calaveras County home in a fire that PG&E caused in 2015. Since then, she’s shared a trailer with her 25-year-old daughter. They live on the same lot where their home burned down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“How can they look in the mirror and put together an agreement like that?” McBride said. “What part of humanity do they belong to? It’s not the humanity I belong to where I actually care about my brothers and sisters and my fellow citizens.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED and The California Newsroom reached out to eight of the hedge funds dumping stock. None would comment on the record for this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fire survivors, UC Hastings College of the Law professor Jared Ellias noted, “are not the bankruptcy experts that the hedge funds were” and so the hedge funds “left the fire victims with the risk of the shares and the risk of the deal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hedge funds’ maneuverings have had dire consequences not only for fire survivors, but also for \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/california-divide/debt/2021/03/california-high-electricity-prices/\">PG&E’s 16 million ratepayers, who spend about 80% more on power than the national average\u003c/a>, according to a recent study. And \u003ca href=\"https://sjvsun.com/business/merced-joins-opposition-to-pges-proposed-rate-increases/\">PG&E wants to increase rates by an average of 19%\u003c/a> going forward. Experts say that’s in part because of all the debt the company took on while the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11755807/how-hedge-funds-are-shaping-pges-future\">hedge funds exerted control over the company\u003c/a> — having \u003ca href=\"https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/75488/000095015719000433/form8k.htm\">replaced nearly the entire board of directors\u003c/a> in early 2019 with new arrivals half of whom had investing or corporate restructuring backgrounds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though companies usually use the bankruptcy process to get on surer financial footing, PG&E’s debt load has exploded from $22 billion before the bankruptcy to $38 billion when it ended in mid-2020. That debt has escalated further since it left Chapter 11 last year, rising to $42.5 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have to pay debt back,” said John Geesman, a former member of the California Energy Commission, who said the impacts will only become more extreme with time as the company attempts to repair its long-neglected system. PG&E’s precarious financial state coming out of bankruptcy “impacts the ability of the company to finance necessary infrastructure improvements and necessary fire mitigation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Geesman said the company’s fragile financial state means it is more likely to spark wildfires and even enter another bankruptcy — an outcome, he said, engineered by the hedge funds but also hardly a surprise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a little bit like complaining when sharks bite people,” Geesman said. “You have to ask yourself, why did we agree to this?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Hedge funds dumping stock\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The sell-offs run counter to the hedge funds’ public pronouncements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last April, while fire survivors were voting on their settlement, the head of one large fund rejected the notion that there would be a stock dump that would depress the value of the victims’ shares.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The idea that everybody will suddenly turn around and sell all of their stock at the same time is inconsistent with how these investors approach the situation over a long period of time and certainly inconsistent with selling something at well below fair value,” Tom Wagner, the head of Knighthead Capital Management, said in \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2020-04-09/knighthead-s-wagner-on-pg-e-restructuring-credit-markets-amid-virus-video\">an April 2020 interview with Bloomberg TV\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11891638 size-full aligncenter\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/knighthead-1-2.jpg\" alt=\"A graphic shows PG&E shares owned by Knighthead Capital Management from 2017 to 2021, with shares peaking after PG&E exits bankruptcy, particularly in August 2020.\" width=\"1508\" height=\"1141\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/knighthead-1-2.jpg 1508w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/knighthead-1-2-800x605.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/knighthead-1-2-1020x772.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/knighthead-1-2-160x121.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1508px) 100vw, 1508px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hedge funds dumping stock run the gamut from the relatively obscure to some of the most celebrated names on Wall Street. They include one founded by nonagenarian billionaire George Soros, and another started by famed Wall Street investor David Tepper, who was once profiled in a New York Magazine article titled “\u003ca href=\"https://nymag.com/news/features/establishments/68513/\">Ready to Be Rich\u003c/a>” and whose name now graces the business school of his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11887723/sharks-are-circling-again-with-wildfires-come-lawyers-and-previous-survivors-have-a-warning\">Reporting by KQED\u003c/a> has shown that another fund, Centerbridge Partners, was part of a group of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11887723/sharks-are-circling-again-with-wildfires-come-lawyers-and-previous-survivors-have-a-warning\">investors that bankrolled mass tort lawyer Mikal Watts\u003c/a> with a massive line of credit. \u003ca href=\"https://pgelawsuit.com/\">Watts had bragged\u003c/a> about scoring a $13.5 billion settlement for fire survivors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Critics say \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11814494/wall-street-ties-of-lawyer-for-pge-fire-victims-have-some-survivors-querying-settlement-vote\">the line of credit represents a potential conflict of interest\u003c/a>, since Centerbridge stood to benefit if fire survivors got a smaller settlement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, the settlement has never been worth the $13.5 billion Watts claims. The December 2019 deal between PG&E and fire survivors was composed of $6.75 billion in cash and PG&E stock that was said to be worth\u003ca href=\"https://www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/newsdetails/index.page?title=20200620_pge_achieves_bankruptcy_court_confirmation_of_its_plan_of_reorganization\"> an equal amount\u003c/a>. But when PG&E funded the stock at the market price of about $9, the stock component ended up falling more than $2 billion short.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘The justice system thoroughly failed the survivors of these fires. They thoroughly failed us. That’s a fact.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The stock has ticked up this month, reaching $10.70 on October 8 after lagging for much of the summer. But shares would have to top $14 for the settlement to be worth $13.5 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The filings reviewed by KQED and The California Newsroom reflect stock holdings by these hedge funds through June 30. Two weeks after that date, the Dixie Fire erupted, burning down the historic town of Greenville on its path to destroying nearly a million acres and becoming the second largest fire in California history. PG&E has indicated that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11887723/sharks-are-circling-again-with-wildfires-come-lawyers-and-previous-survivors-have-a-warning\">its equipment may have played a role in sparking the catastrophic blaze\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E also now faces manslaughter charges in the 2020 Zogg Fire, which killed four people in Shasta County. It’s the second time PG&E has faced manslaughter charges in as many years. Last year, the company pleaded guilty to 84 involuntary manslaughter counts stemming from the 2018 Camp Fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement to KQED and The California Newsroom, PG&E said state regulators closely monitor the utility’s “financial health” to ensure it “can continue to make important safety, reliability and clean energy improvements.” The company said that it was moving forward with a plan to improve wildfire mitigation and the resilience of the grid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network (TURN), said that while PG&E is improving when it comes to wildfire safety, the legacy of the hedge funds is clear: “The high debt makes it hard for the company to invest in infrastructure,” Toney said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11891646\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11891646\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Terry-in-front-of-storage-shed.jpg\" alt=\"A woman in a tank top stands in front of a storage shed, with a slight smile and eyes closed in the bright sun.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Terry-in-front-of-storage-shed.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Terry-in-front-of-storage-shed-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Terry-in-front-of-storage-shed-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Terry-in-front-of-storage-shed-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Terry-in-front-of-storage-shed-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Terry McBride, 61, who lost her Calaveras County home in a fire that PG&E caused in 2015. Since then, she’s shared a trailer with her 25-year-old daughter. They live in a trailer on the same lot where their home burned down. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Terry McBride)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>A bet gone wrong\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In conducting our analysis, KQED and The California Newsroom reviewed hundreds of securities filings, known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.sec.gov/divisions/investment/13ffaq.htm\">13Fs\u003c/a>, which large institutional investors must submit to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission every three months. The documents offer a snapshot of a hedge fund’s portfolio, showing how much stock it holds in various companies at the end of each quarter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The filings tell the story: Hedge funds saw an opportunity to profit by buying low when PG&E’s stock price plunged after a series of fires tore through the North Bay in 2017. The firestorm killed 44 people and destroyed thousands of homes. PG&E shares fell from $70 to $45 within weeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But PG&E’s share price had much further to fall. The following year, the 2018 Camp Fire sent shares plummeting to $25 in the days after PG&E equipment sparked the blaze before plummeting to $7 when PG&E chose to enter Chapter 11 a few weeks later. The fire killed 85 people and displaced tens of thousands in and around the town of Paradise. It remains the deadliest and most destructive fire in California history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As shares sank, many hedge funds that had scooped up shares after the 2017 fires watched their big bet on PG&E turn sour. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "“How can they look in the mirror and put together an agreement like that? … What part of humanity do they belong to? It’s not the humanity I belong to where I actually care about my brothers and sisters and my fellow citizens.”",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At that point, some of the funds decided to dramatically increase their purchases of PG&E shares, filings show. Knighthead joined forces with two other funds — Abrams Capital Management and Redwood Capital Management. This \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-15/new-pg-e-investor-group-is-said-to-push-for-management-shakeup\">trio emerged as leaders of a group of hedge funds\u003c/a> that would go on to exert control of the bankruptcy of PG&E, using its leverage to remake PG&E’s board on the heels of the company’s decision to enter Chapter 11. Wagner would serve as the public face of the group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time the bankruptcy was finalized last summer, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1512397/000101297520000693/0001012975-20-000693-index.htm\">Wagner’s fund held 22.3 million shares of PG&E\u003c/a>, at least a quarter of which had been received at no cost as part of the backstop, valued at almost $200 million, according to its 13F filings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But though Wagner dismissed the idea that investors would quickly dump their stock on Bloomberg TV, Knighthead has since sold off more than half its PG&E shares, our analysis of filings shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another hedge fund, Anchorage Capital Group, held as many as 45 million shares worth $425 million last year. 13F filings show Anchorage had sold off its entire stake by this past March. Anchorage also participated in the backstop and received an estimated 8 million shares, worth at least $68 million, in the giveaway\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>GoldenTree Asset Management, Stonehill Capital Management and the SteelMill Master Fund are among the slew of other hedge funds who have completely exited the stock. Before the bankruptcy ended, each of these funds held more than $100 million worth of PG&E shares.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But these sales pale in comparison to the sell-off by David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management. Tepper has long kept tabs on PG&E.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Of course California will bail out Pacific Gas & Electric Company, because it’s not going to let the state not have power,” reporter Jessica Pressler wrote of Tepper’s philosophy in her 2010 New York Magazine article “\u003ca href=\"https://nymag.com/news/features/establishments/68513/\">Ready to Be Rich.\u003c/a>” Tepper is invested in being “a regular guy,” she wrote. Appaloosa was also part of a foursome of \u003ca href=\"https://investor.pgecorp.com/news-events/press-releases/press-release-details/2020/PGE-Corporation-Announces-325-Billion-Common-Stock-Investment-from-Multiple-Investors/default.aspx\">private investors that purchased PG&E shares at a discount\u003c/a> as the company raised money in preparation to leave bankruptcy protection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Filings show that Appaloosa owned nearly 81 million shares of PG&E worth $760 million as of last September. An estimated 10 million shares, worth at least $82 million, likely were provided by the backstop. By June, however, Appaloosa had slashed its stake in PG&E by around 80%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Appaloosa did not respond to our inquiries about its decision to sell off while fire survivors struggled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Centerbridge Partners, the hedge fund that helped bankroll attorney Mikal Watts, sold 1.8 million shares — a fifth of its stake — in the year after PG&E’s left Chapter 11 bankruptcy. KQED and The California Newsroom estimate that Centerbridge was given around 3.5 million shares, worth at least $29 million, at no cost through the special backstop arrangement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Centerbridge was co-founded by Mark Gallogly, who was appointed as an adviser to President Joe Biden’s climate team earlier this year. \u003ca href=\"https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/attn-john-kerry-mark-gallogly-is-loyal-to-profit-not-climate/\">Gallogly’s appointment immediately drew rebukes from environmental advocacy groups\u003c/a>, who said he had profited from climate emergencies in both California and Puerto Rico. Gallogly departed Biden’s climate team a few months later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not every hedge fund with significant PG&E holdings has dumped the stock. Baupost owned about 30 million shares of PG&E as of June. The fund got most of that, around 21 million shares worth at least $174 million, at no cost in the equity backstop deal. That’s more than any other hedge fund.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, a Baupost spokesperson said it participated in the backstop after being asked by several parties in the bankruptcy — including representatives of fire survivors — to “support the company’s emergence from bankruptcy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/klarmans-baupost-poised-to-cash-in-on-pg-e-insurance-bet-11568387840\">Baupost salvaged a badly timed investment in PG&E stock\u003c/a> by buying PG&E insurance claims for cheap. In the bankruptcy, this insurance group shared $11 billion in cash, far more than fire survivors.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The great risk shift\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Through it all, the special trust for PG&E’s 70,000 fire survivors continues to hold onto stock in the company that sparked fires that destroyed their homes or killed their loved ones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many fire survivors want to be rid of the emotional burden that comes with this, and receive cash that would come with the stock’s sale, but the stock has continued to lag well below the level needed to make fire victims whole. In June, John Trotter, the court-appointed trustee of the Fire Victim Trust, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XDLml9GEyg&t=270s\">signaled in a YouTube video\u003c/a> that he planned to hold off on selling any of the 478 million shares it owns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The story of the stock is not a good one,” Trotter said in the video, without indicating a timeline of when he might sell the shares. Fire survivors “should want PG&E to do well,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11884610/will-pges-fire-victims-ever-be-made-whole-never-says-trustee-overseeing-compensation\">It’s such quicksand\u003c/a>,” Trotter told KQED and the California Newsroom in a subsequent interview. Trotter said he expects that there may only be enough to provide survivors 60% of what they are owed. They will “never be made whole,” Trotter said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11891642\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11891642\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Kathleen_in_her_craft_shed.jpg\" alt=\"A woman bends over some crafting work in a shed, with a lamp hovering over her work.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Kathleen_in_her_craft_shed.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Kathleen_in_her_craft_shed-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Kathleen_in_her_craft_shed-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Kathleen_in_her_craft_shed-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/10/Kathleen_in_her_craft_shed-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kathleen McBride, 25, in her craft shed in Calaveras County. The McBride family lost their Calaveras County home in a fire that PG&E caused in 2015. They live in a trailer on the same lot where their home burned down. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Terry McBride)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As Terry McBride and her daughter wait for compensation from the Fire Victim Trust, they’ve had to brave a combination of extreme heat and wildfire smoke that leaves them with persistent headaches. The temperature in their trailer regularly spikes higher than 100 degrees. They’ve covered their trailer, which Terry refers to as “a tin can,” with reflective paint to try to lower the temperature inside by a few degrees on the hottest days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They live modestly while they wait. Terry spends much of her time gardening while her daughter spends hours doing crafts each day. Terry says she has grown increasingly dependent on her daughter as her eyes start to fail her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have zero doubt that Wall Street was behind this. We’re not of value to them. We have no value to them,” McBride said. “The justice system thoroughly failed the survivors of these fires. They thoroughly failed us. That’s a fact.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McBride is among the vast majority of fire survivors who have yet to receive any money from the Fire Victim Trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wall Street analysts have taken notice that fire survivors appear stuck with the stock, because that means a quarter of PG&E’s stock remains off the market, providing stability to the stock price.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In June, when Trotter indicated his willingness to wait on selling the stock, analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith of Bank of America called the announcement a “de-risking factor,” or a reassuring sign for investors in the face of the company’s other risks — such as the fact that the company continues to be linked to new wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Critically trustee Justice John Trotter indicated in recent days that no imminent sales are planned as the Trust continues to work through issues of taxable gains on any share sales,” he wrote in a research note this summer. “We see this as potentially serving as [an] offsetting de-risking factor against otherwise elevated near-term fire risks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another analyst, Jonathan Arnold of Vertical Research Partners, referred to the trustee’s comments as “the glass-half-full headline takeaway for the market.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>‘Who is responsible for this?’\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Some fire survivors say they are caught in the middle of a Wall Street game that they never wanted to play. Their settlement has shifted PG&E’s myriad risks onto them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regardless of what happens to the stock now, Camp Fire survivor Tony Dunn wants to understand why PG&E was permitted to fund an amount of stock that ended up being worth $4.5 billion — not the promised $6.75 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It looks like they cut themselves a 33% discount. Where’s the oversight on this to say, ‘You can’t do that’?” Dunn told KQED by phone from his home near Asheville, North Carolina, where he and his wife, Jhan, moved about a year after they were displaced from Paradise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Did PG&E save money in this process? Was this PG&E’s lawyers? The hedge funds? This math was never right,” Dunn continued. “This is egregious and there’s absolutely no excuse for it. My biggest question now is, who is responsible for this? Who knew and let it happen anyway?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we asked PG&E to answer Dunn’s question about why the stock funding came in at billions of dollars less than promised, the company declined to answer. It provided a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We continue to honor the victims of the Camp Fire and previous fires, and all that was lost, by continuing the important work to reduce wildfire and other risk across our energy systems. We funded the trust in accordance with our plan of reorganization,” PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lily Jamali is a correspondent for KQED in San Francisco. She produced this investigation for The California Newsroom. Aaron Glantz, senior investigations editor for the Newsroom, edited this story together with Managing Editor Adriene Hill. It was copyedited by Jenny Pritchett of KQED.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>A federal judge demanded on Monday that PG&E explain why it didn’t immediately shut off electricity flowing through a power line with blown fuses at the ignition site of the Dixie Fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who oversees PG&E's criminal probation for federal pipeline safety violations arising from the 2010 San Bruno disaster, \u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.kqed.org/news/11881837/why-it-took-pge-9-5-hours-to-get-to-the-scene-where-dixie-fire-started&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1631581424828000&usg=AOvVaw2tXKZZ-eMnoJQVJUiBEOUO\">questioned delays in the response of an electrical equipment troubleshooter\u003c/a> — called a “troubleman” — that amounted to several hours and may have allowed a tree that had fallen onto a distribution line to ignite on July 13.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Dixie Fire has grown to become California’s largest single-origin wildfire and has burned more than 960,000 acres, or 1,500 square miles, as of Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“How come it took so long to get somebody there, and once they were there, why wasn’t it the smart thing to do to turn that power off?” Alsup said from the bench after two hours of testimony from the PG&E troubleshooter who responded to a power outage at Cresta Dam near the Butte-Plumas County border. The court has concealed the PG&E worker’s identity to protect his safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup said PG&E recognized that the power line was on one of the most dangerous of the utility’s circuits for starting a fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Why was the power left on in that circuit?” Alsup asked. “That’s the key question that you’ve got to answer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During questioning that was at times contentious, the worker recounted the steps he took when he arrived at Cresta Dam. He saw through his binoculars what looked like blown fuses on a power pole that would prove difficult to access. He said he did not see a fallen tree or any evidence of fire, and he decided to drive to the power pole.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t see this as a high danger,” he testified. “There hadn't been any wind, it was a calm day, and I didn’t see anything on the line.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took him about four hours of driving a one-way rocky road to reach the site, after he was further delayed by construction on a bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was only when he reached the pole and prepared to examine the blown fuses that he discovered a 40-foot Douglas-fir had fallen onto the line, and below it he saw a fire that he estimated was then between 600 and 800 square feet in size.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He tried to use his radio to call for help, but said he knew the signal in that area was spotty. Then he decided to try to fight the fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I basically slid probably 60 yards down this hill to the location with a 2-and-a-half-gallon fire extinguisher,” he said. “My concern was if I could keep it out of the canopy where the wind could get to it or it could go from tree to tree, that hopefully somebody would see the smoke and be able to help.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He eventually got in touch with a supervisor on his radio and would meet Cal Fire crews as the blaze grew into the evening to engulf a few acres.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the most dramatic testimony came as Alsup questioned the worker on statements he made over the radio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You say there’s a tree on the line that started the fire?” Alsup asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not going to deny that’s what I said,” the worker answered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=\"news_11885591,news_11881837,news_11881579\" label=\"More Dixie Fire Coverage\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Do you stand by your statement?” Alsup pressed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No, I do not,” the worker said. “All I can say is there was a tree on the line and there was a fire there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup asked what changed his mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Just thinking about other possibilities,” the worker said. “Possibly lightning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The judge noted that there was clear weather and no evidence of lightning strikes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Prior to today, have you given anyone any statement that contradicts your statement to dispatch that, ‘There’s a tree on the line that started the fire?’” Alsup asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The worker said he had not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The judge asked repeatedly why he didn’t think to go to a main-line switch just minutes from Cresta Dam and shut it off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The troubleshooter said he couldn’t see a tree on the line when he saw the blown fuses through his binoculars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I deemed that there was no hazard,” he testified.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Was this something you could rule out in your own mind: that there was in fact a tree on the line that you couldn’t see, it had not yet ignited,” Alsup asked, “and in the time it took for you to go that long route, the tree exploded into fire? Was that a possible scenario?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yes, that is possible,” the worker testified.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the end of questioning, the judge thanked the worker for his “single-handed effort to stop that fire, which is now the largest fire in California history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then he turned to a series of orders for PG&E.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said a declaration filed by a company expert was misleading and appeared to obfuscate that the distribution line in question had been ranked the 11th most dangerous for wildfire risk related to the utility’s equipment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ask yourself, why would somebody want to conceal that fact?” Alsup said. “I want that witness to file a new declaration, and if it’s not satisfactory we’re going to bring him in to explain himself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The judge said photographs of the tree showed burns that could indicate a “ground fault,” in which electricity traveled through the tree into the earth, starting a fire near its roots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are plenty of scar marks, burn marks all over that tree from the power that went through it,” Alsup said. “If that happens long enough, it catches the tree on fire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Is that a plausible explanation here of what occurred?” he asked the utility’s attorney. “What evidence do you have that that scenario is wrong?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E’s responses are due Friday.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The judge indicated it’s possible that PG&E could have prevented what’s grown to be the largest single-origin wildfire in state history if the utility had moved quickly to shut down power on a line with blown fuses that was a known fire threat.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A federal judge demanded on Monday that PG&E explain why it didn’t immediately shut off electricity flowing through a power line with blown fuses at the ignition site of the Dixie Fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who oversees PG&E's criminal probation for federal pipeline safety violations arising from the 2010 San Bruno disaster, \u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.kqed.org/news/11881837/why-it-took-pge-9-5-hours-to-get-to-the-scene-where-dixie-fire-started&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1631581424828000&usg=AOvVaw2tXKZZ-eMnoJQVJUiBEOUO\">questioned delays in the response of an electrical equipment troubleshooter\u003c/a> — called a “troubleman” — that amounted to several hours and may have allowed a tree that had fallen onto a distribution line to ignite on July 13.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Dixie Fire has grown to become California’s largest single-origin wildfire and has burned more than 960,000 acres, or 1,500 square miles, as of Monday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“How come it took so long to get somebody there, and once they were there, why wasn’t it the smart thing to do to turn that power off?” Alsup said from the bench after two hours of testimony from the PG&E troubleshooter who responded to a power outage at Cresta Dam near the Butte-Plumas County border. The court has concealed the PG&E worker’s identity to protect his safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup said PG&E recognized that the power line was on one of the most dangerous of the utility’s circuits for starting a fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Why was the power left on in that circuit?” Alsup asked. “That’s the key question that you’ve got to answer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During questioning that was at times contentious, the worker recounted the steps he took when he arrived at Cresta Dam. He saw through his binoculars what looked like blown fuses on a power pole that would prove difficult to access. He said he did not see a fallen tree or any evidence of fire, and he decided to drive to the power pole.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t see this as a high danger,” he testified. “There hadn't been any wind, it was a calm day, and I didn’t see anything on the line.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took him about four hours of driving a one-way rocky road to reach the site, after he was further delayed by construction on a bridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was only when he reached the pole and prepared to examine the blown fuses that he discovered a 40-foot Douglas-fir had fallen onto the line, and below it he saw a fire that he estimated was then between 600 and 800 square feet in size.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He tried to use his radio to call for help, but said he knew the signal in that area was spotty. Then he decided to try to fight the fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I basically slid probably 60 yards down this hill to the location with a 2-and-a-half-gallon fire extinguisher,” he said. “My concern was if I could keep it out of the canopy where the wind could get to it or it could go from tree to tree, that hopefully somebody would see the smoke and be able to help.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He eventually got in touch with a supervisor on his radio and would meet Cal Fire crews as the blaze grew into the evening to engulf a few acres.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the most dramatic testimony came as Alsup questioned the worker on statements he made over the radio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You say there’s a tree on the line that started the fire?” Alsup asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not going to deny that’s what I said,” the worker answered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Do you stand by your statement?” Alsup pressed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No, I do not,” the worker said. “All I can say is there was a tree on the line and there was a fire there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup asked what changed his mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Just thinking about other possibilities,” the worker said. “Possibly lightning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The judge noted that there was clear weather and no evidence of lightning strikes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Prior to today, have you given anyone any statement that contradicts your statement to dispatch that, ‘There’s a tree on the line that started the fire?’” Alsup asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The worker said he had not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The judge asked repeatedly why he didn’t think to go to a main-line switch just minutes from Cresta Dam and shut it off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The troubleshooter said he couldn’t see a tree on the line when he saw the blown fuses through his binoculars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I deemed that there was no hazard,” he testified.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Was this something you could rule out in your own mind: that there was in fact a tree on the line that you couldn’t see, it had not yet ignited,” Alsup asked, “and in the time it took for you to go that long route, the tree exploded into fire? Was that a possible scenario?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yes, that is possible,” the worker testified.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the end of questioning, the judge thanked the worker for his “single-handed effort to stop that fire, which is now the largest fire in California history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then he turned to a series of orders for PG&E.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said a declaration filed by a company expert was misleading and appeared to obfuscate that the distribution line in question had been ranked the 11th most dangerous for wildfire risk related to the utility’s equipment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ask yourself, why would somebody want to conceal that fact?” Alsup said. “I want that witness to file a new declaration, and if it’s not satisfactory we’re going to bring him in to explain himself.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The judge said photographs of the tree showed burns that could indicate a “ground fault,” in which electricity traveled through the tree into the earth, starting a fire near its roots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are plenty of scar marks, burn marks all over that tree from the power that went through it,” Alsup said. “If that happens long enough, it catches the tree on fire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Is that a plausible explanation here of what occurred?” he asked the utility’s attorney. “What evidence do you have that that scenario is wrong?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California is in the grip of another round of devastating wildfires, including history-making blazes that have jumped from one side of the Sierra to the other, fueled by overgrown forests thick with dry brush. But it hasn’t always been that way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For thousands of years before contact with Europeans, the Karuk people, like many others, tended their land with fire. The Karuk tribe is one of the largest in California, spanning parts of Humboldt and Siskiyou counties along the Klamath River. When the federal government took over managing the forest in the mid-1800s, it stripped the Karuk people of their relationship with fire. Suppressing cultural burning and indigenous fire management techniques has had profound effects, contributing to the mammoth fires burning year after year across the state. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this half-hour documentary, KQED Science reporter Danielle Venton walks through the forest with tribal leaders and witnesses a controlled burn firsthand. She looks at the relationship between the Karuk and cultural burning, and the tribe’s negotiations with the state of California to get that control back.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can find more of Danielle’s reporting on the Karuk \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1973196/the-karuk-used-fire-to-manage-the-forest-for-centuries-now-they-want-to-do-that-again\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">here.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California is in the grip of another round of devastating wildfires, including history-making blazes that have jumped from one side of the Sierra to the other, fueled by overgrown forests thick with dry brush. But it hasn’t always been that way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For thousands of years before contact with Europeans, the Karuk people, like many others, tended their land with fire. The Karuk tribe is one of the largest in California, spanning parts of Humboldt and Siskiyou counties along the Klamath River. When the federal government took over managing the forest in the mid-1800s, it stripped the Karuk people of their relationship with fire. Suppressing cultural burning and indigenous fire management techniques has had profound effects, contributing to the mammoth fires burning year after year across the state. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this half-hour documentary, KQED Science reporter Danielle Venton walks through the forest with tribal leaders and witnesses a controlled burn firsthand. She looks at the relationship between the Karuk and cultural burning, and the tribe’s negotiations with the state of California to get that control back.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can find more of Danielle’s reporting on the Karuk \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1973196/the-karuk-used-fire-to-manage-the-forest-for-centuries-now-they-want-to-do-that-again\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">here.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "PG&E Faces New Round of Questions Over Its Response at Outset of Dixie Fire",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated 1:40 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the \u003ca href=\"https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2021/7/14/dixie-fire/\">Dixie Fire\u003c/a> in the sixth week of its rampage through the northern Sierra and beyond, PG&E is facing new scrutiny over its possible role in igniting the blaze.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The utility is facing a tough new round of questions from U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is seeking new details about the company's response to a power line problem in the Feather River Canyon on July 13, the day the fire started.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of his inquiry, Alsup has ordered a PG&E worker who responded to the line problem and eventually discovered the beginnings of the Dixie Fire to appear at a court hearing set for Sept. 13. The judge said he will issue a subpoena to compel the worker's appearance if he does not attend voluntarily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup is overseeing PG&E's probation for criminal convictions arising from the deadly \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11287618/pge-gets-3m-fine-for-san-bruno-blast-must-advertise-its-conviction-on-tv\">2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline disaster\u003c/a>. He wants the company to more fully explain the actions of the worker, called a troubleman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In orders issued \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21045564/1417-usavpge-210817.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tuesday\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21045565/1418-usavpge-210818.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wednesday\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21046071/1419-usavpge-210819.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Thursday\u003c/a>, Alsup posed dozens of questions centering on events in the first 10 hours of the fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In filings submitted last month to the California Public Utilities Commission and Judge Alsup's court, PG&E reported that the first sign of problem in the area where the fire started was detected early July 13: A power outage was detected at the company's Cresta Dam, on the North Fork of the Feather River northeast of Oroville.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E's filing explained that remote sensing equipment had detected a momentary surge of current on the three-conductor line at 6:48 a.m. The surge was too brief — just a few thousandths of a second — for a safety device called a recloser to trip and shut off power through the line. That meant that current continued to flow through the line in an area well known to be at high risk for wildfires as PG&E began the process of investigating the problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most attention-getting detail in the company's account of its response was its admission that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11881837/why-it-took-pge-9-5-hours-to-get-to-the-scene-where-dixie-fire-started\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">it took nearly 10 hours\u003c/a> after the first sign of a problem for its troubleman to reach the site where a 70-foot Douglas-fir tree had fallen across a power line and ignited a small fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11881837 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/07/dixiefire-1536x851.jpg']The worker tried unsuccessfully to extinguish the blaze, which he described as growing to about 1,200 square feet as he fought it. A fire crew that happened to be driving up the other side of the Feather River on Highway 70 had already spotted the flames and, a few minutes after 5 p.m., reported the incident to a Cal Fire dispatcher as an \"established\" fire measuring about 40 feet by 40 feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his long list of queries, Judge Alsup asks PG&E to explain why the power line problem apparently took so long to ignite the small fire the troubleman first encountered. Noting that no one had spotted a fire before the PG&E worker arrived at the site, Alsup asked, \"What, if anything, did the troubleman do upon his arrival at the site that might have accidentally caused the fire?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup's questions include a back-and-forth between the judge and PG&E over what the company knows about a drone flight that interfered with firefighters in the hours immediately following the discovery of the Dixie Fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11884337/investigators-probing-pges-possible-link-to-fateful-dixie-fire-drone-flight\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ordered the company \u003c/a>on Aug. 6 to tell him what it knows about the drone, including whether it might have been flown by a contractor. In a response filed Monday, PG&E \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11885363/pge-tells-judge-it-knows-nothing-about-dixie-fire-drone-flight\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">flatly denied\u003c/a> knowing anything about the drone flight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But on Tuesday, Alsup posed the drone question again. The judge said he had information by way of the court monitor assigned to track PG&E's safety performance that the company might know something about the drone after all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The court has received information that PG&E informed the monitor of the following: PG&E believed that the drone that interfered with Dixie firefighting on July 13 was being flown by a PG&E contractor at the time of the interference,\" Alsup wrote. \"PG&E believed that the contractor was not doing work for PG&E at the time of the interference, however, because records indicated that it had completed PG&E surveillance work for the day. Is it true that PG&E did believe that a PG&E contractor operated the drone (regardless of whether it was on behalf of PG&E or not)? What was the source of this information? Does PG&E still believe that?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, PG&E reiterated it's \"not aware of any evidence that the company or any of its contractors operated a drone anywhere near the start of the Dixie fire on July 13.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We intend to update the court on what appears to be a misunderstanding based on early reports and preliminary information,\" the company said. \"We will clarify this information with the court and seek to clarify all stakeholders' understanding of the facts.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Dixie Fire has burned more than 1,050 square miles over the past 38 days, has destroyed more than 500 homes and continues to threaten communities in Lassen, Plumas and Tehama counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated 1:40 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the \u003ca href=\"https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2021/7/14/dixie-fire/\">Dixie Fire\u003c/a> in the sixth week of its rampage through the northern Sierra and beyond, PG&E is facing new scrutiny over its possible role in igniting the blaze.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The utility is facing a tough new round of questions from U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is seeking new details about the company's response to a power line problem in the Feather River Canyon on July 13, the day the fire started.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of his inquiry, Alsup has ordered a PG&E worker who responded to the line problem and eventually discovered the beginnings of the Dixie Fire to appear at a court hearing set for Sept. 13. The judge said he will issue a subpoena to compel the worker's appearance if he does not attend voluntarily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup is overseeing PG&E's probation for criminal convictions arising from the deadly \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11287618/pge-gets-3m-fine-for-san-bruno-blast-must-advertise-its-conviction-on-tv\">2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline disaster\u003c/a>. He wants the company to more fully explain the actions of the worker, called a troubleman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In orders issued \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21045564/1417-usavpge-210817.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tuesday\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21045565/1418-usavpge-210818.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wednesday\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21046071/1419-usavpge-210819.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Thursday\u003c/a>, Alsup posed dozens of questions centering on events in the first 10 hours of the fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In filings submitted last month to the California Public Utilities Commission and Judge Alsup's court, PG&E reported that the first sign of problem in the area where the fire started was detected early July 13: A power outage was detected at the company's Cresta Dam, on the North Fork of the Feather River northeast of Oroville.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E's filing explained that remote sensing equipment had detected a momentary surge of current on the three-conductor line at 6:48 a.m. The surge was too brief — just a few thousandths of a second — for a safety device called a recloser to trip and shut off power through the line. That meant that current continued to flow through the line in an area well known to be at high risk for wildfires as PG&E began the process of investigating the problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most attention-getting detail in the company's account of its response was its admission that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11881837/why-it-took-pge-9-5-hours-to-get-to-the-scene-where-dixie-fire-started\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">it took nearly 10 hours\u003c/a> after the first sign of a problem for its troubleman to reach the site where a 70-foot Douglas-fir tree had fallen across a power line and ignited a small fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The worker tried unsuccessfully to extinguish the blaze, which he described as growing to about 1,200 square feet as he fought it. A fire crew that happened to be driving up the other side of the Feather River on Highway 70 had already spotted the flames and, a few minutes after 5 p.m., reported the incident to a Cal Fire dispatcher as an \"established\" fire measuring about 40 feet by 40 feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his long list of queries, Judge Alsup asks PG&E to explain why the power line problem apparently took so long to ignite the small fire the troubleman first encountered. Noting that no one had spotted a fire before the PG&E worker arrived at the site, Alsup asked, \"What, if anything, did the troubleman do upon his arrival at the site that might have accidentally caused the fire?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup's questions include a back-and-forth between the judge and PG&E over what the company knows about a drone flight that interfered with firefighters in the hours immediately following the discovery of the Dixie Fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11884337/investigators-probing-pges-possible-link-to-fateful-dixie-fire-drone-flight\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ordered the company \u003c/a>on Aug. 6 to tell him what it knows about the drone, including whether it might have been flown by a contractor. In a response filed Monday, PG&E \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11885363/pge-tells-judge-it-knows-nothing-about-dixie-fire-drone-flight\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">flatly denied\u003c/a> knowing anything about the drone flight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But on Tuesday, Alsup posed the drone question again. The judge said he had information by way of the court monitor assigned to track PG&E's safety performance that the company might know something about the drone after all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The court has received information that PG&E informed the monitor of the following: PG&E believed that the drone that interfered with Dixie firefighting on July 13 was being flown by a PG&E contractor at the time of the interference,\" Alsup wrote. \"PG&E believed that the contractor was not doing work for PG&E at the time of the interference, however, because records indicated that it had completed PG&E surveillance work for the day. Is it true that PG&E did believe that a PG&E contractor operated the drone (regardless of whether it was on behalf of PG&E or not)? What was the source of this information? Does PG&E still believe that?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, PG&E reiterated it's \"not aware of any evidence that the company or any of its contractors operated a drone anywhere near the start of the Dixie fire on July 13.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We intend to update the court on what appears to be a misunderstanding based on early reports and preliminary information,\" the company said. \"We will clarify this information with the court and seek to clarify all stakeholders' understanding of the facts.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Dixie Fire has burned more than 1,050 square miles over the past 38 days, has destroyed more than 500 homes and continues to threaten communities in Lassen, Plumas and Tehama counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>PG&E told a federal judge Monday it has no knowledge of a drone flight that interfered with firefighters last month during the very first hours of the Dixie Fire, a blaze that has become the largest single-origin wildfire in modern California history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11884665/fbi-faa-investigating-dixie-fire-drone-incident\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">FBI, Federal Aviation Administration \u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11884337/investigators-probing-pges-possible-link-to-fateful-dixie-fire-drone-flight\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">local prosecutors\u003c/a> all are investigating who was flying the drone, which a Cal Fire air attack pilot spotted early the evening of July 13 as tankers and a water-dropping helicopter were working to extinguish the fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11881837/why-it-took-pge-9-5-hours-to-get-to-the-scene-where-dixie-fire-started\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The blaze started\u003c/a> July 13 when a tree fell across PG&E power lines adjacent to one of the company’s hydropower dams on the Feather River.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those circumstances prompted U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing PG&E’s five-year term of probation for a criminal conviction arising from the 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline disaster, \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21039022/1415-usavpge-210806.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">to order\u003c/a> the company to tell him what it knows about the drone flight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=\"news_11884665,news_11884337,news_11881837\" label=\"Related Posts\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In its \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21044045/1416-usavpge-210816.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reply\u003c/a> on Monday, PG&E said it knows nothing about the drone — who was flying it or what the flight’s purpose was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“PG&E has not identified any individual or company who flew a drone near the Dixie Fire on the evening of July 13, 2021,” the company filing said. “PG&E has seen no indication that any PG&E employee or contractor was instructed or asked to — or did — fly a drone” near the fire on the date it started.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Cal Fire updates in the fire’s early hours, the blaze had burned an acre or two at the time an agency pilot saw the drone and called off aerial firefighting about 45 minutes before they would have had to return to their bases because of darkness. With ground crews experiencing difficulty getting to the remote site of the fire in the Feather River Canyon, the blaze expanded to 1,200 acres by the next morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Five weeks later, the conflagration has consumed about 604,000 acres of northern Sierra forest as of Tuesday and destroyed nearly 1,200 structures, including 600 homes. The incident continues to pose a serious threat to communities in Plumas and Lassen counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Authorities continued to issue new evacuation orders and warnings on Monday. The Lassen County Sheriff’s Office issued a warning — an advisory that residents should make preparations to leave — for part of Susanville, a town of 15,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>PG&E told a federal judge Monday it has no knowledge of a drone flight that interfered with firefighters last month during the very first hours of the Dixie Fire, a blaze that has become the largest single-origin wildfire in modern California history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11884665/fbi-faa-investigating-dixie-fire-drone-incident\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">FBI, Federal Aviation Administration \u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11884337/investigators-probing-pges-possible-link-to-fateful-dixie-fire-drone-flight\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">local prosecutors\u003c/a> all are investigating who was flying the drone, which a Cal Fire air attack pilot spotted early the evening of July 13 as tankers and a water-dropping helicopter were working to extinguish the fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11881837/why-it-took-pge-9-5-hours-to-get-to-the-scene-where-dixie-fire-started\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The blaze started\u003c/a> July 13 when a tree fell across PG&E power lines adjacent to one of the company’s hydropower dams on the Feather River.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those circumstances prompted U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing PG&E’s five-year term of probation for a criminal conviction arising from the 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline disaster, \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21039022/1415-usavpge-210806.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">to order\u003c/a> the company to tell him what it knows about the drone flight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In its \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21044045/1416-usavpge-210816.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reply\u003c/a> on Monday, PG&E said it knows nothing about the drone — who was flying it or what the flight’s purpose was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“PG&E has not identified any individual or company who flew a drone near the Dixie Fire on the evening of July 13, 2021,” the company filing said. “PG&E has seen no indication that any PG&E employee or contractor was instructed or asked to — or did — fly a drone” near the fire on the date it started.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Cal Fire updates in the fire’s early hours, the blaze had burned an acre or two at the time an agency pilot saw the drone and called off aerial firefighting about 45 minutes before they would have had to return to their bases because of darkness. With ground crews experiencing difficulty getting to the remote site of the fire in the Feather River Canyon, the blaze expanded to 1,200 acres by the next morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Five weeks later, the conflagration has consumed about 604,000 acres of northern Sierra forest as of Tuesday and destroyed nearly 1,200 structures, including 600 homes. The incident continues to pose a serious threat to communities in Plumas and Lassen counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Authorities continued to issue new evacuation orders and warnings on Monday. The Lassen County Sheriff’s Office issued a warning — an advisory that residents should make preparations to leave — for part of Susanville, a town of 15,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated 5:50 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2021.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday it’s working closely with the FBI to investigate a drone flight that interfered with Cal Fire aircraft during the first hours of the agency’s fight to control the Dixie Fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The FAA’s announcement came in a one-sentence emailed statement. An agency spokesperson referred questions to the FBI’s Sacramento field office, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the scope of the investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey, who is leading a probe into the fire, said his office reached out to the FBI soon after the July 13 incident. He said investigators have been taking advantage of FBI technology — what he called “trick resources” — to try to identify the drone and its operator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11884337,news_11881837]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/46320\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Federal law\u003c/a> provides for a civil penalty of as much as $20,000 for any drone operator who “knowingly or recklessly interferes with a wildfire suppression, law enforcement, or emergency response effort.” \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=402.&nodeTreePath=4.9&lawCode=PEN\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">California law\u003c/a> makes it a misdemeanor for a drone operator to interfere with emergency responders, including firefighters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On July 13, a Cal Fire pilot observed a drone over the fire, just hours after \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11881837/why-it-took-pge-9-5-hours-to-get-to-the-scene-where-dixie-fire-started\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">it started\u003c/a> in the Feather River Canyon northeast of Oroville. The drone appeared as the agency’s air tankers and a water-dropping helicopter worked to extinguish the blaze.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ramsey, who’s leading a local law enforcement investigation of the incident, has said interference from the drone may have prevented the fire from being contained when it was still a minor incident.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The blaze escaped control and over the past four weeks has burned through more than a half-million acres of northern Sierra forest and destroyed the Plumas County town of Greenville.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire units conducted a brief, unsuccessful search for the drone operator after the remotely operated aircraft was seen near the fire. The fire agency also alerted the sheriffs’ offices in Butte and Plumas counties and the California Highway Patrol.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As KQED reported earlier this week, Ramsey’s office \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11884337/investigators-probing-pges-possible-link-to-fateful-dixie-fire-drone-flight\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">is investigating\u003c/a> whether the drone was operated by PG&E or one of its contractors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Separately, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco has ordered the company to say what it knows about drone flights in the area of the fire. Alsup is overseeing PG&E’s criminal probation for violating federal pipeline safety laws and obstructing a National Transportation Safety Board investigation into the company’s deadly 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline explosion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E says no drones authorized to do work for the company were operating in Butte and Plumas counties at the time of the incursion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire and the district attorneys’ offices in Butte and Plumas counties are investigating what started the Dixie Fire. PG&E has acknowledged in filings with the California Public Utilities Commission and Judge Alsup’s court that the blaze started at a site where a 70-foot Douglas-fir had fallen across its power lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated 5:50 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2021.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday it’s working closely with the FBI to investigate a drone flight that interfered with Cal Fire aircraft during the first hours of the agency’s fight to control the Dixie Fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The FAA’s announcement came in a one-sentence emailed statement. An agency spokesperson referred questions to the FBI’s Sacramento field office, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the scope of the investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey, who is leading a probe into the fire, said his office reached out to the FBI soon after the July 13 incident. He said investigators have been taking advantage of FBI technology — what he called “trick resources” — to try to identify the drone and its operator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/46320\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Federal law\u003c/a> provides for a civil penalty of as much as $20,000 for any drone operator who “knowingly or recklessly interferes with a wildfire suppression, law enforcement, or emergency response effort.” \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=402.&nodeTreePath=4.9&lawCode=PEN\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">California law\u003c/a> makes it a misdemeanor for a drone operator to interfere with emergency responders, including firefighters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On July 13, a Cal Fire pilot observed a drone over the fire, just hours after \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11881837/why-it-took-pge-9-5-hours-to-get-to-the-scene-where-dixie-fire-started\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">it started\u003c/a> in the Feather River Canyon northeast of Oroville. The drone appeared as the agency’s air tankers and a water-dropping helicopter worked to extinguish the blaze.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ramsey, who’s leading a local law enforcement investigation of the incident, has said interference from the drone may have prevented the fire from being contained when it was still a minor incident.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The blaze escaped control and over the past four weeks has burned through more than a half-million acres of northern Sierra forest and destroyed the Plumas County town of Greenville.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire units conducted a brief, unsuccessful search for the drone operator after the remotely operated aircraft was seen near the fire. The fire agency also alerted the sheriffs’ offices in Butte and Plumas counties and the California Highway Patrol.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As KQED reported earlier this week, Ramsey’s office \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11884337/investigators-probing-pges-possible-link-to-fateful-dixie-fire-drone-flight\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">is investigating\u003c/a> whether the drone was operated by PG&E or one of its contractors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Separately, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco has ordered the company to say what it knows about drone flights in the area of the fire. Alsup is overseeing PG&E’s criminal probation for violating federal pipeline safety laws and obstructing a National Transportation Safety Board investigation into the company’s deadly 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline explosion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E says no drones authorized to do work for the company were operating in Butte and Plumas counties at the time of the incursion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire and the district attorneys’ offices in Butte and Plumas counties are investigating what started the Dixie Fire. PG&E has acknowledged in filings with the California Public Utilities Commission and Judge Alsup’s court that the blaze started at a site where a 70-foot Douglas-fir had fallen across its power lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Former Professor Accused of Arson Near Dixie Fire – Blazes Could Have Trapped Firefighters",
"title": "Former Professor Accused of Arson Near Dixie Fire – Blazes Could Have Trapped Firefighters",
"headTitle": "KQED News",
"content": "\u003cp>Firefighters battling the massive Dixie Fire have also been facing a second enemy: a serial arsonist who went on a spree of setting fires in July and August — and who sought to trap fire crews with his fires, according to agents from the U.S. Forest Service. They allege former college professor Gary Maynard is the culprit, citing their tracking of his movements and other evidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Where Maynard went, fires started. Not just once, but over and over again,\" the government said in a court memorandum arguing for Maynard, who was arrested Saturday, to be denied bail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A judge agreed to that request during a brief hearing Wednesday, saying there are no \"conditions or combination of conditions that would provide the necessary level of safety to this community should the defendant be released.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added: \"Based on that finding, the defendant will be detained as a risk of non-appearance and a danger to the community.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maynard's next court appearance is scheduled for Aug. 24, a representative of the U.S. attorney's office in Sacramento told NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While court documents allege that Maynard is connected to more than a half-dozen dangerous fires in Northern California, he is currently charged with starting only the Ranch Fire. That blaze broke out on Saturday morning in a remote area where, according to court records, Maynard had just camped for the night. It's one of three fires that officials said Maynard set in recent days — all of them close to the Dixie Fire's northeastern footprint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"He entered the evacuation zone and began setting fires behind the first responders fighting the Dixie fire,\" the U.S. attorney's office in Sacramento said in court papers. It added, \"Maynard's fires were placed in the perfect position to increase the risk of firefighters being trapped between fires.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maynard's alleged offenses \"show that he is particularly dangerous, even among arsonists,\" the federal prosecutors said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If it weren't for the surveillance federal agents were conducting on Maynard, the fires would have been much worse and the risk to firefighters would have been greater, the document said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11884691\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1879px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11884691\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/08/gary-maynard-fires-map_wide-2150410ca6ad7b04afb833cef201f77a6606776d.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1879\" height=\"1059\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/08/gary-maynard-fires-map_wide-2150410ca6ad7b04afb833cef201f77a6606776d.jpg 1879w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/08/gary-maynard-fires-map_wide-2150410ca6ad7b04afb833cef201f77a6606776d-800x451.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/08/gary-maynard-fires-map_wide-2150410ca6ad7b04afb833cef201f77a6606776d-1020x575.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/08/gary-maynard-fires-map_wide-2150410ca6ad7b04afb833cef201f77a6606776d-160x90.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/08/gary-maynard-fires-map_wide-2150410ca6ad7b04afb833cef201f77a6606776d-1536x866.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1879px) 100vw, 1879px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A map submitted with court papers shows the massive Dixie Fire, in red, along with three fires that U.S. Forest Service agents allege Maynard set. No. 1 marks the approximate location of the Moon Fire, which started Aug. 5; No. 2 refers to the Ranch Fire; and No. 3 refers to the Conard Fire. The latter two ignited on Saturday. \u003ccite>(Courtesy U.S. Forest Service)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>Maynard Identified After His Car Got Stuck Near a Fire\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Maynard, 47, is a former professor who has taught at colleges in the Bay Area and in New York, according to online records. Last fall, he taught in the criminology and criminal justice department at \u003ca href=\"https://ccjs.sonoma.edu/news-events/ccjs-welcomes-new-lecturers-fall-2020\">Sonoma State University\u003c/a>, which says in its official bio for Maynard that he has a doctorate in sociology and three master's degrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His teaching and research, the school said, focuses on topics that include the \"sociology of health, deviance and crime\" and environmental sociology. Maynard also has connections to other schools, from Stony Brook University in New York (where he received his doctorate) to Santa Clara University, where he also taught.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On July 20, Maynard was spotted near the scene of the Cascade Fire, on the western slopes of Mount Shasta. A mountain biker in those remote woods had noticed signs of a fire, called 911 and then worked to limit the fire's spread.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Forest Service fire investigator determined the Cascade Fire was likely the result of arson. He also noticed that on a dirt road 150 to 200 yards from the fire, a man was struggling to free his car, a black Kia Soul, after the vehicle's rear had failed to clear a partially buried boulder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A witness told investigators that the man, later identified as Maynard, had arrived several hours before the fire started, court records show. The witness said the man had walked off in the direction of where the fire eventually ignited, returning around 10 minutes later. After the man returned, the witness recalled, smoke from the Cascade Fire became visible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The investigator kept his distance from Maynard, citing the man's \"uncooperative and agitated behavior.\" But he took a picture of his car, and the license plate number led to Maynard. Forest Service agents also measured and recorded data about the tire tread pattern left by Maynard's car — evidence that they say ties him to a string of arson wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Read the full complaint \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21040032/maynard-complaint-usfs.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Tracking an Arson Suspect\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In an affidavit requesting an arrest warrant for Maynard, U.S. Forest Service Special Agent Tyler Bolen said he used a variety of means to learn more about the arson suspect, from internet searches that turned up his ties to colleges to inquiries with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The USDA, Bolen says, confirmed that Maynard had an electronic benefits transfer account. Tracing his use of the card at grocery stores, the Forest Service was able to place Maynard close to the time and place where a number of fires were set, according to Bolen's affidavit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The EBT account showed Maynard made purchases at a Safeway in Fortuna, along California's coast, on July 18, and then, a week later, at a Safeway store in Susanville — some 260 miles inland, just east of the Lassen National Forest across the Sierra from where the Dixie Fire erupted in mid-July, the affidavit said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since Maynard's car was registered in San José, Bolen also contacted the San José Police Department, which passed along a 2020 warning from a colleague who had reported her concern for Maynard's well-being, citing a severe mental health crisis. Crucially, the police agency shared Maynard's cellphone number, which was later confirmed to be linked to his EBT account, according to the affidavit.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Part of 'An Arson-Setting Spree'\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Investigators said they've connected Maynard to a string of fires in Northern California, as early as the Bradley Fire that destroyed over 300 acres on July 11, and possibly as early as the Sweetbriar Fire on July 6. Both of those blazes struck in the Mount Shasta area, northwest of the Lassen National Forest where the Dixie Fire is still raging.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In recent days, authorities said, Maynard set numerous fires in the Lassen area — part of \"an arson-setting spree,\" Bolen said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In late July, Forest Service agents grew so concerned about Maynard's actions that they also asked Verizon Wireless for 15-minute updates on his location, 24 hours a day. Eventually, an agent also installed a tracker on Maynard's car, according to Bolen's affidavit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agents used that data to follow along behind Maynard, putting out several fires and gathering evidence that could link him to the blazes. Investigators also obtained warrants requiring Verizon Wireless to preserve evidence from Maynard's cellphone account that could show his movements and activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Saturday, Lassen County sheriff's deputies arrested Maynard after a California Highway Patrol officer initially pulled him over for driving in an emergency closure area.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Maynard Denies Starting the Fires\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>After his arrest, Maynard told Forest Service agents he had not started any fires. He was then booked into the Lassen County Jail on a charge of violating a state law that forbids entering a closed emergency area. But later Saturday, a deputy told him that a federal felony arson charge was being added. An angry Maynard insisted that he is innocent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I'm going to kill you, f***ing pig! I told those f***ers I didn't start any of those fires!\" he said to the deputy, according to the affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maynard was later transferred to Sacramento County's jail. He had a brief court appearance by video Tuesday, followed by his detention hearing on Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the days before he was taken into custody, Maynard allegedly set the Moon Fire on Aug. 5, as well as the Ranch and Conard fires, which both ignited on Saturday, according to Bolen's affidavit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maynard now faces federal charges of setting fire to land that's owned by the U.S. or is under its jurisdiction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">npr.org\u003c/a>.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=A+Former+College+Professor+Accused+Of+Serial+Arson+Is+Denied+Bail+In+California&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Gary Maynard, who taught criminology in the Bay Area, is accused of setting multiple fires near the Dixie Fire in locations that indicated he sought to trap firefighters.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Firefighters battling the massive Dixie Fire have also been facing a second enemy: a serial arsonist who went on a spree of setting fires in July and August — and who sought to trap fire crews with his fires, according to agents from the U.S. Forest Service. They allege former college professor Gary Maynard is the culprit, citing their tracking of his movements and other evidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Where Maynard went, fires started. Not just once, but over and over again,\" the government said in a court memorandum arguing for Maynard, who was arrested Saturday, to be denied bail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A judge agreed to that request during a brief hearing Wednesday, saying there are no \"conditions or combination of conditions that would provide the necessary level of safety to this community should the defendant be released.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added: \"Based on that finding, the defendant will be detained as a risk of non-appearance and a danger to the community.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maynard's next court appearance is scheduled for Aug. 24, a representative of the U.S. attorney's office in Sacramento told NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While court documents allege that Maynard is connected to more than a half-dozen dangerous fires in Northern California, he is currently charged with starting only the Ranch Fire. That blaze broke out on Saturday morning in a remote area where, according to court records, Maynard had just camped for the night. It's one of three fires that officials said Maynard set in recent days — all of them close to the Dixie Fire's northeastern footprint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"He entered the evacuation zone and began setting fires behind the first responders fighting the Dixie fire,\" the U.S. attorney's office in Sacramento said in court papers. It added, \"Maynard's fires were placed in the perfect position to increase the risk of firefighters being trapped between fires.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maynard's alleged offenses \"show that he is particularly dangerous, even among arsonists,\" the federal prosecutors said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If it weren't for the surveillance federal agents were conducting on Maynard, the fires would have been much worse and the risk to firefighters would have been greater, the document said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11884691\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1879px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11884691\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/08/gary-maynard-fires-map_wide-2150410ca6ad7b04afb833cef201f77a6606776d.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1879\" height=\"1059\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/08/gary-maynard-fires-map_wide-2150410ca6ad7b04afb833cef201f77a6606776d.jpg 1879w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/08/gary-maynard-fires-map_wide-2150410ca6ad7b04afb833cef201f77a6606776d-800x451.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/08/gary-maynard-fires-map_wide-2150410ca6ad7b04afb833cef201f77a6606776d-1020x575.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/08/gary-maynard-fires-map_wide-2150410ca6ad7b04afb833cef201f77a6606776d-160x90.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/08/gary-maynard-fires-map_wide-2150410ca6ad7b04afb833cef201f77a6606776d-1536x866.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1879px) 100vw, 1879px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A map submitted with court papers shows the massive Dixie Fire, in red, along with three fires that U.S. Forest Service agents allege Maynard set. No. 1 marks the approximate location of the Moon Fire, which started Aug. 5; No. 2 refers to the Ranch Fire; and No. 3 refers to the Conard Fire. The latter two ignited on Saturday. \u003ccite>(Courtesy U.S. Forest Service)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>Maynard Identified After His Car Got Stuck Near a Fire\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Maynard, 47, is a former professor who has taught at colleges in the Bay Area and in New York, according to online records. Last fall, he taught in the criminology and criminal justice department at \u003ca href=\"https://ccjs.sonoma.edu/news-events/ccjs-welcomes-new-lecturers-fall-2020\">Sonoma State University\u003c/a>, which says in its official bio for Maynard that he has a doctorate in sociology and three master's degrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His teaching and research, the school said, focuses on topics that include the \"sociology of health, deviance and crime\" and environmental sociology. Maynard also has connections to other schools, from Stony Brook University in New York (where he received his doctorate) to Santa Clara University, where he also taught.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On July 20, Maynard was spotted near the scene of the Cascade Fire, on the western slopes of Mount Shasta. A mountain biker in those remote woods had noticed signs of a fire, called 911 and then worked to limit the fire's spread.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Forest Service fire investigator determined the Cascade Fire was likely the result of arson. He also noticed that on a dirt road 150 to 200 yards from the fire, a man was struggling to free his car, a black Kia Soul, after the vehicle's rear had failed to clear a partially buried boulder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A witness told investigators that the man, later identified as Maynard, had arrived several hours before the fire started, court records show. The witness said the man had walked off in the direction of where the fire eventually ignited, returning around 10 minutes later. After the man returned, the witness recalled, smoke from the Cascade Fire became visible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The investigator kept his distance from Maynard, citing the man's \"uncooperative and agitated behavior.\" But he took a picture of his car, and the license plate number led to Maynard. Forest Service agents also measured and recorded data about the tire tread pattern left by Maynard's car — evidence that they say ties him to a string of arson wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Read the full complaint \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21040032/maynard-complaint-usfs.pdf\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Tracking an Arson Suspect\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In an affidavit requesting an arrest warrant for Maynard, U.S. Forest Service Special Agent Tyler Bolen said he used a variety of means to learn more about the arson suspect, from internet searches that turned up his ties to colleges to inquiries with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The USDA, Bolen says, confirmed that Maynard had an electronic benefits transfer account. Tracing his use of the card at grocery stores, the Forest Service was able to place Maynard close to the time and place where a number of fires were set, according to Bolen's affidavit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The EBT account showed Maynard made purchases at a Safeway in Fortuna, along California's coast, on July 18, and then, a week later, at a Safeway store in Susanville — some 260 miles inland, just east of the Lassen National Forest across the Sierra from where the Dixie Fire erupted in mid-July, the affidavit said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since Maynard's car was registered in San José, Bolen also contacted the San José Police Department, which passed along a 2020 warning from a colleague who had reported her concern for Maynard's well-being, citing a severe mental health crisis. Crucially, the police agency shared Maynard's cellphone number, which was later confirmed to be linked to his EBT account, according to the affidavit.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Part of 'An Arson-Setting Spree'\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Investigators said they've connected Maynard to a string of fires in Northern California, as early as the Bradley Fire that destroyed over 300 acres on July 11, and possibly as early as the Sweetbriar Fire on July 6. Both of those blazes struck in the Mount Shasta area, northwest of the Lassen National Forest where the Dixie Fire is still raging.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In recent days, authorities said, Maynard set numerous fires in the Lassen area — part of \"an arson-setting spree,\" Bolen said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In late July, Forest Service agents grew so concerned about Maynard's actions that they also asked Verizon Wireless for 15-minute updates on his location, 24 hours a day. Eventually, an agent also installed a tracker on Maynard's car, according to Bolen's affidavit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agents used that data to follow along behind Maynard, putting out several fires and gathering evidence that could link him to the blazes. Investigators also obtained warrants requiring Verizon Wireless to preserve evidence from Maynard's cellphone account that could show his movements and activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Saturday, Lassen County sheriff's deputies arrested Maynard after a California Highway Patrol officer initially pulled him over for driving in an emergency closure area.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Maynard Denies Starting the Fires\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>After his arrest, Maynard told Forest Service agents he had not started any fires. He was then booked into the Lassen County Jail on a charge of violating a state law that forbids entering a closed emergency area. But later Saturday, a deputy told him that a federal felony arson charge was being added. An angry Maynard insisted that he is innocent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I'm going to kill you, f***ing pig! I told those f***ers I didn't start any of those fires!\" he said to the deputy, according to the affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maynard was later transferred to Sacramento County's jail. He had a brief court appearance by video Tuesday, followed by his detention hearing on Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the days before he was taken into custody, Maynard allegedly set the Moon Fire on Aug. 5, as well as the Ranch and Conard fires, which both ignited on Saturday, according to Bolen's affidavit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maynard now faces federal charges of setting fire to land that's owned by the U.S. or is under its jurisdiction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">npr.org\u003c/a>.\u003cimg src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=A+Former+College+Professor+Accused+Of+Serial+Arson+Is+Denied+Bail+In+California&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated 4:25 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Butte County district attorney is investigating whether a drone that reportedly interfered with firefighting aircraft in the crucial first hours of the Dixie Fire was operated by PG&E or one of its contractors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>District Attorney Mike Ramsey says the drone’s incursion over the fire on July 13 may have prevented Cal Fire aircraft from stopping the blaze when it had burned an acre or two. As of Tuesday, the Dixie Fire had consumed nearly a half million acres of northern Sierra Nevada forest and become the largest single-origin (non-complex) fire in modern California history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire and local prosecutors are investigating whether a PG&E power line touched off the fire, which began four weeks ago near one of the utility’s hydroelectric dams on the North Fork of the Feather River.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ramsey said Monday the company has reported that it had been operating drones over Plumas County the day the fire started, but not close to its ignition point near Cresta Dam. He added the company has been cooperating with his investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“PG&E had drones, they indicated, not in that area but up in the Greenville area” on the day the fire started, Ramsey said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Greenville, a town of 1,000 that burned down last week as the Dixie Fire grew to its current size of about 487,000 acres, is 30 miles northeast of where the fire started.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ramsey said his office is also checking whether a PG&E contractor might have been responsible for the drone flight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“PG&E does contract with drone companies and has for a while” as part of its efforts to improve maintenance of its power infrastructure, Ramsey said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E declined comment on the drone issue when the subject came up in a federal judge’s order last Friday night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing PG&E’s probation for a criminal conviction arising from the deadly 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline explosion, issued \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21039022/1415-usavpge-210806.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the Friday night order\u003c/a> seeking information about PG&E’s possible connection to the drone flight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Describe the purpose of the drone’s surveillance,” Alsup wrote. “If the drone was not working for PG&E when it flew close to the Dixie Fire, please inform the court for whom the drone was working. Also explain what the drone was doing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside tag=\"wildfires\" label=\"Related Posts\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup directed the company to respond to his questions by Aug. 16.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked after Alsup issued his order whether the company was involved with the July 13 drone flight or any other drone operations at or near the site where the Dixie Fire started, PG&E spokesperson Matt Nauman said in a Saturday email, “We’re aware of the judge’s order and we’ll respond by the deadline.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, after this story published Tuesday afternoon, PG&E said no drones authorized to do work for the company were in the air at the time of the incursion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Drone dispatch records and records of work performed show that all of the drones authorized to fly on behalf of PG&E on July 13, 2021, in Butte or Plumas Counties had completed their flights for PG&E by approximately 12:30 p.m.,” company spokesman James Noonan said in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E has reported in filings to the court and the California Public Utilities Commission that an electrical problem was detected just before 7 a.m. on July 13 at Cresta Dam, on the North Fork of the Feather River about 25 miles northeast of Oroville.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took PG&E workers \u003ca class=\"c-link\" href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11881837/why-it-took-pge-9-5-hours-to-get-to-the-scene-where-dixie-fire-started\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-sk=\"tooltip_parent\">more than five hours\u003c/a> after the first indication of trouble to trace it to a section of a 12,000-volt power line located a quarter-mile away from — and 800 feet above — the dam. It took more than four additional hours for one of those utility workers, delayed by a steep, narrow, twisting road and an out-of-commission bridge, to get to the power line. There he found that a 70-foot Douglas-fir had fallen across the line’s three wires and ignited a small fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The worker tried unsuccessfully to extinguish the blaze, which by that point measured about 40 feet by 40 feet. A fire crew that happened to be driving up the other side of the river on Highway 70 had already spotted the blaze and, a few minutes after 5 p.m., reported it to a Cal Fire dispatcher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire responded with two air tankers that dropped fire retardant to limit the spread of the blaze while a helicopter made repeated water drops on the blaze to hold it in check until ground crews arrived. Slowed by the same narrow road and out-of-service bridge that hampered the PG&E worker’s journey, the first handful of firefighters didn’t arrive on the scene for more than two hours after the incident was first reported.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then at about 7:45 p.m., with about 45 minutes of daylight remaining to continue flying, a Cal Fire air attack pilot spotted a drone over the fire. Following standard practice for wildland firefighting, Cal Fire suspended air operations, and the air attack plane, tankers and helicopter returned to their bases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ramsey says he believes the drone prevented Cal Fire from stopping the blaze. Aircraft “were working their way in toward the center to put the fire dead out” when the drone appeared, he said last month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Who was flying the drone has remained a mystery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Cal Fire dispatch recordings, fire personnel on Highway 70 conducted a short, unsuccessful search for the drone operator after the aircraft was detected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.safecom.gov/safecom/21-0571\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Cal Fire report\u003c/a> filed after the incursion said the air attack pilot — who functions as a sort of air-traffic controller for other firefighting pilots — had been able to follow the drone a short distance up the river from the spot where the Dixie Fire was slowly growing beyond control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Eventually visual contact with the drone was lost when it descended into the Rock Creek drainage,” the report said. Rock Creek, about 2 miles upstream from the fire’s starting point, is the site of a PG&E powerhouse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked whether he was investigating whether a drone might have been flown from the Cresta Dam, immediately across the river from the fire, Ramsey said the Rock Creek powerhouse was more of an area of interest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Declining to go into detail about the progress of the investigation, he added his office has developed “fruitful leads” about the identity of the drone operator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday the agency, which regulates drone operations in U.S. airspace, is in the process of reviewing the July 13 incursion report.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated 4:25 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Butte County district attorney is investigating whether a drone that reportedly interfered with firefighting aircraft in the crucial first hours of the Dixie Fire was operated by PG&E or one of its contractors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>District Attorney Mike Ramsey says the drone’s incursion over the fire on July 13 may have prevented Cal Fire aircraft from stopping the blaze when it had burned an acre or two. As of Tuesday, the Dixie Fire had consumed nearly a half million acres of northern Sierra Nevada forest and become the largest single-origin (non-complex) fire in modern California history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire and local prosecutors are investigating whether a PG&E power line touched off the fire, which began four weeks ago near one of the utility’s hydroelectric dams on the North Fork of the Feather River.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ramsey said Monday the company has reported that it had been operating drones over Plumas County the day the fire started, but not close to its ignition point near Cresta Dam. He added the company has been cooperating with his investigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“PG&E had drones, they indicated, not in that area but up in the Greenville area” on the day the fire started, Ramsey said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Greenville, a town of 1,000 that burned down last week as the Dixie Fire grew to its current size of about 487,000 acres, is 30 miles northeast of where the fire started.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ramsey said his office is also checking whether a PG&E contractor might have been responsible for the drone flight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“PG&E does contract with drone companies and has for a while” as part of its efforts to improve maintenance of its power infrastructure, Ramsey said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E declined comment on the drone issue when the subject came up in a federal judge’s order last Friday night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing PG&E’s probation for a criminal conviction arising from the deadly 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline explosion, issued \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21039022/1415-usavpge-210806.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the Friday night order\u003c/a> seeking information about PG&E’s possible connection to the drone flight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Describe the purpose of the drone’s surveillance,” Alsup wrote. “If the drone was not working for PG&E when it flew close to the Dixie Fire, please inform the court for whom the drone was working. Also explain what the drone was doing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup directed the company to respond to his questions by Aug. 16.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked after Alsup issued his order whether the company was involved with the July 13 drone flight or any other drone operations at or near the site where the Dixie Fire started, PG&E spokesperson Matt Nauman said in a Saturday email, “We’re aware of the judge’s order and we’ll respond by the deadline.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, after this story published Tuesday afternoon, PG&E said no drones authorized to do work for the company were in the air at the time of the incursion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Drone dispatch records and records of work performed show that all of the drones authorized to fly on behalf of PG&E on July 13, 2021, in Butte or Plumas Counties had completed their flights for PG&E by approximately 12:30 p.m.,” company spokesman James Noonan said in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E has reported in filings to the court and the California Public Utilities Commission that an electrical problem was detected just before 7 a.m. on July 13 at Cresta Dam, on the North Fork of the Feather River about 25 miles northeast of Oroville.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took PG&E workers \u003ca class=\"c-link\" href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11881837/why-it-took-pge-9-5-hours-to-get-to-the-scene-where-dixie-fire-started\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-sk=\"tooltip_parent\">more than five hours\u003c/a> after the first indication of trouble to trace it to a section of a 12,000-volt power line located a quarter-mile away from — and 800 feet above — the dam. It took more than four additional hours for one of those utility workers, delayed by a steep, narrow, twisting road and an out-of-commission bridge, to get to the power line. There he found that a 70-foot Douglas-fir had fallen across the line’s three wires and ignited a small fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The worker tried unsuccessfully to extinguish the blaze, which by that point measured about 40 feet by 40 feet. A fire crew that happened to be driving up the other side of the river on Highway 70 had already spotted the blaze and, a few minutes after 5 p.m., reported it to a Cal Fire dispatcher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire responded with two air tankers that dropped fire retardant to limit the spread of the blaze while a helicopter made repeated water drops on the blaze to hold it in check until ground crews arrived. Slowed by the same narrow road and out-of-service bridge that hampered the PG&E worker’s journey, the first handful of firefighters didn’t arrive on the scene for more than two hours after the incident was first reported.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then at about 7:45 p.m., with about 45 minutes of daylight remaining to continue flying, a Cal Fire air attack pilot spotted a drone over the fire. Following standard practice for wildland firefighting, Cal Fire suspended air operations, and the air attack plane, tankers and helicopter returned to their bases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ramsey says he believes the drone prevented Cal Fire from stopping the blaze. Aircraft “were working their way in toward the center to put the fire dead out” when the drone appeared, he said last month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Who was flying the drone has remained a mystery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Cal Fire dispatch recordings, fire personnel on Highway 70 conducted a short, unsuccessful search for the drone operator after the aircraft was detected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.safecom.gov/safecom/21-0571\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Cal Fire report\u003c/a> filed after the incursion said the air attack pilot — who functions as a sort of air-traffic controller for other firefighting pilots — had been able to follow the drone a short distance up the river from the spot where the Dixie Fire was slowly growing beyond control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Eventually visual contact with the drone was lost when it descended into the Rock Creek drainage,” the report said. Rock Creek, about 2 miles upstream from the fire’s starting point, is the site of a PG&E powerhouse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked whether he was investigating whether a drone might have been flown from the Cresta Dam, immediately across the river from the fire, Ramsey said the Rock Creek powerhouse was more of an area of interest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Declining to go into detail about the progress of the investigation, he added his office has developed “fruitful leads” about the identity of the drone operator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
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"order": 1
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"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"order": 9
},
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
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"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"hidden-brain": {
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
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"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
}
},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
"title": "Perspectives",
"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
"info": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Perspectives_Tile_Final.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Perspectives",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/perspectives/",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
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"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/432309616/perspectives",
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},
"planet-money": {
"id": "planet-money",
"title": "Planet Money",
"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/sections/money/",
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