Wildfire Survivors Fight Newsom's Last-Minute Utility Bailout
Wildfire Survivors Push Back Against Newsom-Led Utility Bailout
California's governor is pushing a last-minute bill to shield PG&E, SDG&E, and SCE from wildfire liability, capping victim claims and attorney fees. Survivors and advocates, led by Every Fire Survivor's Network, counter that the state's Wildfire Fund has $38 billion in capacity, not the claimed depletion. They've proposed alternatives and rallied against a utility-funded campaign. The article details the utilities' history of negligence, their record lobbying spending, and the survivors' fight for accountability.
A fire perimeter maps a fire. It does not measure actual harm.
- wduquette
I have every sympathy for the folks who lost homes here in California last year; it could easily have been my house. But what a lot of discussions miss regarding SCE's role in the Altadena fire is that SCE is a public utility, and California's Public Utilities Commission has not been allowing SCE (or other utilities, like PG&E) to charge rates that would allow them to do the required maintenance to prevent fires. In another case, some years ago, I understand that a fire in Northern California started next to a PG&E substation; the brush had not been trimmed, so I'm told, because environmental regulation didn't allow it.
From where I sit, this is not simply a "power company bad" situation; the state has played a significant role.