The Santa Rosa fire started from five+ places where wires swung and arced and set surrounding branches on fire. They just sent a crew out to each one. If after the fifth incident, they had cut power for just a few hours, there would have been no conflagration. If they had cut back the branches so they did not surround the wires, as they are expected to do and used to do, there would have been no conflagration.
This is PGE very clearly demanding that the state act to free them from their responsibilities. If the state does, PGE thould also be freed from any responsibility to return a profit to shareholders, or to pay salaries to existing executives.
It might be a stunt. I still think it is the right thing to do. PG&E has a huge amount of deferred brush clearing to work through. Even if the day after the Santa Rosa fire they had trippled the crew sizes and had been working non-stop they still would not have worked it all down. Those are just the facts on the ground. Cutting power is much better than starting fires.
It's very possible there are politics at play here, but the NWS forecast sounds like something we won't get every year?
Although we had it in 2017 in the North Bay and 2018 in Butte county, so maybe it is going to be common?
This seems more like a stunt to convince the state to release them from some liability.