I'm surprised to see so much unconsidered support for PG&E here.
It's not about holding the utility "liable for fires", it is holding them liable for gross negligence by failing to perform critical or routine maintenance. These aren't difficult or impossible problems. The Camp Fire was caused by a system that was significantly overdue for upgrading: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-knew-for-years-its-lines-c...
So PG&E showed tidy profits by ignoring their infrastructure and doing it so completely that their people on the street simply lied about maintaining things because no one cared... until stuff began to systematically began to blow up and burn down: https://www.abc10.com/article/news/investigations/the-histor...
The problem is one of accountability. PG&E execs roll from court case to court case but face no risk of personal jail time for decisions that have caused tens to hundreds of preventable deaths: https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-pge-c...
So the courts get more and more frustrated, fining PG&E larger and larger amounts. But the utility never actually fix their known problems, they simply pass the bill back to their customers, declare bankruptcy and, at this point, turn off the power preemptively as some sort of power move to try to force government compliance.
The thing that bugs me is that as much as we can blame PGE, we also have done an excellent job building flammable houses surrounded by flammable landscaping which makes it very easy for wildfire ashes to collect in nooks and shrubbery and ignite houses from there. That's not PG&E's fault.
Building codes apparently changed about a decade ago and are helping the situation, but most of our housing stock is much older. Anyhow there are signs of some political movement on the subject, such as funding for retrofitting. I'm hopeful that pick up.
>I'm surprised to see so much unconsidered support for PG&E here.
California hasn't woken up yet so you've got Europe and the east coast who are mostly impartial observers looking at it and going "yup, while probably not ideal this is not an unreasonable outcome considering the situation."
yes, though I actually do think it is about as ideal as it can get. The reason Enron didn't change the discussion about privatization into how to undo it is that the US wants privatization to remain legitimate so it can force it on other nations via the IMF and extract wealth like a bad pay day loan company. Companies being afraid to deal with privatization, courts destroying companies for doing it wrong, etc are all gettig the precedent necessary give developing nations options to protect themselves from exploitation that largely originates from California.
It's not about holding the utility "liable for fires", it is holding them liable for gross negligence by failing to perform critical or routine maintenance. These aren't difficult or impossible problems. The Camp Fire was caused by a system that was significantly overdue for upgrading: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-knew-for-years-its-lines-c...
Time and again, PG&E ignored maintenance requirements and funneled profits to execs and stockholders. The San Bruno pipeline explosion was also entirely preventable: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/How-PG-E-missed-chanc...
What's more, PG&E falsified safety records as a matter of course: https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/15/us/pge-falsifying-records/ind...
So PG&E showed tidy profits by ignoring their infrastructure and doing it so completely that their people on the street simply lied about maintaining things because no one cared... until stuff began to systematically began to blow up and burn down: https://www.abc10.com/article/news/investigations/the-histor...
The problem is one of accountability. PG&E execs roll from court case to court case but face no risk of personal jail time for decisions that have caused tens to hundreds of preventable deaths: https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-pge-c...
So the courts get more and more frustrated, fining PG&E larger and larger amounts. But the utility never actually fix their known problems, they simply pass the bill back to their customers, declare bankruptcy and, at this point, turn off the power preemptively as some sort of power move to try to force government compliance.