Utility company Pacific Gas & Electric is set to pay $55m to avoid criminal prosecution over two major wildfires in California.
The Dixie Fire last year, which exploded into one of the largest in the state’s history, and the 2019 Kincade Fire were both started by aging power lines owned by the company.
PG& does not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlements which will funnel financial damages to hundreds of homeowners who lost their properties.
PG&E also will submit to five years of oversight by an independent monitor similar to the supervision it faced during five years of criminal probation after it was convicted for misconduct that contributed to its natural gas explosion that killed eight people in 2010.
The Dixie fire was a megablaze which burned nearly one million acres across five Northern California counties. It killed one firefighter, and left three others injured. More than 1,300 buildings were destroyed.
The blaze was caused by a tree hitting electrical distribution lines west of a dam in the Sierra Nevada, where the fire began on July 13, last year, according to state fire investigators.
The Kincade fire burned across more than 77,700 acres in Sonoma County, home to some of California’s most celebrated wineries. More than 370 buildings were destroyed and nearly 100,000 evacuated.
Sonoma County prosecutors filed 33 criminal charges last year accusing PG&E of inadvertently injuring six firefighters and endangering public health with smoke and ash from the Kincade Fire.
PG&E has been blamed for more than 30 wildfires since 2017 that wiped out more than 23,000 homes and businesses and killed more than 100 people. It previously reached settlements with wildfire victims of more than $25.5bn.
While PG&E, the country’s largest utility, has sparked some of California’s most devastating fires, the climate crisis is exacerbating blazes in the state, and across the US more broadly. Extreme heat and a years-long drought, along with diminished snowpack and rainfall, is fuelling larger, more unpredictable fires.
AP contributed to this report
