PGE and the Lawyers Won While Victims and Customers Lose

There have been two movies about the harm caused by the northern california electrical utility, PG&E. There is the Erin Brokovich in 2000 with Julia Roberts. There is Ron Howard’s documentary, Rebuilding Paradise.

The Victims or their heirs got some money. However, the bad guys won.

PG&E lost the lawsuits but they just increase the utility bills so that customers lose.

The Lawyers won.

In the movie Erin Brokovich, the character inspired by Walker in the film, Donna Jensen, played by Marg Helgenberger, was awarded $5 million. But Walker said she received far less.

“I didn’t even receive a fraction of that,” Walker explained. It made it look like we won and we really didn’t. … The money did not fix the problem for me. Not at all.”

Walker and her family were tested for chromium 6, a process she said was “excruciating.” “After we received our results back, we all had chromium 6 in our DNA — that was pretty devastating,” said Walker. “The process of getting checked was excruciating. They had to scrape our gums, and of course, because we were known to have nosebleeds, anyway, my daughter’s gums wouldn’t stop bleeding for days.”

The Hinkley case was settled in 1996 for US$333 million, the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit in United States history. In 2006, PG&E agreed to pay $295 million to settle cases involving another 1,100 people statewide for hexavalent chromium-related claims.

85% of the people have left Hinkley.

PG&E caused the 2018 Campfire because for the faulty power line. They filed for bankruptcy, citing expected wildfire liabilities of $30 billion. On December 6, 2019, the utility made a settlement offer of $13.5 billion for the wildfire victims; the offer covered several devastating fires caused by the utility, including the Camp Fire. On June 16, 2020, the utility pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter.

The PG&E still has a near monopoly and the California government is allowing PG&E to continue to operate. Customers are forced to pay increasing bills to pay for the lawsuits and incompetence.

Probably Over 2000 PGE Caused Wildfires and Counting

Dennis Wyatt, the Bulletin, also covers the issue of PG&E.

A few months ago PG&E itself predicted the settlement they engineered after killing 84 people and virtually wiping the Town of Paradise off the map that they will earn a record profit of $2.4 billion by 2024. This will be done with annual rate increases of 8 percent through 2024 that will pay for equipment upgrades they systematically and recklessly diverted to pump up profits for years. Of the billions more ratepayers will pay for “safety” work that was already supposed to have been done with previous rate increases, the state is guaranteeing PG&E a profit of 10.5 percent.

Who is protecting 16 million Californians from the No. 1 cause of wildfires in state history?

PG&E has been directly blamed for its equipment causing 1,500 plus wildfires in the six-year period from 2013 to 2016.

Regulatory agencies such as the California Public Utilities Commission and ultimately elected politicians in Sacramento that have authority over PG&E and all utilities.

California state law essentially prevents corporations that engage in criminal acts or are not financially solvent to operate public utilities. However, this has not changed for decades.

PG&E was responsible for either by admission or based on the conclusion of CAL FIRE investigators were 102 of the 165 deaths and 19,514 of the 40,142 structures that burned from 2013 and 2019. PG&E was responsible for the Dixie fire in 2021.

Pacific Gas & Electric will face trial for manslaughter over its role in a 2020 wildfire in Northern California that killed four people. The Zogg Fire that began in September 2020 tore through the forested county south of the Oregon border. The blaze burned 88 square miles of land and destroyed more than 200 homes before it was brought under control.

Four people died, including an 8-year-old girl and her mother who were caught by the flames while trying to drive away from their home.

State fire officials said the fire began when a pine tree fell into a PG&E distribution line.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) concluded in January 2022 that a tree falling on PG&E’s electrical distribution lines caused the 2021 Dixie Fire. The fire started on July 13, 2021 and burned over 963,000 acres in multiple counties. It became the second-largest wildfire in California’s history.

Jan 25, 2024, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved a settlement agreement between the CPUC’s Safety and Enforcement Division (SED) and Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), which penalizes PG&E $45 million for its involvement in the 2021 Dixie Fire.

PG&E was sued for starting California’s largest wildfire in the 2022 Season. The Mosquito fire burned almost 77,000 acres in Sierra hills.

Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.

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