Utility charged in Calif. fire wants to pay $4M fine from victims fund

Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility that has pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for the 2018 Camp fire in Northern California, wants to pay its $4 million fine from a fund set aside for victims of the blaze.

The utility is on the hook for $3.5 million in fines and penalties and an additional $500,000 that will go to the Butte County District Attorney’s Environmental and Consumer Protection Fund as part of a plea agreement the utility recently reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The utility plans to pay that $4 million out of a $13.5 billion Fire Victim Trust that was set up during its bankruptcy after the wildfire that killed 85 people and destroyed more than 18,000 buildings in the rural mountain town of Paradise in Northern California.

“This is an unconscionable attempt to avoid responsibility for the very crime to which it just confessed,” said Michael Carlson of Caymus Vineyards, one of thousands of claimants against the utility. “The district attorney worked hard to hold PG&E responsible for its crime, and we are confident he never intended for PG&E to use funds dedicated to fire victims.”

Indeed, Butte County District Attorney Michael Ramsey told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday he was surprised when he learned of the utility’s payment plan.

“It’s incredibly stupid and insensitive, in a nutshell,” Ramsey said. “All these statements of ‘great remorse.’ Is that all fake?”

But Ramsey acknowledged he does not have the power to tell the utility how to pay its fine. That will be up to the judge overseeing the utility’s bankruptcy. Observers such as Paradise Councilman Michael Zuccolillo have already made up their minds on how the judge should rule.

“It’s a fine against PG&E, it’s not a fine against the wildfire fund,” said the councilman, who like most of the town’s residents lost his home in the 2018 blaze. “I think it’s extremely poor PR. I have a hard time imagining PG&E can’t come up with $4 million.”

PG&E officials argued that when the trust was established, all parties agreed to use the fund to pay out claims against the utility. Fines and penalties are mentioned in the fine print once, on the third page of the agreement’s term sheet.