PG&E pleads guilty in 84 deaths during 2018 Camp Fire.
Company admits to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in deal that paves way for payments to victims of deadly fire
Joining the pantheon of the deadliest corporations in American history, PG&E has agreed to plead guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in the deadly Camp Fire that roared through Butte County in 2018.
PG&E admitted its guilt in an agreement with the state of California and the Butte County District Attorney’s Office, according to a regulatory filing by the utility with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“The utility has agreed to plead guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of unlawfully causing a fire,” PG&E said in the SEC filing.
“It took the Butte County District Attorney and a federal prosecution to bring PG&E to its knees and to show the world how PG&E flaunted the law for its selfish financial benefit,” said state Sen.
Jerry Hill, whose district includes parts of Santa Clara County and San Mateo County as well as the city of San Bruno. In 2016, PG&E was convicted for felonies the company committed before and after a fatal explosion in 2010 that killed eight and destroyed a San Bruno neighborhood.
PG&E acknowledged on Monday that the fire the company caused in Butte County destroyed the towns of Paradise and Con
cow and devastated the town of Magalia.
“Today’s charges underscore the reality of all that was lost,” PG&E Chief Executive Officer William Johnson said. “We hope that accepting those charges helps bring more certainty to the path forward so we can get victims paid fairly and quickly.”
PG&E is attempting to extricate itself from a $51.69 billion bankruptcy proceeding ushered in by the company’s wildfire-linked liabilities that caused the company’s finances to buckle beneath a mountain of debts.
The utility must successfully conclude its bankruptcy case by June 30 under an agreement PG&E reached this month with Gov. Gavin Newsom. If PG&E fails to emerge from bankruptcy by that date, the company might then be sold off to the state or other interested parties.
As part of the Camp Fire settlement, PG&E must pay the maximum statutory fine of $3.49 million, according to Butte County District Attorney Michael Ramsey
Ramsey also acknowledged the work of the county’s grand jury in helping secure the evidence that ultimately resulted in the guilty plea.
“They carefully listened to nearly 100 witnesses, examined over 1,400 exhibits and produced many thousands of pages of transcript,” Ramsey said.
The 84 deaths acknowledged in the guilty plea exceed the carnage from catastrophes such as the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010 caused by BP that killed 11 in the Gulf of Mexico and PG&E’s fatal natural gas explosion in San Bruno.
PG&E also has the forbidding distinction of being forced to pay the largest regulatory penalty in American corporate history. In 2015, the state Public Utilities Commission imposed a $1.6 billion penalty on PG&E for causing the San Bruno explosion.
Furthermore, the embattled utility must face the prospect of a $2.1 billion PUC penalty for its role in causing a series of fatal infernos in the North Bay Wine County and nearby regions in 2017, as well as the Butte County Camp Fire in 2018, although a final decision has yet to be reached by the commission.
Separately from all of these proceedings, PG&E had previously reached settlements with an array of victims from wildfires in 2015, 2017 and 2018, that together totaled roughly $25.5 billion.
In the Butte County criminal case, along with the 84 involuntary manslaughter charges, PG&E also agreed to plead guilty to one count of unlawfully causing a fire.
That count, in turn, contains three special allegations of PG&E causing great bodily injury to a firefighter, causing great bodily injury to more than one surviving victim, and causing multiple structures to burn. About 18,800 structures burned in the Camp Fire, the Butte district attorney estimated.
The guilty plea establishes PG&E’s criminal guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt,” Ramsey said. Ramsey added that residents of Butte County may perhaps feel a sense of “justice done.”