SETTLEMENT
lowing his family to move from their one-bedroom apartment into their rebuilt Fountaingrove home on Hanover Place sometime next year.
“Overall, I feel OK,” said Kat-kuoy, a medical device engineer who commutes several hours each day between Santa Rosa and Santa Clara. “We have something – better than nothing. The number, it sounds big, but we need to know all the details.”
Friday’s settlement, which needs approval from a federal bankruptcy judge, is meant to address the claims of individuals
who sustained losses from the October 2017 wildfires – including the Tubbs fire – and the Camp fire of 2018, the “Ghost Ship” Oakland warehouse fire of 2016 and the Butte fire of 2015, according to PGE. Though PGE’S equipment has been linked to the Camp fire and numerous other recent blazes, a PGE spokesman said the utility still “does not admit fault” for the Tubbs and Ghost Ship fires, which fire investigators have traced to private electrical systems and which killed 58 people combined.
The recent deal followed a $1 billion settlement that included $415 million to about a dozen North Bay governments including Santa Rosa
and Sonoma County and a separate $11 billion agreement with insurance companies that paid out claims for 2017 and 2018 wildfires.
These deals to settle wildfire-related claims are important for PGE, which aims to finalize its bankruptcy proceedings by June 30 to access a $21 billion state wildfire fund Gov. Gavin Newsom approved in July. The legislation creating the fund makes money available to PGE only after the utility “has paid substantially all third-party liability claims” related to recent wildfires.
Calls for PGE to be taken over or broken up over have mounted in recent months, including
after the utility’s equipment malfunctioned in northern Sonoma County shortly before the nearby ignition of the Kincade fire, which burned some 77,000 acres and destroyed or damaged several hundred homes and buildings. Frantz characterized the settlement as a way to hold PGE accountable for the utility’s “egregious misconduct” in failing to make sure its electric infrastructure was safe.
“They’re not going to be ‘PGE’ any more if they fall down again,” Frantz said.