PG&E says equipment may have led to merging of two wildfires
PG&E’s equipment may have sparked the Fly fire, a fast-growing blaze that quickly merged with the state’s largest of the season about two weeks ago in Plumas County, the utility told regulators Monday night.
Sometime between 3 and 4 p.m. on July 22, a PG&E distribution line serving the Butterfly Valley Twain Road and Highway 70 area “reported alarms and other activity” when a portion of it was de-energized, the utility said in a new report to the California Public Utilities Commission.
Wildfire cameras first showed smoke emerging from the area about an hour later. Over the next two days, the Fly fire ballooned to about 4,300 acres — at which point fire officials deemed it part of the much-larger Dixie fire. That fire has now charred nearly 250,000 acres in three counties.
Utility workers and the U.S. Forest Service removed a tree that was resting on the distribution line’s circuit on Monday, though the reason for the lag time was not clear from the report.
When asked to explain the circumstances of that inspection and whether any had taken place before Monday, spokesperson James Noonan would only say that the utility is “cooperating with the official investigations, and we are undertaking our own review.”
“We can’t answer specific questions about an ongoing review,” he said.
The report marks the third time so far this summer that PG&E’s equipment has been linked to a notable wildfire. On July 13, a separate malfunction may have sparked the Dixie fire when blown fuses lit up a tree leaning against a line northeast of Paradise; yet another was potentially involved with the start of the Blue fire in Fresno County.
The Dixie fire has since destroyed or damaged 50 major structures and threatened at least 7,000 more, according to Cal Fire, at one point creeping toward the shore of Lake Almanor as well as communities near Highway 70 and Bucks Lake. Evacuation orders were reinstated along the flames’ eastern edge Tuesday amid unpredictable fire growth.
PG&E cited the Dixie fire’s fallout when it promised — the day before the Fly Fire broke out — that it would eventually place 10,000 miles of California power lines underground to help reduce the possibility of sparking wildfires. The utility has provided no timeline for the project and only limited details of how it would be paid for, although ratepayers are ultimately expected to foot the bill.
Over the years, the utility’s equipment has been linked to numerous blazes, including fatal fires in Amador County and Calaveras County in 2015, the North Bay in 2017 and the 2018 Camp fire.