PG&E pleads guilty to charges fatal Camp Fire

PG&E has pleaded guilty to scores of criminal charges arising from the deadly Camp Fire of 2018.

PG&E on Monday disclosed it has pleaded guilty to scores of criminal charges arising from the deadly Camp Fire of 2018 that roared through Butte County, an inferno caused by the disgraced utility.

The company’s admission of guilt for 84 involuntary manslaughter charges shoves PG&E into the grim pantheon of the deadliest corporations in American history.

Under the agreement that PG&E reached with the state of California and the Butte County District Attorney’s Office, PG&E admitted its guilt in the Camp Fire, which caused 85 fatalities, according to a regulatory filing by PG&E with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“Subject to the terms and conditions of the Agreement, the utility has agreed to plead guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of unlawfully causing a fire,” PG&E stated in the SEC filing.

The 84 deaths acknowledged in the guilty plea to criminal charges exceed the carnage caused by catastrophes such as the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010 that killed 11 in the Gulf of Mexico and PG&E’s fatal natural gas explosion in that same year that killed eight in

San Bruno.

In 2016, PG&E was convicted in a federal criminal prosecution for felonies the company committed before and after the fatal San Bruno blast.

“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.