Bankrupt California utility PG&E, blamed for deadly wildfires, agrees to $11bn payout

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian and agencies

Bankrupt California utility blamed for deadly wildfires agrees to $11bn payout

PG&E to pay insurers of claimants from two years of blazes, including Paradise fire that left 86 dead, in tentative deal

Vivian Ho and agencies
Sat 14 Sep 2019 03.01 BST

A utility company with a history of sparking wildfires has agreed to pay $11bn to a group of insurance companies representing claimants from deadly northern California wildfires in 2017 and 2018.

The tentative agreement includes insurance claims from the town of Paradise, where 86 died last November, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) said in a statement Friday.

The agreement comes after the utility filed for bankruptcy protection in January because it could not afford the estimated $30bn in potential wildfire liabilities.

The company, which provides gas and electricity to 16 million Californians, has been found responsible for several other disasters in recent years, including the 2017 North Bay fires, which killed 43 people and destroyed more than 14,700 homes; the 2015 Butte fire, which killed two people and destroyed almost 900 structures; and a 2010 gas line explosion in San Bruno that ripped through an entire neighborhood, killing eight and injuring 58 people. PG&E was fined $1.6bn for the San Bruno explosion and a federal jury found the company guilty of six felony charges, ordering it to pay $3m in fines.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/13/california-wildfires-pg-e-agreement

[CountAllVotes]

1. So PG&E murders over 80 persons

They get a bailout for it.

Something is rotten in Denmark so to speak!

[BigmanPigman]

2. Will they somehow pass that amount onto its customers?

This is the same company that poisoned the drinking water in that town that was portrayed in the film Erin Brockovich. How are they allowed to get away with these crimes against people and the environment, especially in CA?

"In 1993, legal clerk Erin Brockovich began an investigation into the health impacts of the contamination. A class-action lawsuit about the contamination was settled in 1996 for $333 million, the largest settlement of a direct-action lawsuit in U.S. history. In 2008, PG&E settled the last of the cases involved with the Hinkley claims. Since then, the town's population has dwindled to the point that in 2016 The New York Times described Hinkley as having slowly become a ghost town."