
PG&E stock plunged 32% after it disclosed a possible link to California’s fire - breitling
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/pg-e-plunges-in-early-trading-amid-wildfire-destruction
======
brownbat
99PI's coverage of forest fire policy and design was really provocative:

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-to-
burn/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-to-burn/)

1\. Our entire approach to fighting forest fires may just be making them
worse.

2\. Smart and simple design decisions can save houses.

A house can be thirty feet from an entire forest on fire and never burn down.

We learned this through hardcore experiments in Canada where they built homes
to test and lit forests on fire nearby.

One of the immediate takeaways was to change roofing materials to resist
embers, but there are other options for materials and landscaping that could
make homes basically impervious.

The problem is probabilities. Fires are common, constant. They are exceedingly
rare in any one location though. So fire resistant design is no one's urgent
problem, fires are always something that seems like it will happen to somebody
else.

~~~
Amezarak
The article doesn't mention it, but controlled burns are actually a regular
occurrence in the east and southeast US. I always assumed it was some decision
by the Californian state government to not do so. The rest of the country is
not stuck in the mindset described in the article.

Fires are necessary for ecological reasons. You can either start them on
purpose and control them, or you can wait until they happen anyway and watch
them get totally out of control.

Exacerbating the situation, I heard on NPR this morning that some POAs in
California _forbid cutting down trees_ on your property. Something has to
change. Even if you put a complete stop to human-caused fires somehow (not
possible) and stop climate change tomorrow, you will still have fires from
lightning strikes, etc. You can either thin forests and underbrush (incredibly
labor intensive) or you can have controlled burns.

~~~
kryogen1c
> The article doesn't mention it, but controlled burns are actually a regular
> occurrence in the east and southeast US. I always assumed it was some
> decision by the Californian state government to not do so.

Wait what? California doesn't do controlled burns?

Mother of God: [https://www.quora.com/Why-does-California-not-institute-a-
co...](https://www.quora.com/Why-does-California-not-institute-a-controlled-
burn-policy-to-minimize-forest-and-brush-fires)

I find this _unfathomable_. I'm from a desert state where during dry times it
was illegal to light fires and we absolutely did controlled burns.

California's plan is to let everything burn down and then blame a utility
(true or not is irrelevant) and try to collect $20B they definitely don't
have? This is unbelievable.

~~~
gamblor956
California has millions of dry, dead trees owing to a bark beetle infestation
and multiple, 100-degree+ heat waves. Do you know how hot that wood burns?
More than a few trees together, and it burns hot enough to spontaneously
combust trees up to a few dozen feet away. _Without wind._ California's
forests are _dense._ They're dense enough that fires, even controlled burns,
can and have generate firestorms--where the heat of the fire generates its own
atmospheric wind system that feeds the fire.

Do you know what sort of embers these sorts of fires generate? The kind that
fly hundreds of feet, retaining enough heat to light structures on fire when
they land. Take a look at the shots of the Malibu portion of the Hill/Woolsey
fire: there are structures that burned almost a quarter of a mile away from
the closest flora.

So the reason that California cut back on controlled burns? Because due to the
factors described above, controlled burns very quickly become massive,
uncontrolled conflagrations. Controlled burns are something you can do when
the trees and climate is relatively wet, since only the stuff you set on fire
burns, or where flora is far enough apart and weather patterns mild enough
that the fire can't spread on its own.

But you know what's really unbelievable? Someone who doesn't know diddly squat
about what they're talking about who thinks they know better than the people
who actually have to deal with this on a regular basis.

~~~
kryogen1c
> So the reason that California cut back on controlled burns? Because due to
> the factors described above, controlled burns very quickly become massive,
> uncontrolled conflagrations.

Yeah what a disaster a massive, uncontrolled burn would be.

> But you know what's really unbelievable? Someone who doesn't know diddly
> squat about what they're talking about who thinks they know better than the
> people who actually have to deal with this on a regular basis.

Your righteous indignation falls pretty flat when there is plain evidence that
they are doing a bad job. Here is a list of the 20 largest CA fires
[https://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets...](https://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/Top20_Acres.pdf)
19 are from the last 50 years, 16 in the last 20. How many more hundreds of
thousands of acres have to burn before the approach is changed?

------
Mvandenbergh
"The legislation also didn’t change how California applies “inverse
condemnation,” a legal doctrine under which the state’s utilities can be held
liable for any economic damages tied to their equipment, even if they follow
all of the state’s safety rules. That’s left the utilities exposed to open-
ended liabilities."

This seems like a very inefficient way of allocating risk. California is
naturally fire prone and has become more so over recent years due to drought.
Anyone operating an electricity distribution network is therefore operating
assets that are inherently fire and explosion prone - even if operated and
maintained correctly - there is no way to move that much energy over those
distances without it occasionally being released in an undesirable way - in a
place where the consequences of that are severe.

Simple logic dictates that you only expose companies and individuals to
economic risks that are within management control, otherwise you just end up
with an economic role that is necessary but impossible to fill.

Even if state standards for safety were updated to reduce the chances of a
transformer explosion, circuit breaker arc, or fault in forested areas you'd
never get the risk down to zero nor would you remove all the other sources of
ignition.

~~~
Tyrek
I don't necessarily agree with your 'simple logic' \- there's plenty of stuff
that can be done (but not perhaps outright regulated) that can reduce the
incidence of fires around electrical equipment. (i.e. maintaining clearances
around transmission stations, etc.) That involves probably more cost that the
/free market/ would enjoy bearing. This measure can be framed as an attempt to
force the externality (i.e. the damages caused by fires) onto the cause - Why
_shouldn 't_ individual power consumers of California bear additional cost to
prevent/reduce the incidence of fires? Your position is one of deliberate
helplessness, and entirely assumes that companies should only toe the
regulatory line and go no further.

~~~
x0x0
Yes, but it's quite probable that (as Mvandenbergh claims) there is no way to
make the equipment 100% safe. It occasionally fails. Humans have a response
time. People make mistakes. Homeowners shriek if you cut their electricity off
preventively.

PG&E has 81k miles of overhead power lines and 26k miles of underground
distribution lines.

How can you operate a system where one screwup -- one decaying tree too close
to a line, or one underground construction mistake -- anywhere in 100k miles
of power lines can create a $15B bill?

[1] [http://www.pgecurrents.com/2017/10/31/facts-about-
undergroun...](http://www.pgecurrents.com/2017/10/31/facts-about-
undergrounding-electric-lines/)

~~~
amluto
With new technology? I see no inherent reason that a downed power line needs
to cause several giant arcs. I don’t know exactly how big an arc is needed to
start a fire, but ISTM it should be possible to make line-to-ground faults
only arc a tiny bit and line-to-line faults make much smaller arcs.

CA has a big head start here over the rest of the country: in CA, utilities
cannot have current-carrying wires that are grounded at multiple points. That
practice is widespread elsewhere and is rather dangerous for several reasons.
And I think it would interfere with several potential technologies to reduce
arcs.

(I don’t really know, but I assume CA’s rule is related to the dairy industry.
Utility-induced ground current turns out to be hazardous to cows being milked
with metallic equipment.)

~~~
Johnny555
_I don’t know exactly how big an arc is needed to start a fire_

Not very big, sparks coming off a tow chain dragging behind a vehicle can
start a fire.

[http://www.fox13news.com/news/local-news/officer-shows-
how-s...](http://www.fox13news.com/news/local-news/officer-shows-how-small-
spark-can-become-wildfire)

------
andrewvc
The silliest thing about this is that anthropogenic forest fires have been the
norm in CA for thousands of years. If they aren't started on purpose by a
human they will eventually be started by a human accident (or the rare
lightening strike). The ecosystem evolved with humans this way. The notion of
liability here is absurd.

[http://www.californiachaparral.com/enativeamericans.html](http://www.californiachaparral.com/enativeamericans.html)

[https://phys.org/news/2017-01-anthropogenic-forest-
impacted-...](https://phys.org/news/2017-01-anthropogenic-forest-impacted-
earth-climate.html)

~~~
will_brown
That’s like saying death is natural and would occur any way, so there
shouldn’t be liability if one human causes another human’s death.

Sure forest fires may have occurred anyway but if someone started it either
intentionally or negligently, well they should be liable for at least some of
the damages.

~~~
andrewvc
The difficulty people have in understanding that these fires are inevitable is
why they won't stop anytime soon. People will die because of our collective
inability to accept the ecology of the region.

It's more like there's a crowded place with a gun pointed at the middle of the
crowd. Every 30m the gun is cocked. 1-10m after that based on a random timer,
it fires.

If someone trips and accidentally pulls the trigger after 32m in are they
liable? Maybe, but only in the smallest way. The actual problem is the gun or
the people walking in front of it.

It's wrong to use the word "may" for these fires. These areas have evolved to
burn and will do so unless we shrink wrap each plant.

Humans put the gun there, we started burning which gave rise to an ecosystem
that thrived on burning and encouraged more. Then, we settled that area en
masse.

~~~
will_brown
Whether or not a fire is inevitable has nothing to do with liability for
starting a fire.

If a poorly maintained utility truck didn’t start the fire...maybe eventually
there would have been controlled burns/fires that ultimately prevented the
damages that resulted from this fire. Or maybe, as you say the forest
inevitably catches on fire from a natural act (act of god - a legal term of
art) and forest fire burns in a less populated area and no damage is caused to
people/homes...or maybe lightning starts the same fire in the same location
and causes the same damages, well even then insurance exists to cover that,
but otherwise there wouldn’t be liability the same as someone
negligently/intentionally setting the fire.

Fires can legally be acts of god, same as the law might treat a hurricane or
tornado...but unlike the later humans can’t (at least not yet) cause them
intentionally or negligently, obviously fires are different as they canso
liability (criminal and/or civil) is appropriate for fires started
intentionally or negligently.

------
gxigzigxigxi
I sure hope the liability laws are not such that PG&E gets wiped out. I don’t
think it makes much sense to assign most of the causal weight to a spark when
it would do nothing without all that tinder. There would have been another
spark, eventually.

If you don’t want to sometimes worry about forest fires, don’t build your
house in the woods. It isn’t that complicated.

~~~
aplummer
> If you don’t want to sometimes worry about forest fires, don’t build your
> house in the woods. It isn’t that complicated.

Bushfires in Australia have previously covered more than 10 million acres.
Recently people in greek suburbs were literally driven into the sea. It is
pretty complicated.

~~~
gxigzigxigxi
Exceptions to the general rule that fires mostly affect those who live in the
woods. Does not affect my assertion that living away from the woods
dramatically decreases your risk/worry of being involved in or affected by
forest fires.

------
gimmeThaBeet
Utilities are weird, I could easily be wrong/offbase but going after them
legally always feels vaguely like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
The threat of inverse condemnation just feels like short term thinking of how
you interact with your utility.

Forget return on equity and shareholder returns, if you really hold a utility
liable like that, not only would PG&E probably go away, I don't know how you'd
get another utility to step in. I seriously think you'd need some giant Cal
co-op, or you're going to have to charge seriously high prices to make it
worth the risk, or go gridless, which sounds cool but infeasible at that kind
of scale if you had to do it in a couple years.

~~~
olliej
> Utilities are weird, I could easily be wrong/offbase but going after them
> legally always feels vaguely like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
> The threat of inverse condemnation just feels like short term thinking of
> how you interact with your utility.

No. The short term thinking is saying "here, private corporation, fell free to
turn a profit by not maintaining your assets in the knowledge that you will be
bailed out when you burn down a city". The long term effect of this is that
tax payers do the following:

* Pay the "profitable" corporation to receive what ever utility it is providing.

* Pay vastly more than it would have cost to simply maintain the utility when recovering from whatever disaster is caused by the utility not maintaining their system.

In the absence of liability for failure to maintain their network, a utility
has (according to modern corporate policy) a /duty/ to not maintain their
network, so they can maximize the money they give to their shareholders.

> if you really hold a utility liable like that, not only would PG&E probably
> go away, I don't know how you'd get another utility to step in.

You mean like an actual public entity? As has been the case in most countries
for a long long time?

> or you're going to have to charge seriously high prices to make it worth the
> risk

No. If a company needs liability insurance at a feasible price they'd need to
actively work to mitigate risk - private insurance would be a good hammer for
that as failing to maintain your lines and equipment would increase the costs
of your insurance. The other problem with this is it assumes that the cost of
"seriously high prices", is higher than the cost for tax payers when they are
having to pay to deal with whatever disasters and recovery costs directly.

------
romed
People are discussing this event as if it were a “pole” servicing some house.
The downed line that is suspected here is a high voltage transmission line
serving a hydroelectric power station. It’s major infrastructure and there are
only a handful of such lines in the state.

------
thrower123
I didn't see what equipment actually might have started the fire? That would
be more interesting.

Ultimately you've got awful forestry management practices that are really to
blame for this annual mess.

~~~
newman8r
It's often a faulty transformer

~~~
sgc
It's far more often lines sparking/arcing during high winds when striking
nearby vegetation which was not properly trimmed.

------
sjroot
The article states that there is roughly $15 billion in damages from this
fire. PG&E’s assets and wildfire insurance are worth ~$5B.

That said, if it were proven that PG&E were directly liable for this fire, how
would that play out?

~~~
_pmf_
> That said, if it were proven that PG&E were directly liable for this fire,
> how would that play out?

As it always plays out: regular people will only sue via class action lawsuit,
meaning there will be a settlement that is a fraction of the damage. The
lawsuit with the state as plaintiff will drag on until either a settlement or
the statute of limitation is reached.

~~~
dragonwriter
> As it always plays out: regular people will only sue via class action
> lawsuit, meaning there will be a settlement that is a fraction of the
> damage.

Businesses and individuals (and public agencies like cities, counties, and
special districts) with losses, especially of structures, will in many cases
be insured; direct action lawsuits, or the threat thereof, to force a
substantially full settlement, to recover from liable parties are a big part
of what insurance companies _do_ , and the nature of insurance companies is
that each will have much larger losses than any individual, and much more
motivation to aggressively pursue them; there may still be settlements that
are less than would be recovered in a final judgement (to the extent that time
value of money and risk and reduced litigation costs make that a winning
proposition), but nowhere near as small a fraction as is typical in a class
action.

> The lawsuit with the state as plaintiff will drag on until either a
> settlement or the statute of limitation is reached.

That's not how statutes of limitations work. They run from the event giving
rise to the cause of action to the moment the action is filed; once the case
is filed within the statute of limitations, how long it runs is immaterial.

~~~
gowld
That's only true in some cases. In the recent Tesla occupational-safety case,
the statute of limitations ran from time of the incident until time of
_resolution_ , so stalling did cancel the government intervention.

~~~
dragonwriter
> the recent Tesla occupational-safety case, the statute of limitations ran
> from time of the incident until time of resolution, so stalling did cancel
> the government intervention.

The one with Tesla I am familiar with ran to filing action. The investigation
found previously-unknown potential violations which were too far in the past
for CalOSHA to initiate legal action regarding them.

Do you have a source for something else?

------
jypepin
The video of the article mentions that PG&G might also be responsible of the
napa fires in 2016. This is crazy. Are there any liabilities for their
executives in the case of such damage done because of negligibility?

If PG&E did not make efforts to maintain their equipment better after napa,
and this is the cause of Malibu, that becomes almost 3rd degree murder, right?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
It's a utility company. The regulatory capture and political influence is too
great for them to ever be held liable to such an extent.

------
notacoward
If PG&E was negligent, they should be held accountable. On the other hand, if
this happened despite all reasonable safety precautions, it seems like
scapegoating. I generally despise the concept of limited liability as it
applies to every corporation in every kind of business, but this particular
case seems to be exactly the kind of situation that justifies it. Unless one
prefers that this kind of infrastructure be run only by the government itself
(not an unreasonable belief), some kind of liability shield is necessary.
Otherwise no sane business person would take that risk. Do you want the power
infrastructure run by insane people?

~~~
randyrand
If it were run by the government, how would the government be held liable?

We can’t ‘fine’ the government. All we have are brief elections. So the
question becomes - are elections a better incentive for forest safely than
financial liability is for a power company?

Seems laughable to claim that.

~~~
notacoward
> If it were run by the government, how would the government be held liable?

At the ballot box. You're correct that they can't be held financially liable
even to the extent that corporations currently are. That's why I wasn't
personally suggesting that the power grid should be nationalized. I'm just
saying that "make PG&E pay for everything without limit" leaves no other
option, so that's the debate people would need to have.

~~~
conanbatt
No ammount of voting makes the government liable to foot a bill. Government
has no money of its own, it takes it from someone else.

~~~
notacoward
I know that's something the think-they're-cool kids like to say, but how is it
even relevant? In a tort context, it doesn't matter where the money comes from
or whose money it is in abstract, and BTW it could just be made up out of thin
air instead of being taken via taxes so even that part isn't accurate. All
that matters is whether the plaintiff can be forced to pay. If it's the
government then the answer is no. If it's a private party who doesn't have the
money the answer is still no. The outcome doesn't change.

If a plaintiff who is providing an essential service is driven into bankruptcy
then the government will either have to provide operating funds or take over
entirely, and we're back to how they can be held accountable. "Their" money
vs. "someone else's" money never comes into it. No matter whose money it is,
nobody can force the government to do anything it reserves the right not to.
As the entity controlling the courts and the enforcement of courts' decisions,
they can simply nullify any decision ... until they're held accountable at the
ballot box.

The idea that unlimited liability somehow creates accountability is absurd.
All it would do is put _more_ things in the hands of government.

~~~
conanbatt
> The idea that unlimited liability somehow creates accountability is absurd

Of course, and I dont agree with your intepretation that the courts can
nullify requests on the state: the state often pays a lot of damages and
compensations, it just does it by taxing third parties.

It's an important detail: if if PGE threatens bankrupcy and for example,
endangers payouts to small counties and individuals that lost their homes, you
could think that the state should bail out PG&E to help those people. After-
all the bailout is free. Or you should think that the state invents a program
to raise taxes to alleviate the condition of the victims, and PG&E is not even
mentioned.

~~~
notacoward
> the state often pays a lot of damages and compensations

Even more often it denies suit. It's called sovereign immunity, and at the US
federal level it must be explicitly waived before a suit can even start. There
are many other ways that governments at all levels protect themselves from the
liability a private party would have for doing the same things. An occasional
exception doesn't change the fact that they have and use the ability.

> you could think that the state should bail out PG&E

Not "should" so much as "will". I know it's not free, but it's going to happen
anyway in the case of essential services. That's the real point. You can't sue
PG&E into oblivion. You can just back-door nationalize it via lawsuits. Is
that what you think should happen? I'm really not sure what you're trying to
get at here, other than repeating a "gubmint is evil" trope that has no
bearing on the situation at hand.

------
geggam
The fact we prevent forest fires from spreading is the reason they spread so
bad. Eliminate the fuel and you wont have these fires.

Instead of living with nature we push nature off until it overwhelms our
defenses.

Eventually humans will learn ?

------
platz
Remember when BP spilled all that oil.. wish I'd bought that dip

~~~
prewett
Which is why you're buying this one, right?

------
openforce
We should think about investing in smoke/heat sensors that can broadcast an
emergency signal that can be placed in the wilderness areas close to human
habitation. Just thinking through here, we need to determine the max radius of
fire that can be confidently contained by the nearest fire department (taking
into consideration some metrics such as time taken to reach the spot, how
prone the area is for fire, wind speed averages, number/ability of the fire
safety crew). Place a pole at the edge of such radius with sensors at
different height , inbuilt GPS, and ability to broadcast its status to a
remote control room. The number of poles in an area can be based on the above
metrics.

I understand that some wood fires that start naturally, actually are part of
the natural cycle and is necessary. So remote areas could be spared, but still
monitored to check its spread.

Maybe a combination of such sensors and satellite data can help catch a fire
when it is still small enough to be contained.

~~~
jbob2000
No. Manage the forests better. Don’t build in fire prone areas. A forest fire
burning down your house is a warning from Mother Nature, not an attack.

Your system will just let debris build up even longer, leading to even bigger
fires.

~~~
openforce
That might not work for already existing constructions.

The system can be designed to not add to the fire, we can possibly add this to
the already existing power infrastructure.

This is a solvable problem.

------
crunchlibrarian
I don't know much about the EE side of the world, but surely there is a way to
design grid/transformer equipment such that the circuit can be interrupted
immediately when a pole falls over or whatever.

Is this possible? Is it just a matter of spending the money to upgrade the
infrastructure?

~~~
VLM
To use EE terms and try something like CS terms, because the energy travels at
the same speed as our fastest communications systems (actually, faster...)
coordination is very tricky. In practice the system is entirely "pull based"
and whatever energy you ask for we'll try to send and the only control system
dampening is via losses (oscillations just turn into heat...). So if you were
pulling 1000 KW on a line dampened to send no more than 2000 KW and suddenly
you pull 1001 KW there's no communications technology fast enough for us to
know if a fire is starting or merely my toaster is making breakfast.

The problem with some kind of packetized transfer of energy between storage
batteries is not only is any reasonable packet far more than enough energy to
start a forest fire, even the mere capacitance of a long power line, even if
given infinite fast commo and protocols, is still way more than enough energy
to start a forest fire.

There is no technological way to push energy thru a tinderbox without having
occasional failures aka forest fires. You can fix that by only running wires
thru a treeless desert, and if you don't have a desert you can make one, or
you can not run wires. The idea of only running long distance electricity
along a deforested interstate or rail very wide right of way is interesting
and would be safe although probably extremely ugly.

~~~
ac29
> because the energy travels at the same speed as our fastest communications
> systems (actually, faster...)

Radio waves propagate at the speed of light, and electricity is slower:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_electricity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_electricity)

~~~
pps43
There's buffering, Nagle delay, etc.

------
8bitsrule
11/15 Wired article: 'How California needs to adapt'.
[https://www.wired.com/story/how-california-needs-to-adapt-
to...](https://www.wired.com/story/how-california-needs-to-adapt-to-survive-
future-fires/)

"Last year, that conflagration came in the form of the Thomas Fire. But
Montecito had been readying itself for decades.... They really focused on
defensible space around homes, particularly the homes that were closest up
against the wildland areas.... When the Thomas Fire hit, Montecito couldn’t
rely on aircraft to drop water, but seven homes were lost—not 500."

Of course, a fire-related mudslide soon destroyed many homes there. So a
related thought: some places should not be occupied.

------
michaelt

      The utility’s filing also may have marked the start of a
      campaign to get bailed out by California’s lawmakers --
      as it was after last year’s fires.
    

Seems to me bailing out the same company twice for the same mistake would be
the height of idiocy.

I mean, that's tantamount to saying you'll bail out the company every year
forever. You've basically telling the CEO "Don't spend $1 billion of your
money on inspections and preventative maintenance so your equipment stops
causing fires! Instead, destroy $15 billion of value and we'll pay for it all
at no cost to yourself!"

Of course the company would accept that if someone fool offered it to them.
It's super-inefficient for that fool, but the company saves a billion dollars!

~~~
dahdum
California sets all the rules for utilities, including rates. There isn’t much
wiggle room for PG&E, holding them liable for this is silly. It’s just a
political shell game, assigning blame to PG&E and avoid responsibility for
legislative failure.

------
homero
How's it really their fault though? We all benefit from electricity, how are
they supposed to provide it if they're always at fault.

------
aplummer
This situation is actually similar to the black Saturday bushfires in
Australia - also caused by power lines. The utility eventually settled for
half a billion dollars. Meaningless if you look up the loss of life.

(Maybe somewhat different because every type of bushfire prevention strategy
was in place / overwhelmed and I don't know what the situation is in
California.)

------
yashap
If they were being negligent, they should absolutely have to pay a large
percentage of the damages, maybe even 100%. Getting companies to be
responsible for externalities is a no-brainer, even though it’s so often not
enforced.

------
garysahota93
The wildfires in California are insane right now. I live in San Francisco and
it's been extremely hard to breathe. All you see is folks with masks
everywhere. It's just so sad to hear about all that's going down.

------
LinuxBender
There have been several dozen people arrested for arson in the last couple of
months just in the bay area alone. Are we certain someone didn't tamper with
pg&e's equipment?

------
newman8r
Southern California Edison stock was down ~10% too

------
mistrial9
people - the last three hundred years of industrial development has been a
patchwork of travesty and tragedy. Singling out "forest management" is
sounding remarkably uneducated in particular, among a crowd that is notably
otherwise.

Secondly, PG&E and many other regulated utilities, created holding companies
to siphon out profits in the go-go 90s. the deregulation of California's
electrical energy markets and subsequent ENRON debacle exposed the holding
companies in the ensuing crisis discovery process.

Thirdly, PG&E is super-guilty of labor avoiding, subcontracting, penny-
pinching and evasive behavior for decades. This includes tree-trimming; this
includes inaccurate record keeping of the gas pipeline safety records; many
other ordinary, daily management decisions we dont know about, but
collectively create the situation as it is.

Do not cry for PG&E, or mimic PR company talking points. Thanks

------
paulpauper
Someone probably made a killing with the put options

------
trhway
i wonder whether external fire sprinklers - turn them on whenever there is a
fire say in a mile or 2 radius - would decrease the chances of the house being
fired up by the wind brought embers.

------
dsfyu404ed
When your half mil house in the CA hills gets burnt down it's PG&E's fault for
not trimming trees and they should pay you for it.

When a storm erodes the beach out from under your 3-mil beachfront house it's
the town's fault for not building erosion controls and they should pay you for
it.

When your dumpy trailer in a dumpy trailer park is tossed by a tornado you
knew the risks and nobody should give you a cent.

See the double standard?

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0xffff2
Is anyone aside from beach-front property owners in favor of bailing them out?
Even the degree to which PG&E should be liable is clearly controversial just
based on the comments on this post alone.

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dsfyu404ed
>Is anyone aside from beach-front property owners in favor of bailing them
out?

Local politicians who want a bunch of rich people on their side tend to favor
those sorts of things.

