It was supposed to be a public reckoning. On Tuesday, America’s largest utility was set to go on trial in an effort to hold it accountable for sparking a wildfire that claimed the lives of four people.
Family members of the victims of the 2020 Zogg fire planned to face PG&E executives as the company stood trial in a northern California courtroom on manslaughter charges.
Instead, Judge Daniel Flynn on Wednesday dismissed the charges and like it has done in so many cases before, PG&E agreed to a multimillion-dollar settlement.
The outcome largely marks the end of a chaotic chapter for the company, a behemoth in the energy industry that serves about one of every 20 Americans and nearly half of all Californians. In recent years, PG&E has been defined by the devastating fires linked to its power equipment that have killed dozens across the state, resulting in mass payouts and the threat of criminal consequences, but arguably little reform.
The utility did not have to admit wrongdoing as part of the Shasta county deal, a preferable outcome for PG&E, said Steven Weissman, a lecturer at UC Berkeley and former judge at the California public utilities commission.
“This has been the modus operandi for all these years to never have to face judgment or face as few judgments as you possibly can,” he said. “This really has been a very successful strategy.”
As part of a settlement to avoid a trial, PG&E has agreed to pay $45m to fire prevention and rebuilding efforts in the rural area and a $5m civil penalty, a significant sum in a small, under-resourced county. But no one seems particularly thrilled with the resolution, not family members of the deceased nor the district attorney, Stephanie Bridgett, who hoped to hold PG&E accountable and force change.
“This resolution does not make me happy,” said Bridgett, when announcing the settlement. “Taking PG&E to trial and holding them criminally responsible was always our goal – but the tentative ruling changed our position and I am unwilling to gamble with the safety of Shasta county.”
For survivors like Wayne King, whose 79-year-old wife, Karin, died as she tried to escape the flames, the settlement was a welcome but unsatisfying outcome. “All the money that PG&E has, all the contributions – that won’t make up for my loss,” said King.
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PG&E, has faced years of reckoning over its role in California’s wildfire crisis. Between 2017 and 2022, the company set off at least 31 wildfires that wiped away entire towns, burned nearly 1.5m acres and 24,000 structures, and killed 113 people.
The company has been accused of repeatedly prioritizing profits over safety, enriching shareholders rather than removing trees that pose a danger to its power lines. More radical efforts to reform PG&E, either by splitting it into multiple companies or a takeover by the state government, have not materialized.
PG&E has paid billions of dollars to settle claims from fire victims and pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in the 2018 Camp fire – sparked when a crumbling piece of equipment, overdue for replacement by decades, cast sparks into the dry Sierra Nevada foothills, creating a fire that killed dozens of people, destroyed about 14,000 homes and leveled the town of Paradise.
In the aftermath, it filed for bankruptcy, replaced its CEO several times over and pledged to run a safer company that can supply gas and electricity to millions of Californians without injuring or killing its customers.
The company was still dealing with the fallout from the Camp fire when it sparked a new blaze in Shasta and Tehama counties that became known as the Zogg fire.
The 2020 disaster started during a windstorm when an ailing gray pine, marked for removal because of its defects, fell on power lines in the rugged mountainous terrain east of Redding. Fueled by fire-friendly conditions, the blaze raced through the tiny towns of Igo and Ono and scattered homes in the foothills, consuming more than 56,000 acres (23,000 hectares), taking out hundreds of homes and forcing people to immediately evacuate.
The fire quickly traveled the half mile to the home of animal rights activists Karin King and her husband, Wayne. By the time they got in their vehicles with their dogs, fire was burning on both sides of the only route to safety. Smoke made it so the road was hardly visible at all and Karin, who was driving separately, kept falling behind, Wayne King said in an interview with the Guardian.
Wayne would stop and honk and wait for her to catch up and turned around to find her more than once, but as they wound down the last stretch of the winding two-lane road, he was alone.
“Karin didn’t come,” he said. Later he’d learn she made it only half a mile past the last spot he saw her.
“She ran off into a gully with the car and it burned up and she burned up and the dog burned up and all of our records and all that [was] in the fire resistant safe burned up,” he said. “She was a good woman and I miss her terribly.”
Three other people died trying to escape the fire: Alaina Mcleod, 46, and her eight-year-old daughter, Feyla, and Kenneth Vossen, 52, who was badly burned as he sought refuge at a pond on his rural property and later died at a hospital.
PG&E was eventually fined $150m by California’s public utility regulator, which alleged that “the tree that caused the fire was not removed in time because of PG&E’s poor recordkeeping”.
Bridgett, the district attorney, opted to charge the company, putting an investigator and multiple attorneys on the case. She geared up for a fight against a corporation with substantial resources in order to get justice for the victims and to ensure that PG&E doesn’t “continue the practices that led to the fire in the first place”.
From the outset, she says, the imbalance was palpable. “They have a virtually unlimited budget when it comes to their defense,” she said. “They have multiple attorneys present at every court appearance. They have significant resources that a small county DA’s office doesn’t necessarily have.”
Still, the case moved forward with a judge finding PG&E should be criminally prosecuted for its role in the fire, and setting the date for a trial in June. The company challenged that ruling and another judge determined the tree falling on company infrastructure did not necessarily mean PG&E had been negligent, a ruling that led to the charges being dropped and the settlement reached.
Under the agreement, PG&E will fund fuel mitigation efforts, a scholarship program to increase the number of local firefighters, a large animal evacuation center and memorials to honor those killed in the fire. PG&E must also move some of its infrastructure underground, install new weather monitoring stations and meet regularly with the district attorney’s office to ensure it is complying.
“The agreement reflects our continuing commitment to making it right and making it safe. We stand behind our thousands of trained and experienced coworkers and contractors working every day to keep Californians safe,” Patti Poppe, the company’s CEO, said in a statement.
Bridgett wanted to see the case go to court, with all the evidence against PG&E made public, but said she’s hopeful about what the agreement means for the county.
“We worked hard with them to try to come up with very measurable things they could do and we could have oversight with them. Ultimately, we want them to be in compliance with the law and so that none of their equipment is going to start a fire that kills another person.”
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Last month at the Igo store, a one-stop shop and bar, residents shared memories of the blaze and how it forever altered life in the tiny woodsy settlements tucked in the foothills, now green and blooming with wildflowers after recent rains.
“It was terrifying – plain and simple. We’d lived through a lot of fires up here but never seen anything like that,” said Damon Brazell, 82, a retired sheriff’s deputy who lost his home in the disaster. “It took out the heart of the community. There’s nothing here anymore.”
Brazell ruminated over all the fire took as he sat at the bar surrounded by some of his remaining neighbors. Many people didn’t rebuild their homes, he said, and key community gathering places were destroyed. He lost treasured belongings and a property he built. He has a new home, but not one he made with his hands.
“It broke my spirit. It gave me a big case of the blues – a sadness I don’t think I’ll get over,” he said.
But Brazell, like others at the Igo store, were torn about what would constitute a proper punishment. “How do you hold a corporation accountable? I think it’s kind of fruitless myself.”
The money promised in the settlement will help ensure the area’s safety in future fires, King said. The home he shared with Karin survived the fire and he still lives there. He runs into PG&E workers, in the area to remove dead trees, as he goes about his errands – trips to the Igo store for lunch, church and the nearby cemetery where he visits Karin.
“I get irritated every month when I get a PG&E bill, but I pay it,” he said.
Still, he says, revenge is the last thing he wants. “We were married for 62 years and we had a very good relationship all of our 62 years. I miss her but getting even with PG&E is not in my book,” he said. “Hopefully, they have come to the conclusion they need to do a better job of protecting their lines.”
