Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) today issued the following
statement in response to the latest release of information by the
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE)
regarding some of the October 2017 Northern California wildfires:
The safety of our customers, their families and the communities we serve
is our most important job. The loss of life, homes and businesses in
these extraordinary wildfires is simply heartbreaking, and we remain
focused on helping communities recover and rebuild.
Programs Overall Met State’s High Standards
We look forward to the opportunity to carefully review the CAL FIRE
reports to understand the agency’s perspectives.
Based on the information we have so far, we continue to believe our
overall programs met our state’s high standards.
For example, PG&E meets or exceeds regulatory requirements for pole
integrity management, using a comprehensive database to manage multiple
patrol and inspection schedules of our more than two million poles.
Similarly, under PG&E’s industry-leading Vegetation Management Program,
we inspect and monitor every PG&E overhead electric transmission and
distribution line each year, with some locations patrolled multiple
times. We also prune or remove approximately 1.4 million trees annually.
Following Governor Brown’s January 2014 Drought State of Emergency
Proclamation and the California Public Utilities Commission’s Resolution
ESRB-4, PG&E added enhanced measures to address areas particularly
affected by drought and bark beetles including increased foot and aerial
patrols along power lines in high fire-risk areas, removal of hundreds
of thousands of dead or dying trees, and daily aerial fire detection
patrols during high fire season to improve fire spotting and speed of
fire response.
‘New Normal’ Requires New Solutions
With that said, years of drought, extreme heat and 129 million dead
trees have created a “new normal” for our state that requires
comprehensive new solutions.
Extreme weather is increasing the number of large wildfires and the
length of the wildfire season in California. According to CAL FIRE, in
2017 alone, CAL FIRE confronted 7,117 wildfires, compared to an average
of 4,835 during the preceding five years. Five of the 20 most
destructive wildfires in the state’s history burned between October and
December 2017.
In the case of these Northern California wildfires, we saw an
unprecedented confluence of weather-related conditions, including: years
of drought resulting in millions of dead trees, a record-setting wet
winter that spurred the growth of vegetation that then became abundant
fuel after record-setting heat during the summer months, very low
humidity and very high winds.
To address the growing threats posed by wildfires and extreme weather,
and in light of the wildfires throughout our state last year, PG&E has
launched the Community Wildfire Safety Program to help keep our
customers and communities safe. Among the key components of the new
program are:
-
Wildfire Safety Operations Center: A state of the art operations
center that will monitor extreme weather and fire threats in real time
and in coordination with our safety partners.
-
Weather Stations Network: A network of weather stations throughout
high fire-risk areas to better monitor growing extreme weather
conditions and predict where wildfires may occur.
-
Fire Defense Zones: Augmenting our already rigorous vegetation
management program to create new fire defense zones near power lines
in high fire threat areas.
-
Public Safety Power Shutoff: As a last resort, a program to
proactively turn off electric power for safety when extreme fire
danger conditions occur, while helping customers prepare and providing
early warning notification, when and where possible.
We Must Work Together to Address This Challenge
The state, first responders and California’s utilities are all in
agreement that we must work together to prevent and respond to wildfires
and enhance infrastructure resiliency.
This includes solutions that go beyond utility practices such as
improvements in forestry management and in building codes. In addition,
we must address the availability and affordability of insurance
coverage, and we believe it is imperative to reform California’s
unsustainable policies regarding wildfire liability.
California is one of the only states in the country where the courts
have applied inverse condemnation liability to events associated with
investor-owned utility equipment. This means PG&E could be liable for
property damages and attorneys’ fees even if we followed established
inspection and safety rules.
Liability regardless of negligence undermines the financial health of
the state’s utilities, discourages investment in California and has the
potential to materially impact the ability of utilities to access the
capital markets to fund utility operations and California’s bold clean
energy vision.
Reforming inverse condemnation would not absolve utilities from
responsibility. Anyone harmed by these tragic wildfires has the ability
to pursue a negligence claim in court. Furthermore, the CPUC, which
regulates utilities, has the authority to investigate and evaluate a
company’s conduct and performance and deny the recovery of costs if such
conduct did not meet the state’s high standards.
We are committed to advocating with legislative leaders and policymakers
across the state on comprehensive legislative solutions for all
Californians, as we collectively seek to meet the challenge of climate
change, and position the California economy for success.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E
Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas
and electric energy companies in the United States. Based in San
Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of
the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in Northern and
Central California. For more information, visit www.pge.com/
and pge.com/news.
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