PG&E Update: After California Wildfires, Bankrupted Utility Company Reaches $13.5 Billion Settlement With Victims

Utility company Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) said Friday that it had reached a $13.5 billion deal to settle victims' claims from the wildfires that ravaged multiple areas of California from 2017 and 2018, as well as the 2015 Butte fire. The company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January claiming that it had potential liabilities of $30 billion stemming from these wildfires.

“From the beginning of the Chapter 11 process, getting wildfire victims fairly compensated, especially the individuals, has been our primary goal. We want to help our customers, our neighbors and our friends in those impacted areas recover and rebuild after these tragic wildfires,” President and CEO of PG&E Corporation Bill Johnson said.

The money in the deal would go to the wildfire victims and to the government agencies and attorneys who worked on the claims.

The 2015 Butte Fire in Amador County, Calfornia, killed two people, while the 2017 Northern California wildfires killed 44 people and destroyed 8,900 buildings. The 2018 wildfire season was the worst that California has ever seen, leaving 103 people dead and 22,751 buildings destroyed.

State fire investigators have tied PG&E transmission lines to the Camp Fire in California in 2018, which killed 85 people in the vicinity of the town of Paradise. They also believed that power lines from the company caused some fires north of San Francisco Bay in 2017.

California wildfires in 2019 have killed five people. The Kincade Fire in Sonoma County was the largest of the 2019 season, lasting from Oct. 23 to Nov. 6.