The District Attorney of Sonoma County has filed criminal charges against Pacific Gas and Electric for the role their equipment played in starting the 2019 Kincade Fire, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle. The company was charged with five felonies and 28 misdemeanors, including “unlawfully causing a fire that resulted in great bodily injury, unlawfully causing a fire that resulted in the burning of inhabited structures, and unlawfully causing a fire that resulted in the burning of forest land, as well as various air pollution crimes,” according to the District Attorney’s office.
The fire started October 23, 2019 northeast of Geyserville, California, burned more than 77,000 acres, and destroyed 374 structures.
Investigators with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection sent a report to the District Attorney’s office in July of 2020 which concluded PG&E’s equipment was at fault.
On October 24, 2019 PG&E filed a required preliminary report with the California Public Utilities Commission that stated “at approximately (9:20 p.m.) on Oct. 23, PG&E became aware of a Transmission level outage on the Geysers No. 9 Lakeville 230kV line when the line relayed and did not reclose. At approximately (7:30 a.m.) on Oct. 24, a responding PG&E Troubleman patrolling the Geysers No. 9 Lakeville 230 kV line observed that CalFire had taped off the area around the base of transmission tower 001/006. On site CalFire personnel brought to the Troubleman’s attention what appeared to be a broken jumper on the same tower.”
PG&E told a judge on November 29, 2019 that it was investigating whether there was a systemic problem with a piece of hardware on their high voltage electrical transmission towers that can start wildfires, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Investigators with PG&E and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection were looking at the possible failure of jumper cables on towers near the points of origin of two huge recent fires, the 2017 Camp Fire at Paradise, California and the Kincade Fire.
The video below shows the ignition of the Kincade Fire on October 23 as seen in near infrared from a camera at Barham near Geyserville, California. Keep your eye on the bright light on the horizon left of center. It disappears at about 21:19:55 and 15 seconds later the fire can be seen growing rapidly.
Investigators also determined that PG&E equipment started other fires in recent years. The Wall Street Journal (subscription) reported that investigators attributed more than 1,500 fires to PG&E power lines and hardware between June 2014 and December 2017. CAL FIRE attributed 12 large fires that started on October 8 and 9, 2017 to PG&E power equipment.
We constructed a list of 18 of the larger fires linked to PG&E equipment.
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Tom.
What caused the bright light left of center, and what caused it to disappear before the fire started?
The bright light left of center is presumably an electrical light. It disappearing shortly before the fire started could have been caused by an electrical outage related to the powerline equipment failure that ignited the fire.
Utilities continue to be built absent addressing the fire risk they are responsible for placing on citizens and resources. Idaho Power who are wanting to build the Boardman to Hemingway (300 mile) transmission line are unwilling to provide their own fire protection or provide the resources the counties have requested due to the inadequacy of local fire fighting resources to fight transmission line created fires.