A district attorney in Northern California says the nation’s largest utility company committed a crime last year in failing to update its equipment that sparked a devastating wildfire. Shasta County DA Stephanie Bridgett said in a press release that Pacific Gas & Electric was “criminally liable for causing the Zogg Fire,” which took four lives in September 2020, including that of an 8-year-old girl and her mother. Bridgett said she plans to mount criminal charges against the company. PG&E said its equipment may have sparked the gargantuan Dixie Fire that is currently raging, and it has been found criminally liable for a deadly wildfire before—the Paradise Fire in which 88 people died. The company announced last week that it would bury more than 10,000 miles of its power lines across the American West to mitigate fire danger, an effort expected to cost tens of billions.
