

The proceeding unfolded as PG&E approaches the end of a complicated bankruptcy case that it used to work out $25.5 billion in settlements to pay for the damages from the fire and others that torched wide swaths of Northern California and killed dozens of others in 2017.

Ramsey predicted Butte County’s exhaustive investigation will lay the foundation for imprisoning members of PG&E’s future management team if the utility doesn’t live up to its promises. “It isn’t perfect justice, but we don’t have a perfect system.” “It is a modicum of justice,” Ramsey said of Tuesday’s guilty pleas while expressing with his inability to seek harsher penalties. The San Bruno convictions didn’t include homicide charges, unlike what happened in the extraordinary case brought against PG&E in Butte County. That tragedy resulted in a criminal conviction that put PG&E on a five-year probation that ends in January 2022. The San Francisco company won’t be placed on criminal probation, unlike what happened after its natural gas lines blew up a neighborhood in San Bruno, California, killing eight people in 2010. PG&E has agreed to pay a maximum fine of $3.5 million in addition to $500,000 for the cost of the investigation. It doesn’t feel safe.”ĭeems is expected to formally sentence PG&E either Thursday or Friday, though no one will be imprisoned for the company’s crimes.

I just feel like it’s not ended,” said Taft, who moved away from the area after the fire and said she “can’t handle going back into Butte County ever again. “As far as actual change, to save lives, that is not happening. To Christina Taft, 26, the public plea of guilt didn’t feel like enough. Christina Taft, whose mother Victoria Taft, 67, died inside their Paradise home, said she couldn’t bear to be there in person Tuesday but watched it on YouTube.
