2019 Articles on PG&E
In 2019, I collaborated with other Wall Street Journal reporters on several articles, charts and videos about the California utility PG&E. Here are links to several of these works.
Finalist for 2020 Pulitzer Prizes!! Click here for articles on Pulitzer website.
Winner of a 2020 Loeb Award for Beat Reporting
PG&E Sparked at Least 1,500 California Fires. Now the Utility Faces Collapse.
PG&E Corp. equipment started more than one fire a day in California on average in recent years as a historic drought turned the region into a tinderbox. The utility’s unsuccessful efforts to prevent such blazes have put it in a state of crisis. The fires included one on Oct. 8, 2017, when nearly 50-mile-an-hour winds snapped an alder tree in California’s Sonoma County wine country. The tree’s top hit a half-century-old PG&E power line and knocked it into a dry grass field, a state investigation found. The line set the grass ablaze, sparking what became known as the Nuns Fire.
The First Climate-Change Bankruptcy, Probably Not the Last
PG&E Corp.’s bankruptcy could mark a business milestone: the first major corporate casualty of climate change. Few people expect it will be the last. California’s largest utility was overwhelmed by rapid climatic changes as a prolonged drought dried out much of the state and decimated forests, dramatically increasing the risk of fire. On Monday, PG&E said it planned to file for Chapter 11 protection by month’s end, citing an estimated $30 billion in liabilities and 750 lawsuits from wildfires potentially caused by its power lines.
A PG&E line surrounded by a landscape burned during the Camp Fire. MAX WHITTAKER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
PG&E Delayed Safety Work on Power Line That Is Prime Suspect in California Wildfire
For five years, PG&E Corp. repeatedly delayed a safety overhaul of a century-old high-voltage transmission line that is a prime suspect behind the deadliest wildfire in California history. The company told federal regulators in 2013 it planned to replace many of the towers, wires and hardware pieces on the line, called the Caribou-Palermo, regulatory filings show. It again proposed the project in 2014, 2015 and 2016—pushing it back each year. The company planned to start work June 2018 and finish late last year. It hasn’t begun.
PG&E’s Radical Plan to Prevent Wildfires: Shut Down the Power Grid
PG&E Corp. can’t prevent its power lines from sparking the kinds of wildfires that have killed scores of Californians. So instead, it plans to pull the plug on a giant swath of the state’s population. No U.S. utility has ever blacked out so many people on purpose. PG&E says it could knock out power to as much as an eighth of the state’s population for as long as five days when dangerously high winds arise. Communities likely to get shut off worry PG&E will put people in danger, especially the sick and elderly, and cause financial losses with slim hope of compensation.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN KUCZALA
PG&E Knew for Years Its Lines Could Spark Wildfires, and Didn’t Fix Them
Map by Renee Rigdon/WSJ
PG&E Corp. knew for years that hundreds of miles of high-voltage power lines could fail and spark fires, yet it repeatedly failed to perform the necessary upgrades.
Documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal under the Freedom of Information Act and in connection with a regulatory dispute over PG&E’s spending on its electrical grid show that the company has long been aware that parts of its 18,500-mile transmission system have reached the end of their useful lives.
Read the U.S. Dist. Judge Alsop’s order in response to this article…
A ‘Cat and Mouse Game’: PG&E’s Long Record of Run-Ins With Regulators and Courts
The Wall Street Journal identified repeated instances over 25 years in which PG&E misled regulatory authorities, withheld required information, didn’t follow through on promised improvements, engaged in improper back-channel communications with regulators or obstructed an investigation.
The company has paid more than $2.6 billion in state and federal penalties and lawsuit settlements in such cases. While the penalty came to less than $1 million in about a half-dozen of the incidents…
A Year After Fire Destroyed Paradise, a Gutsy Group Fights to Rebuild
Rachel Bujalski for The Wall Street Journal
No more than about 3,000 of 26,000 Paradise residents have returned. So far, nine houses have been rebuilt of the roughly 13,000 destroyed. One of the district’s nine public schools was untouched; four reopened this fall.
The damage was so vast—and the trauma to residents so universal—that Paradise may never again be what it once was. Some predict a decade-long recovery for the town. Others fear its demise.
How PG&E’s Aging Equipment Puts California at Risk
Tower 27/222, which started the Camp Fire
Sixteen of the 20 worst lines are in high-risk fire areas. It’s a perilous combination: vulnerable lines in areas turned into tinderboxes by drought.
PG&E Had Systemic Problems With Power Line Maintenance, California Probe Finds
PG&E Corp. failed to adequately inspect and maintain its transmission lines for years before a faulty line started the deadliest fire in California history, a state investigation has found. In a 700-page report detailing the problems that led the Caribou-Palermo transmission line to malfunction on Nov. 8, 2018, sparking the Camp Fire, investigators with the California Public Utilities Commission said they found systemic problems with how the company oversaw the safety of its oldest lines.
‘Safety Is Not a Glamorous Thing’: How PG&E Regulators Failed to Stop Wildfire Crisis
In 2015, the California regulator overseeing PG&E Corp. opened an inquiry into whether the state’s largest utility put enough priority on safety.
Since then, a federal jury has found PG&E guilty of violating safety regulations for natural-gas pipelines and a federal judge later placed it on criminal probation. Its electrical equipment has sparked more than a fire a day on average since 2014—more than 400 last year—including wildfires that killed more than 100 people. It filed for bankruptcy protection this year, citing $30 billion in fire-related liabilities, and started blacking out millions of customers to try to avoid sparking blazes during strong winds. On Friday, it agreed to pay $13.5 billion to wildfire victims in a settlement deal.
The regulator, meanwhile, is still investigating.
PG&E: Wired to Fail
The utility has sparked deadly fires and pipeline explosions, left millions of Californians in the dark and gone bankrupt twice in less than 15 years. Here’s what went wrong.
PG&E Corp. Chief Executive Tony Earley liked the idea the minute he heard it. He would change the signature line on company emails—“PG&E is committed to protecting our customers’ privacy”— to promote safety instead.
Six months after a top state regulator suggested it, nothing had happened.
“We have one more level of governance to go through before we can change,” Jack Hagan, the regulator, recalled Mr. Earley saying.
“I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ He couldn’t get it done.”
For the past 15 years, PG&E has plotted a round trip from one bankruotcy to another. In between, it navigated the aftermath of a catastrophic natural-has pipeline explosion and a series of increasingly demanding green-energy mandates from state regulators.
How PG&E Filed for Bankruptcy
PG&E power lines were blamed for 2018’s Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in California’s history. But it was just one of 1,900 fires sparked by the utility since 2014, state investigators say. Here’s the story of PG&E’s missteps and why it ultimately filed for bankruptcy.
This Old Metal Hook Could Determine Whether PG&E Committed a Crime
A worn down hook.
A 3-inch hook purchased for 56 cents around the end of World War I could help determine whether PG&E Corp. faces criminal charges for starting the deadliest wildfire in California history. Known as a “C-hook,” the badly worn piece of metal broke on Nov. 8, 2018, dropping a high-voltage electric line that sparked the Camp Fire, destroying the town of Paradise and killing 85 people.