PG&E's Wildfire Liabilities May Not Be Limited to 2018 Camp Fire
*By Amanda Weston*
PG&E's wildfire liabilities may not be limited to the 2018 Camp Fire that has already exposed the California utility to billions in potential costs.
J.D. Morris, energy reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, told Cheddar that the "worst case" scenario would find PG&E also responsible for the 2017 Tubbs fire, which devastated parts of Sonoma and Napa counties.
Morris said the double responsibility "would expose them to billions and billions and billions of dollars of liability for those massively destructive wildfires, the two most destructive fires California has ever experienced."
Morris emphasized it's still too early to verify whether PG&E equipment is to blame for the November fires, which have left at least 77 dead and destroyed several communities.
But after the utility [reported a problem](https://www.sfchronicle.com/california-wildfires/article/Can-PG-E-survive-the-Camp-Fire-13403707.php) with one of its lines near the Camp Fire's suspected ignition point, investors and the public have been closely watching the investigation.
A new state law could allow PG&E to sell bonds to customers to pay off costs over time. However, that law only allows the company to do so for the 2017 fires. An attempt to do so for a 2018 fire would require additional action from state lawmakers.
"They could go bankrupt if state law isn't changed, I think," Morris said.
On top of liability questions, Morris said private lawsuits against PG&E still play "a very large role as well."
"We still don't know how many lawsuits will be filed or have been," Morris said. "I mean it looks like they're piling up pretty quickly. You can see a number of websites that lawyers have put up trying to get fire victims to come to them. So that'll play a very big, big role. And the lawsuits from last year's fire are still ongoing too."
And it could be a while before PG&E gets a definite answer.
"/[The Tubbs]/ fire started in October 2017 and Cal Fire is still investigating it," Morris said. "They've not announced a cause for that one. So 13 months out we still don't have an answer for that, and that is a liability that could potentially come back to PG&E as well given that a number of other fires that happened in the North Bay last year ー Cal Fire has already come out and said that PG&E equipment was responsible for those. It's just the biggest one, the Tubbs Fire, they're still investigating. So we'll see what happens with all that."
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/pg-and-e-faces-uncertain-future-amid-fire-liability-questions).
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