Thousands of victims of California wildfires to receive $13.5 billion from PG&E.
It’s been a long, painful road for the victims of some of California’s worst fires: the Camp fire of 2018, the Tubbs fire of 2017, the Butte fire of 2015.
“I’m still remembering daily all the stuff I lost,” said John Pascoe, a 72-year-old artist who lost his Santa Rosa house in the Tubbs fire. “Photos going back to childhood … all my art and paintings. That loss can’t be replaced. I can’t be made whole for that.”The settlement, which came after two years of intense negotiations between a team of plaintiffs attorneys and PG&E, angered some families because half of the payout will be distributed to victims in company stock.
Like other claimants, well more than 50,000 in total, Pasky-Fouts has no idea how much money she will receive. But she doubts it will help her recover all that she and her husband lost. One of his clients, a man from Santa Rosa, died a year after the blaze from his injuries. He left behind his wife, whose feet melted together in the fire.
Such an inspection could have identified problems with a small metal hook that was supposed to hold up a transmission line and insulator on the tower, and “its timely replacement could have prevented the ignition of the Camp fire,” investigators said. Misconduct by PG&E is not the only factor contributing to the intensity and expanse of the blazes, though. In the last 20 years, more acres have burned in the wine country region than in the entire previous half-century,The increasingly dangerous natural conditions tied to climate change have raised the stakes for what can happen when human error or corporate misdirection is added to the equation. PG&E’s aging infrastructure, in some cases, has then provided the literal spark.
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