PG&E Was Already on Federal Probation for Killing 8 People. Then Its Equipment Killed 85 More.

On November 8, 2018, a C-hook holding a high-voltage line to a transmission tower in Butte County, California, snapped from metal fatigue. The tower was built in 1921. It was 97 years old. The resulting arc ignited the Camp Fire, which killed 85 people, destroyed 18,804 structures, and erased the town of Paradise from the map in a matter of hours.

Pacific Gas & Electric owned the tower. At the time the hook failed, PG&E was already a convicted felon on active federal criminal probation — for a different piece of neglected infrastructure that had killed 8 people eight years earlier. This is a company that was, by court order, supposed to be on its best behavior when its hardware started the deadliest wildfire in California history.

A Hook Nobody Climbed to Check

The California Public Utilities Commission's Safety and Enforcement Division investigated the ignition point and found that the C-hook on Tower 27/222 had worn thin enough to fail under normal load. Investigators concluded that a "hands-on" climbing inspection — physically ascending the tower rather than viewing it from the ground or by helicopter — would likely have caught the wear before it became catastrophic.

PG&E had not sent anyone to climb that tower for a close visual inspection since at least 2001, according to the CPUC investigators' findings. A separate investigation by ABC10 reported that PG&E's own inspection records had flagged hardware on the line for "severe wear" months before the fire, without a repair following.

Regulators did not describe this as an isolated lapse. The CPUC report characterized it as consistent with "an overall pattern of inadequate inspections and maintenance" across PG&E's transmission system generally — not a one-tower problem.

Already a Convicted Felon

On September 9, 2010, a PG&E natural gas pipeline exploded in San Bruno, California, killing 8 people, destroying 38 homes, and injuring dozens more. A federal jury convicted PG&E in August 2016 on six felony counts: five for failing to adequately inspect its gas pipelines, and one for obstructing the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation into the blast.

The sentence, imposed in January 2017, ran for five years: a $3 million fine, an outside safety monitor, 10,000 hours of community service, and probation supervised by U.S. District Judge William Alsup. The Camp Fire ignited on November 8, 2018 — twenty-two months into that five-year probation, under the supervision of a federal judge already tasked with rehabilitating the company.

When PG&E's probation finally expired in January 2022, Alsup did not describe a company turned around. His order noted that "while on probation, PG&E has set at least 31 wildfires, burned nearly one and one-half million acres, burned 23,956 structures, and killed 113 Californians."

84 Counts, No Jail Time

In June 2020, PG&E pleaded guilty in Butte County Superior Court to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter — one for each confirmed Camp Fire victim — plus one count of unlawfully starting a fire, under an agreement reached with Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey. The company paid a fine of approximately $4 million, the statutory maximum for the charges.

No PG&E executive or employee was charged individually, and no one went to prison. The Butte County DA's office itself noted that the penalty structure available under California law for a corporate defendant capped consequences at a fine, regardless of the 84 counts attached to it.

Bankruptcy Twice, Bonuses Anyway

PG&E filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on January 29, 2019 — its second bankruptcy of the 21st century, following a 2001 filing triggered by the California energy crisis. This time the driver was wildfire liability: PG&E disclosed it was facing an estimated $30 billion in claims from the 2017 and 2018 fires.

PG&E had continued paying its shareholders a quarterly dividend through the first three quarters of 2017, even as its equipment was already suspected in that October's Wine Country fires, which killed 44 people. The board suspended the dividend that December, more than a year before the bankruptcy filing.

Three months into bankruptcy, in April 2019, PG&E asked the bankruptcy court to approve $16 million in bonuses for 12 senior executives, structured around safety-performance targets. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali rejected the plan as unreasonable given the scale of the company's wildfire liabilities. That August, however, the court did approve a separate $235 million bonus pool covering up to 10,000 PG&E employees, weighted 65 percent to safety metrics, 25 percent to financial performance, and 10 percent to customer satisfaction — approved before wildfire victims themselves had been paid.

The Settlement Fund That Shrank

PG&E's bankruptcy plan, confirmed by Judge Montali, funded a $13.5 billion Fire Victim Trust to compensate victims of the 2015–2018 wildfires, including the Camp Fire, the Butte Fire, and the North Bay fires. Half of that figure — $6.75 billion — was cash. The other half was paid in PG&E stock: 22.19 percent of the reorganized company's shares, valued at $6.75 billion on paper when the plan was approved in 2020.

The trust held that stock rather than selling it immediately, betting the shares would hold or gain value. They didn't perform as hoped. By the time the trust finished liquidating its PG&E holdings in December 2023, the stock component had generated roughly $7.25 billion — leaving the trust's total net funding around $14.25 billion against $19.5 billion-plus in claims the trust's own administrators had by then approved.

The trustee overseeing the fund told reporters plainly that Camp Fire and other wildfire victims would never be paid in full. As of late 2024, victims were receiving distributions worth roughly 70 percent of their approved claim amounts, before attorneys' fees.

The Probation Record

• September 9, 2010: San Bruno pipeline explosion kills 8, destroys 38 homes.
• August 2016: Federal jury convicts PG&E on 6 felony counts for the San Bruno explosion.
• January 2017: PG&E sentenced to 5 years of federal criminal probation, $3 million fine, court-appointed safety monitor.
• October 2017: Wine County fires, later tied to PG&E equipment, kill 44 people; dividend continues through Q3.
• December 2017: PG&E suspends its shareholder dividend.
• November 8, 2018: Camp Fire ignites from a failed C-hook on a 97-year-old PG&E transmission tower; 85 people die; Paradise is destroyed.
• January 29, 2019: PG&E files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, its second this century.
• April 2019: Bankruptcy judge rejects PG&E's proposed $16 million executive bonus plan.
• August 2019: Bankruptcy judge approves a separate $235 million employee bonus pool.
• June 2020: PG&E pleads guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter over the Camp Fire; pays roughly $4 million in fines.
• July 1, 2020: PG&E exits bankruptcy, funding the $13.5 billion Fire Victim Trust — half cash, half company stock.
• January 2022: PG&E's federal criminal probation from the San Bruno case expires; Judge Alsup notes 31 wildfires, 113 deaths, and 23,956 structures burned occurred during the probation period.
• December 2023: Fire Victim Trust finishes selling its PG&E stock, netting roughly $7.25 billion against a nominal $6.75 billion valuation — still leaving the overall trust short of claims owed.

By the time federal probation for killing 8 people in San Bruno expired, the company on the other end of it had gone on to be blamed for dozens more fires, plead guilty to killing 85 more people in Paradise, file for bankruptcy for the second time this century, and hand its own executives a bonus fight in open court — all while the fund meant to make its wildfire victims whole was still short by billions, paid out in stock nobody made them accept.

Filed from public reporting:

• KQED — State Probe Says PG&E Missed Deadly Flaw on Line That Sparked Camp Fire
• Cal Fire — Remembering the Camp Fire
• CBS News Sacramento — PG&E Agrees To Plead Guilty To 84 Counts Of Involuntary Manslaughter For Camp Fire Deaths
• NPR — Utility Giant PG&E Convicted Of Violating Gas Pipeline Safety Laws
• Courthouse News Service — Judge Blasts PG&E as the Company's Probation Expires
• CNBC — US Judge Orders PG&E to Use Dividends to Pay for Efforts to Reduce Wildfire Risks
• PG&E Corporation — PG&E Announces Suspension of Dividend, Citing Uncertainty Related to Causes and Potential Liabilities Associated with Northern California Wildfires
• Courthouse News Service — PG&E Seeks OK for $454M in Employee and Executive Bonuses
• Utility Dive — A PG&E Bankruptcy Timeline: The Road to Chapter 11 and Beyond
• KQED — Will PG&E's Fire Victims Ever Be Made Whole? 'Never,' Says Trustee Overseeing Compensation
• The Press Democrat — Fire Victim Trust Sells Its Final Chunk of PG&E Stock, Earning the Damage Fund $1.2 Billion
• Al Jazeera — PG&E May Finalise $13.5 Billion Payout for US Wildfire Victims