Pacific Gas and Electric admits it needs to do more to prevent another devastating wildfire, but it disagrees with a report that claims the California utility knew that it’s aging infrastructure was susceptible to burning.
Responding to a scathing Wall Street Journal report, PG&E denied the article’s conclusions that the utility knew for years parts of its transmission system posed a wildfire risk but did not fix them.
Citing reports obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the Journal said that even before the deadly Paradise, California, fire, “the company knew that 49 of the steel towers that carry the electrical line that failed needed to be replaced entirely.”
In one of the documents obtained by the Journal, a PG&E presentation from 2017 showed that the oldest towers were more than 100-years-old with a life expectancy of only 65 years.