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Full Measure After Hours
California’s Wildfires Not Caused by Climate Change
00:27:03
Despite what you may have heard, most of California’s deadly wildfires have been caused by arson or power companies. Order Sharyl’s new bestselling book: “Follow the $cience.” Subscribe to my two podcasts: “The Sharyl Attkisson Podcast” and “Full Measure After Hours.” Leave a review, subscribe and share with your friends! Support independent journalism by visiting the new Sharyl Attkisson store. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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Hi everybody. Cheryl Akison here. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure After Hours. Today, California's wildfires not caused by climate change. Sunday, January 11th. On full measure I investigate the real causes behind the Palisades wildfire raging a year ago at this time, as well as other major high profile wildfires. Two main causes are repeat offenders, arsonists and power companies, as you'll hear in today's interview with attorney Mike Ramsey, the Butte County District Attorney who prosecuted power company PGE for the infamous camp fire that started in 2018. The point is, each time you hear about climate change being a cause or major factor behind this rash of wildfires in California and it belies the actual facts on the ground. Here's attorney Mike Ramsey.
- [01:06]
C
Just a little bit of background when it comes. Are fire prosecutions common when we're talking about prosecuting a company or rather than just an individual arson, which I'm sure plenty of that's been done. But tell me about fire not so.
- [01:20]
A
Much because the individual arson, the firebugs, you have those all the time and seems to be increasing, but companies, not so much. But PGE was richly deserving of this particular prosecution.
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C
Can you give us a little bit of the interesting intrigue about how that came about? Was that initially something somebody in your office thought of like immediately or did this kind of come to light as discussions went on and news was uncovered?
- [01:52]
A
Actually it was almost immediate because what PGE had a bit of a bad history here. In the late 90s we noticed a number of fires were being caused by PG and E failure to clear vegetation around their lines. Trees and high powered lines don't mix very well. Spark caused fires, as I say, in the late 90s we were getting more and more of these and so I started to look into it some more. What's great about being kind of a smaller jurisdiction da, you know, everybody including PGE employees were very anxious to let me know that vegetation management going out and cutting down trees and cutting and trimming trees had been farmed out because PGE was trying was cutting maintenance. So it was being farmed out to contractors, vendors that weren't too reputable. They were cheap.
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C
Give us just a paragraph on the campfire.
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A
How much devastation it did is that about 6:30 that morning the campfire started up underneath one of the PG high tension power lines. It's a 115000 volt line. At that time it moved extraordinarily fast into through the town of Polga Concal and into paradise and Magalia. It just was an absolute monster. Destroyed so many. About 18,000 structures. 14,000 family homes. Displaced 27,000 people, killed 84 souls. The as that is happening, our Cal fire investigators went up to the origin and it moved quickly from the origin and the wind was such, it was blowing all in one direction. So at that time they started their investigation. They looked up into the tower and could see that an arm had come down and that that had most likely started the fire. Next day they called me and said, it looks like this is a PG and Eve caused fire.
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C
Cal fire told you that?
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A
Yes.
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C
Do you think that was their way of saying. Or maybe they didn't care, but their way of saying don't bother to look for an arsonist.
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A
No, they found the arsonist that was B Genie. So I mean that was their way of. We had very good relationship with our Califar arson investigators who world class, quite.
- [04:57]
C
Frankly did this automatically then strike you as a case that could be prosecuted for crime or.
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A
Yeah, we, we had with PG&E, we had a. Previously, the year before, we had a case with him much smaller, 100 acres below paradise that was pointed right at the heart of Paradise. And luckily it was put out. But we brought a criminal action against them at that time for failure to clear the lines. They wanted to settle it civilly. And there was some back and forth because PG and E had been prosecuted for the San Bruno case in 2008 where their pipeline poor maintenance had blown up the San Bruno community and killed eight, eight persons there. And so there was kind of a precedent of looking at PG and E as a. A criminal defendant in the San Bruno case. However, it was not for the killing of the, the people, but it was for the, the bad reporting and paperwork false work from our previous events with PGE back in the late 90s, the year before. It was almost immediate that we said, okay. And as I told the Cal Fire investigators, I said, this is now a criminal investigation. You will treat that entire tower and area as a crime scene. And they said, yeah, we're a little concerned, boss, because we've seen a PG and E helicopter circling. They are to declare a no fly zone. There's not to be any interference with you collecting as much evidence as you possibly can on that transmission line. And we are officially opening a joint criminal investigation. My office in Calvar.
- [07:17]
C
What did, what if anything, did PG and E do to try to stop the case?
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A
Basically we went into their first effort was we started asking for information. And the information that they were giving us on a facial basis was looked to be massive. I mean, they look like they were trying to. To assist. But it became fairly clear that this was going to be a. We'll give them the world and they will have to pick through the hay to get them one needle.
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C
Like how much material were they given?
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A
It was terabytes of information. I think initially the, the initial tranche was around three terabytes. Says no. You know, prosecutor, back in the days of three ring binders we used to say I've got reams of evidence. Now we have to say we got terabytes.
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C
How does a terabyte equate into reams? Like, is it a room full of documents?
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A
It is a tractor trailer full to the brim.
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C
How did you. How did you sort through that problem?
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Trying to do it through computer analysis. And then we said, no, we need to know who did what when. And we're not going to get that through this. So we are now going to go ahead and commit a grand jury. Then we saw the next step which was that everyone that had any contact with pge including a dead employee was given attorneys by PGE and basically we had to fight for every employee to come forth and testify. Over approximately a year.
- [09:27]
C
What ultimately was PG&E charged with?
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A
They were charged with reckless arson. One count of reckless arson with various enhancements for injury. Great injury to a firefighter. Great injury to a number of survivors that got bad, badly burned and multiple structures burnt. And 84 counts of manslaughter. Now there was another person and many times News talks about 85 people. There was an 85th person that committed suicide. Now, how far away the fire was when they committed the suicide is problematic. So we couldn't necessarily do that. Cause so those 84 counts and then they pled as direct.
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C
What is the penalty?
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A
The penalty was minuscule in the sense of a penalty, a fine. Part of going through the grand jury was to see if we could see is there a person responsible. Most people are familiar with the term responding superior. You know, people at the top are responsible for everyone down below. That's great. In a civil case, we were pursuing a criminal case and you would have.
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C
Prosecuted that person if you found.
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If we found that person. But PGINI had done a very good job over the years or just by their business model of siloing people and siloing organizations and siloing information. So it became somewhat clear as we were going through and seeing if we couldn't find that person at the top then, you know, be the president or the chairman of the board or whatever. That would be responsible for this. But California law says no, they'd have to be hands on with this. Well, as it turns out that it was decades of negligent maintenance and obviously criminally negligent maintenance that came about. The hook that failed had been in that location for we figured, 98 years.
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C
What is a hook?
- [11:59]
A
It's called a C hook and it's kind of like a C and it's into a hole in a sheet of iron. And as it's there, it holds insulators that come down and holds a line, that 115k line. And what happened is this line, this sea hook over the years hanging up there and going. And this is a very windy canyon. And we call it the, the gyro winds, which are 50, 60 mile an hour winds that go through there. Over the years it had just worn, worn, worn until it failed. And then when it failed, the insulators came down, the line slapped into the steel structure and then the aluminum and the steel. With that 115,000 volts we figured is about 5,000 volt, 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It just then melted the line in portions of the tower and you shot that down into the grass below. And with that 40, 60 mile an hour winds that were blowing that day, it just took off.
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C
So it was a nearly 100 year old hook holding all that up.
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A
Yeah. Wow.
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C
Which has since been all fixed and replaced.
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A
Actually that entire line has been taken decommissioned. Although it was a bit of a funny story. They decommissioned the line, they said, okay, we're shut off the power. And then I got reports that they might, someone saw sparks, they saw, you know, something was going on with that line. It's supposed to be down dead, not working. Well, there was two other lines, high powered lines and towers on each side. There was electromagnetic effect from those that were causing that line. Says, boys, you better be just taking the line down completely. Just take it off. They did.
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C
What was the penalty then? So if nobody person got prosecuted.
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A
So, you know, so what we looked at is say, okay, a corporation can be prosecuted under California, like, like a person. And so in doing that I can draw those silos together and say, this is the PGE corporate defendant who knows this, who knows this, who knows this, who knows this. So bring that, bring that case forward as a criminal case. However, you can't put a corporation as such in jail. And so you can only fine a corporation. Well, the fine for that was for the reckless arson. I think that was about 500,000. For the people, 10,000 each. So with fine kind of penalty fines on top of the fine. The total fine was $3.5 million. Peanuts.
- [15:35]
C
Was there civil litigation filed against them?
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Yeah.
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C
So they had to pay more.
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A
Well, there was civil litigation but then they ducked into bankruptcy. And that was a sore point. And the, the and part of a tension that we had with negotiating with, with pge. What was going to happen. There was a point in which PGE was saying, please don't prosecute us criminally. We're used to civil. I said, yeah, you're used to civil and paying people and then going away and killing your next bunch of people. And my thought was, no, we're going to make a statement here. This is going to be a statement that hopefully will change the culture of PGE, which had changed in about the mid-90s. I can talk more about that a little bit. But what happened was the law firm, criminal attorneys, former as a usas that were trying to save the company, as they said, said if you prosecute them criminally and convict this company because it's investor owned, then they made the mistake of saying you will kill the company. And I looked at them and I says, but you killed 84 of my citizens. I don't give a damn about your company dying or not. Perhaps it deserves to die. Shifted some of the narrative for them. And so they saw that they're going to have to eat all of the counts. Told Internet research it was the largest corporate homicide case in United States history. But we needed to make a statement. They did go into bankruptcy. Let me kind of explain that. The, the unfortunate thing is a real person, when they have committed a crime and they have caused a loss to a person or a company or community, there's restitution, criminal restitution. And for a real person, you cannot escape into bankruptcy and get that waived or expunged. A corporation under federal law can. And so we were left not with being able to do full restitution for our citizens, but to kind of put a stake in the road. Now the bankruptcy court is probably into this year will finally wrap up $13.5 billion and pay out not, not just to the campfire, but some Santa Rosa fires and some other p genie caused fires because utilities are always on the hook because such a dangerous commodity that they have that they are required to have no fault in a way. They're going to have to, they're going to be required if that starts a fire, to pay. And we figure about half of that was probably the campfire.
- [19:29]
C
Who will they pay or who will get the money?
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A
The, the money that goes out is to the individual homeowners, business owners, persons that were affected by those fires.
- [19:40]
C
What's happened to the people impacted by those fires in the interim? Have they been, has there been a lot of rebuilding? Have people built back?
- [19:47]
A
It's been very slow. I mean paradise was more of a retirement community in of those 27,000 people. And so when you're burnt out and it takes a huge amount of time just to recover because all of the stuff that is burnt is toxic. So lots of problems. And I think we're seeing that down in LA right now though being la and in a sense learning from the campfire, it's gone much faster. But trucking out tons and tons, I mean tens of thousands of tons of toxic waste. A home that burns, all of the toxic material that's in that home has to be taken away, has to be certified clean before you can start, start building again and then becomes a problem. Okay, now everyone wants a home built and where do we get the contractors to, to all come up at the same time? Where do they stay? So it's been a slow but increasingly steady way to get back. But as I say the retirement community, many of them just said I'm done. I've got to go find a place wherever that may be out of state, someplace else and start my life there. I can't wait years to start my life again. And you know, the people, you know, friends and family of mine also suffered a huge amount post traumatic stress in that, in that fire. I mean they were in the middle of the fire trying to, trying to get out. We were absolutely blessed that there wasn't, you know, decimal more points, more people that were, that were killed. You need to be very careful about putting live electricity out there. PG to their credit at this point, that culture change that talked about the, you know, kind of back up the year before when we were prosecuting them for let's do a little 100 acre fire for lack of vegetation management. I talked to the, their attorneys, turns out to be same attorneys later and I says this is going to continue to happen. Trees continue to grow. Why don't you people put this underground? Oh, no way. Way too expensive. After the campfire they found out what expensive is and they have now started putting, putting lines underground. It's expensive if I held a lot less expensive than paying for the destruction that happens when you can't keep up with the, with the maintenance that you should.
- [23:07]
C
So I'm gleaning from that as far as the power line cause of buyers that's resolved if they're buried.
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A
Absolutely. Yeah. Because there's no, there's, there's no lines to fall into, you know, the steel structures. There's no lines to interact with vegetation and spark, spark that off. And then one kind of ancillary advantage is we saw that in the paradise fire, people trying to get out, lines were falling and blocking escape routes. And so that, it's another reason to bury, reason to, to bury this so you have clear escape routes. Lightning starts the fire so everyone can get the hell out.
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C
Not just from your prosecution involving the campfire, but overall, what do you think is sort of something most people don't know outside of California about the fire dangers? We just hear there's wildfires raging in California all the time.
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It's, you know, when you, when you lose a home and it's not and people lose homes in hurricanes and they lose homes and tornadoes and so forth and there's a lot of, a lot of destruction. When you lose a home in a fire, it is gone. Everything's gone. Your memories are gone, you're everything, all the pictures, all the knickknacks, everything is, is pretty much gone. But even more so with, you know, hurricanes, you can, you got some time to move away. Tornadoes, you can get some tornado warnings, fires that are coming through, particularly this fire that came through. There's not enough warning. And the most horrible way you could imagine to die is to burn to death. I listened to the grandmother. I'm sorry, it still fixed me. A mother and her daughter die on a 911 tape as a fire consumed them.
- [25:25]
C
Yeah, I can't think of a worse way to go.
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B
Much more on this story on Sunday, January 11, including the mayor of the hard hit town in Paradise, California. We report from there on an unusually foggy morning six years after the historic camp fire. And I will also have a specific rundown of the major fires over the years and the true causes that have been found behind them. If you want to watch Full Measure this Sunday to find out more, go to cherylakkeson.com and click the Full Measure tab for a list of stations and times. Or you can go to FullMeasure News online and this program will be fed Sunday around 11 in the morning. You can catch it there Fullmeasure News, you can catch replays there anytime. If you happen to be listening to this after January 11th, no worries. Go to FullMeasure News for the replay or find it on our unadvertised YouTube channel, full measure with Cheryl Achison. If you enjoy this podcast, consider leaving us a great review, sharing it with your friends and subscribers, and check out my other podcast, the Cheryl Akison Podcast. My latest bestseller is Follow the How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails, Available everywhere with proceeds supporting independent reporting, causes. Do your own research, make up your own mind, think for yourself.