PG&E: Politics and crime | A FIRE - POWER - MONEY SPECIAL

[Music] the employees of pg e knew they ignored it as a consequence people died the pacific gas and electric company ran a power grid so unsafe it's criminal trying to stop sparking deadly fires pg e had to resort to cutting off the power when the wind blows it's a giant band-aid to cover up their poor maintenance 16 million people have no choice but to buy their power from this company that's committed 91 felonies they had lit the match on this bomb years ago and it wasn't if it's going to go it's when it's going to go after the camp fire pg e promised to do better we won't see you back at one of these no sir but more fires sparked blamed on pg e lines they were supposed to be shutting off the power due to high winds our investigation reveals pg e's deadly behavior and the political machine that allows it to keep going this is fire power money more than two years after the campfire you can find signs of life on the ridge where it burned people rebuilding individual perseverance but as much as we love a good comeback story that's not the big picture in truth when 85 people died here that day this community died with them most of the tens of thousands of people who escaped aren't coming back paradise and its surrounding neighborhoods will have to be born again i'm brandon ridderman i was here in paradise to document the destruction that day and i've been investigating ever since pg e admitted to crimes for causing this fire and it's under investigation for crimes again two more wildfires are blamed on pg e's power lines the grandmother of an eight-year-old girl who died in the zog fire asked me why why is pg e allowed to keep going like this after all it's already done the answer comes down to power not the electrical kind we revealed that california politicians are still willing to take pg e's money even after the company admitted to the felony killing of 84 people here the people who lost loved ones in the camp fire live with a kind of grief few of us can understand the deaths weren't just violent they were caused by a crime he was motivated for money they killed my father for money pg e pleaded guilty to starting the fire and to killing 84 people prosecutors found evidence that pg e repeatedly cut maintenance over the last three decades these hooks wore down so much one of them broke dropping the power line into a metal tower and sparking the fire the hook was 97 years old they didn't want to spend the money to actually inspect these things they didn't want to spend the money to actually replace these things despite pg e's history of skimping on ten dollar hooks there's one thing the company can't seem to stop spending on god i hate politics state campaign finance records show pg e donated 2.1 million dollars of company money to california politicians and campaigns last year this stack about a third of the donations is money pg e gave while the company was still bankrupt there's no law banning companies from making political donations during bankruptcy but in pg e's case it doesn't look good especially when you consider what the company did under chapter 11 protection pg e used its bankruptcy to argue it didn't have cash to pay fines for starting wildfires that killed more than a hundred people i recommended that the payment of the fine be permanently suspended the camp fire prosecutors say pg e tried to offer them money during bankruptcy to avoid accountability for crimes there was a number of offers of rather large money to say do the civil don't charge them criminally they were trying to use the bankruptcy to get out of being charged correct but when time came to pay the victims of pg e's wildfires pg e used bankruptcy once again to say it was broke the victims were not only just victims but then they were hostages former prosecutor mike aguirre represents pg e customers suing the state over the company's bailout instead of cash he points out pg e paid half its settlement to fire victims in shares of pg e stock that means pg e's fire victims took on the company's future risk at the end of february the stock in the victims trust fund was worth 1.75 billion dollars less than what fire victims were told in bankruptcy it really wasn't to help the victims it was to use the victims to justify bailing out pg e at the same time pg e was telling its victims it had no more cash to give pg e somehow found sixty thousand dollars to give to the yes on prop 13 campaign a school bond package voters rejected in the spring primary pg e also spent hundreds of thousands more on political action committees that supported and opposed candidates in that primary later in the year pg e money started flowing directly to candidates something we've seen before pg e was convicted of a federal of six federal felonies in 2016. after that you took more than two hundred thousand dollars to help get elected how should people trust you to be running the show to come up with the solution i um i wish you luck with whatever you're working on but uh that's a strange question our reporting on the 2018 race revealed governor newsome and eight out of ten members of the state legislature took money from pg e they accepted that money even after a jury found the company guilty of six felonies for the deadly san bruno gas explosion those elected officials then bailed pg e out of bankruptcy with a law that created a multi-billion dollar wildfire fund paid for by customers if pg e is engaging in criminal conduct that kills people in order to make money and you know that and then you accept their money what does that make you these politicians the money they're taking is blood money and they're just as guilty as pg e is the camp fire added 85 more felonies to pg e's rap sheet 84 felony counts of manslaughter and one felony for sparking the fire a few months after it was convicted of those crimes pg e started donating again that's this second stack of money and it includes more than a hundred thousand dollars pg e gave to 17 current members of the legislature most are in southern california but these six represent districts in pg e's monopoly territory one who stands out newly elected bay area senator dave cortezi the other members took twenty five hundred dollars apiece pg e spent seventy five thousand dollars to help cortese not to his official campaign but to valley neighborhoods united for dave cortez a group made just to help him cortezi a democrat told us in a statement he had no knowledge of the donation and that he was shocked shocked to learn that pg e expended funds independently to support my efforts we asked cortese if he was willing to disavow the donation that pg e made in his name we didn't hear back senator steve glazer also took money from pg e last year which is odd considering the democrat returned some of his pg e money in 2018. what changed his office didn't reply to our emails asking all their donations helped them get away with murder you don't give somebody eight thousand dollars some minor little state senator eight thousand dollars and expect nothing for it you know i mean that's ridiculous they bought influence of the 17 lawmakers only one told us they parted ways with pg e's donation top senate democrat tony atkins's staff told us an unsolicited contribution from pg e was received and it has since been returned [Music] republicans and democrats accepted pg e money after the company admitted to killing people here so did the campaigns for several controversial ballot questions you can browse all of pg e's donations at firepowermoney.com what pg e did was violent whether you beat someone to death or you caused them to die in a fire you caused a violent death the violence of the camp fire turned main street businesses to ashes it destroyed the homes of 14 000 families and killed at least 84 innocent people the employees of pg e knew they knew they ignored it as a consequence people died pg e's maintenance of its power line wasn't just bad it was criminal the company pleaded guilty to 84 felony counts of manslaughter nearly every building in paradise burned down in the span of a few hours but pg e's criminal behavior took place over years they had lit the match on this on this bomb years ago and it wasn't if it's going to go it's when it's going to go what went was this nearly hundred-year-old worn down hook which cracked dropping the power line it was holding and sparking the fire pg e's decision was simply just to let these things hang until they broke what did pg e know and when did pg e know it much of the evidence used to indict pg e has remained a secret shown only to the grand jury until now we obtained this internal pg e report that found the same kind of wear on other old pg e power lines it shows pg e knew it had this problem with old parts and that pg e wasn't keeping track of how old those parts were your colleague had to guess how old this stuff was yeah we find that a lot [Music] these photos taken by pg e showed the company taking part in its own criminal investigation literally we're letting the murderer into the crime scene and telling them to collect our evidence for us prosecutors couldn't find a qualified contractor willing to pull parts off the power line that sparked the campfire so pg e's own crews did the work and the company catalogued every piece of evidence it helped collect this hook found a couple miles up the line from where the campfire started shows just how bad things got a groove more than halfway through the metal from decades of grinding against the hole it hung from those holes in what are called hanger plates or wear plates also became evidence on this side this hole is worn what we call keyholing these holes started as perfect circles but over time got worn down by the hook we found evidence that before the campfire pg e knew old parts like these were wearing past their useful lives these worn plates showed up in a pg e lab report half a year before the campfire started the photos show the hooks had worn more than halfway through the metal of the plates plates pg e crews found hanging here on this high tension line near the caldecott tunnel in the bay area these plates hadn't been changed in 72 years at least that's the best guess the engineers at pg e's lab could make that these plates were probably installed in 1946 what would it have been like trying to figure out how old those plates were when they walked into the lab oh you wouldn't know engineer nick vance did not write this report he was one of a handful of metallurgists working in the pg e lab that created it and he said pg e had no good database for these parts hooks plates things like that i don't think there's records with any of those anywhere that i'm ever aware of pg e's lab report shows company scientists had to guess how old parts were using the year the tower was built 1946 they know the age of the towers but they weren't tracking the age of the parts exactly the camp fire prosecutors found the same thing on the power line that burned down paradise pg e had no records to show how old the parts were this line was energized in 1921 and then they have nothing until 1990. prosecutors say pg e had a simple reason not to track the age of parts the company wasn't interested in fixing them the term that that all of the pg e people run away from is run to failure run to failure means not fixing a machine until it stops working and pg e's machine carries hundreds of thousands of volts through the air running to failure it's it's like running around with with a loaded gun former state utilities commissioner catherine sandoval says the fact that pg e let parts get this worn down should worry all of us and the world that pg e created reflects their criminal thinking and is criminally reckless pg e denied that it used to run to failure strategy in writing to a federal judge but prosecutors aren't alone saying the company used a run to failure policy so does a former pg e engineer that was talked about its company policy i felt that i didn't know if that wasn't publicly but i mean run the failure was the policy did they call it that that's what it was joked about pretty much run the failure and it wasn't that big of a deal before really the wildfire time wildfire danger has in fact gotten worse in the last decade pg e frequently points to climate change as the main problem the federal judge handling pg e's probation is all out of patience with that please don't blame climate change judge william also scolded pg e's lawyers climate change doesn't start the wildfire pg e starts the wildfire this report on warren parts is also evidence of how pg e looks at this problem there is no remaining life to that in his opinion as a metallurgist nick bantz told us pg e was already on borrowed time with these hanger plates and yet the report claimed those plates could last another 28 years i think it's trash in my opinion to even have stated it the lab report says it ignored the possibility these plates could crack assuming that they'd just keep wearing evenly all the way through but nick says they were already at risk of cracking this could have fell any time in the last like decade that's what happened to the hooks holding up the power line that sparked the campfire on this one the actual hook that caused paradise to burn down you can see just that tiniest bit of a nub we wanted to know why pg e's lab report tried to estimate remaining life for used-up parts engineer peter martin authored that report he now works at the rochester institute of technology in new york martin didn't respond to our calls and emails we do know he's trying to keep his name off of the record of pg e's crimes and so is this whole list of pg e employees in a lawsuit paid for by pg e asking a court to black their names out of the grand jury transcript we obtained all 22 names on that list and it includes all four people listed on the pg e lab report they're keeping quiet but nick has an idea of why his lab tried to save these parts did have some remaining life to give somebody a number for something because they were wanting a number a number nick says pg e's power line managers kept asking for without those managers pg e's lab couldn't earn billable hours of work so he says the lab gave those managers what they asked for that had to do with pressure on the scientists to deliver what they were looking for correct it's completely backwards sandoval says the fact that pg e set up a lab that had to sell its own services to managers within pg e is more evidence of the company relying on criminal thinking that is not the responsibility of some guy to convince to convince another boss to send them work it is pg e's responsibility as the corporation that owns those assets maintains those assets prosecutors say pg e missed these problems because it cut back on maintenance and inspections the company even admitted that it tied bonuses to how well supervisors cut inspection costs pg e told the judge it doesn't do that anymore and the more i study about what happened the more galling it is they knew that these hooks were failing to this day phil binstock still wonders how painful his father's death was his first check for his dad's death finally arrived 25 000 minus attorney's fees he told us he'd much rather see pg e's upper management in prison if i had a sense that they were even trying to fix anything in a really meaningful way maybe i wouldn't feel so harshly towards them but evil little people [Music] [Music] just three months after pg e pleaded guilty to burning down paradise the zog fire killed four people including an eight-year-old girl fayla mccloud and her mom elena in 45 minutes my entire life was wiped out [Music] the zog fire is blamed on a pine tree pg e contractors had marked as needing to be removed but never actually cut down california law requires power companies to cut trees that threaten their lines pg e is on federal probation for crimes it committed back in san bruno eight years before the camp fire the judge handling pg e's probation is pushing the company to keep better track of its safety work and to do a better job targeting shutoffs where the most danger from trees exists he's not the only one investigating shasta county prosecutors say criminal charges are possible charges that could be as serious as murder we can't stop every fire but we can stop these until that happens we'll keep investigating the root causes of this crisis fire power money

Channel: ABC10

Views: 22,800

Keywords: abc10, kxtv, california, wildfire, california wildfire, wildfires, zogg fire, zogg, paradise, paradise wildfire, pacific gas and electric, PGE, PG&E, PG and E, guilty, justice, criminal, criminal investigation, electricity, electric grid, power shutoffs, homicide, power company, fire, power, money, brandon rittiman, abc10 originals, corporate, corporate crime, butte county, subpoena, utility, public utility, public utilities, abc10 sacramento

Id: oeDLDD0z0hM

Length: 20min 18sec (1218 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Yeap, these assholes pleaded guilty to manslaughter and nobody is in jail. What a fucking scam!

[u/NorCalWeirdo]

Glad I have SMUD

[u/Samaahito]

Didn't Erin Brockovich teach us how shitty PG&E was back in the early 90s? Make utilities public; such an essential facet of everyday life should not be for-profit. It would obviate a lot of PG&E's financial mismanagement and it's willingness to accept the kinds of risk for which CA's residents and the environment—not it's board or it's balance sheet—become the beneficiaries.