SONOMA COUNTY BRINGS FELONY CHARGES AGAINST PG&E OVER KINCADE FIRE
A year and a half after the Kincade fire scorched large areas of northeast Sonoma County and forced the largest evacuations in county history, Sonoma County prosecutors brought their case against PG&E into court.
On Tuesday, county district attorney Jill Ravitch filed five felony and twenty-eight misdemeanor charges against the utility in Sonoma County Superior Court. The charges relate to the destruction and air pollution caused by the blaze, which ultimately raged across almost 78 thousand acres of Sonoma County, and forced the evacuations of Healdsburg, Windsor, Geyserville and parts of Santa Rosa.
Cal Fire investigators moved in quickly while the fire was still burning, tracing it’s origins to a spark caused by broken high voltage transmission line in the Geysers area. At the time of the ignition, PG&E had turned off power across wide areas of the county due to a forecast of dangerous high wind conditions. Ironically, the transmission line that Cal Fire found to be the cause had been left energized during the emergency.
Although PG&E accepted Cal Fire’s determination of the cause of the fire, they maintain that no crime was committed. Much of the county’s case focuses on the health consequences of the fire, which subjected hundreds of thousands of county residents to dangerous air quality for 16 straight days as the fire burned out of control.
It took more than 5 thousand firefighters almost two weeks to control the blaze, which forced the evacuation of nearly 200 thousand people, or about 40% of the county’s residents.
PG&E representatives will appear in Sonoma County Superior Court on April 20th to face arraignment on the charges.
Author: newsofthenorthbay
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