As both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chico Enterprise-Record reported, the lawsuit we filed on December 7 outlines our new evidence concerning the cause of the Camp Fire. An insulator on the 100-year old Pulga high voltage transmission tower failed, allowing an uninsulated cable to come into contact with the tower’s steel structure. Once that happened, electrical arcing produced molten metal. The molten metal dropped into the vegetation, igniting the fire.
PG&E’s entire system is old and decrepit, and instead of inspecting and maintaining it in a prudent fashion, they simply let it run until it fails and then fix it,” said Mike Danko, one of the attorneys involved in the suit. “Most of the time, you get away with that. … But you don’t get away with it in the situation that we have with the drought and the dry conditions.