Thread by @BrandonRittiman

How was PG&E convicted of mass manslaughter in the 2018 #CampFire?

We finally have the case they pleaded guilty to: 42 days of secret testimony in front of a Butte County grand jury.

We've made all 5,000+ pages available, but since you likely haven't got time to read 'em...

...here's a link to our story.

And a brief thread on what @ABC10's #FirePowerMoney team found inside 👇

Dozens of PG&E employees testified under oath.

Prosecutors started with what they found at the origin point of the Camp Fire:

abc10.com/article/news/l…

This.

A broken cast-iron C-hook that held up the bare wire, estimated to be a 97+ year old original part on PG&E's Caribou-Palermo line.

This hook broke first, likely because it was was on a tower that sat on this wind-prone hilltop.

But there were many more:

Investigators found more C-hooks "all over the line" on the verge of breaking.

Like this one.

That little bit of metal remaining was all that stood between 115,000 volts and disaster.

Prosecutors wanted to know: how come PG&E inspectors didn't find them?

So they subpoenaed the inspectors to testify.

They were key witnesses to PG&E's crimes.

Most came with lawyers; paid for by PG&E. (Because corporate defendants roll like that.)

Asked about the inspections he used to do on the line, this PG&E troubleman invoked the fifth:

The grand jurors were sent away.

The lawyers and the judge had a meeting that's still secret because it was redacted from the court records we spent the last 2 years pursuing...

It ended with an immunity deal the troubleman, Buck Arden.

Then, he talked:

"Every day we fought [PG&E]," he told the jurors.

He testified to doing the best inspections he could, but "I can only do so much."

It wasn't enough for prosecutors, because...

They'd flown the power line themselves, in the @ButteSheriff helicopter.

Using a digital camera you can buy at Walmart, they started doing more effective inspections of the hooks than PG&E.

These photos, never shown publicly before, show how they found the other worn hooks.

It wasn't hard.

Law enforcement quickly taught themselves how to find them.

All they needed to do was look at the tops of the hooks for a "moon" shape.

Thin, thumbnail moon: good
Half-moon or bigger: bad

This is how easily PG&E could have prevented the #CampFire.

And yet...

PG&E's inspectors thought it couldn't be done.

A. "You would have to be at the exact angle... [it] would be a hazardous position for yourself and the helicopter."
Q: "Okay. But, obviously, this photograph is taken from a helicopter."
A: "It was?"

Multiple PG&E troubleman talked about worn-out hooks in their testimony like they were some kind of unicorn:

"Didn't know that they existed."

"There is no training" on that.

Did they even know the hooks could break? "No, I did not."

Damning answers for PG&E...

Because PG&E and its leaders did know.

The grand jury saw proof.

PG&E's own studies on worn hooks and eye holes going back as far as 1987 (left) and as recently as the months before the Camp Fire 2018 (right).

Compare that 2nd image to what came out of the Camp Fire...

This👇 a hole that held a C-hook on the Caribou-Palermo line.

“Looks very similar… the material and the pattern of wear,” said Peter Martin, the PG&E scientist who authored the 2018 study.

He concluded the parts in his study would wear through at 97 to 100 years old.

But the people *actually inspecting* 97-year-old power lines in Butte County testified they never got information about PG&E's studies of C-hooks and their eye holes.

Did PG&E take any action after the 2018 study?

Not that the supervisor who ordered it was aware of:

It's an example of something PG&E is frequently criticized for: siloing information.

A cultural problem, prosecutors say, that comes from the top...

I need to pause. Will finish this thread with more on that

Meantime, you can watch it in the piece here:

Thanks to everyone for the praise so far, but we're not done.

Why did PG&E let it get like this-- missing such a glaring, known safety problem?

Prosecutors developed a theory:

"Because if you find it, you have to fix it. And to fix it costs money."

They followed the money and found these:

What PG&E insiders called Red-Green reports.

Every month, PG&E sent these to regional transmission line supervisors-- tracking the costs of their inspections.

"Red is bad, green is good," said the fmr. supervisor for the power line...

"Yes," he confirmed, PG&E used those unit costs to set employee bonuses.

"The people who get appreciated and rewarded are the people who come in under budget," not the people who do the right thing, the DA found.

How does that sits with kin of PG&E's manslaughter victims?

"They incentivized not taking proper care of their equipment, financially," said Steve Bradley, grandson of Colleen Riggs.

"That's how little they think of human life," adds Julian Binstock's son Phil.

Like most of PG&E's victims, Colleen and Julian died in their burning homes.

That's one method PG&E used to keep inspection costs down.

The company also simply cut the number of inspections and the time allowed to do them.

In the few decades before it broke, this power line went from 3 inspections per year to one annual "air patrol" most years.

"That's not a patrol. That's a fly-by," said PG&E old-timer Chuck Stinnett.

He testified he used to fly "low and slow" back in the time before those cuts, to really look at each tower.

He was "devastated" by more recent PG&E flight plans...

To fly by “almost 1700 (towers) in a six-hour” shift.

That's less than *13 seconds* to fly past each tower.

Each tower has hundreds of parts. As industry folks often point out: there are "no ornaments."

Every part plays a role to keep 115,000 volts from faulting:

Because there's so much power that the conductor, the bare metal wire, will blow apart (left) if it touches the metal tower.

And white-hot bits of it (right) will fall on the ground below, easily sparking a wildland fire.

All it took was a nasty windstorm like the one that was furiously blowing from the Feather River Canyon in the direction of Paradise that day.

The same wind that snapped the last bit of metal on PG&E's hook broadcast hot embers from burning trees all over the town, doing this.

So, back to PG&E's habit of putting information in silos.

David Gabbard was PG&E's "Senior Director of Transmission Asset Management" before the Camp Fire.

What did he know about the assets he managed? Not enough.

Was he aware that there are 100-year-old parts still hanging in towers?

"I was not," he testified.

Prosecutors viewed Gabbard as "first mate on the Titanic," having only recently taken over making PG&E's five-year plans for which old power lines needed to be replaced.

Using the adage "garbage in/garbage out," prosecutors asked Gabbard to bring it together:

They asked him to admit PG&E's "garbage" data about things like the age and condition of its power lines would lead to "garbage" plans for which parts to replace.

It went, like this:

He ultimately conceded the point.

Regardless, Gabbard did testify he knew PG&E had “prominent… risks of wildfire” from “deteriorated and dilapidated infrastructure.”

And he confirmed personally telling that to PG&E's top brass...

His boss Kevin Dasso.
His boss's boss, Patrick Hogan.
President and CEO Geisha Williams.

Prosecutors weren't willing to give these executives immunity.

So none of them testified.

Despite that fact, PG&E told the public it was "fully cooperating" with the investigation.

No one went to prison.

Since the Camp Fire, PG&E's had four CEOs.

John Simon took over as interim from Williams and is still PG&E’s top lawyer.

Bill Johnson entered guilty pleas to 85 felonies on PG&E’s behalf.

A different Bill, Bill Smith, took sentencing the next day.

Asked outside court if we'd see them back at another one of these, Smith said "no sir."

Three months later, in September 2020, the Zogg Fire killed four people:

Feyla Mcleod (8,) her mom Alaina (46,) and Karin King (79) burned to death.

Ken Vossen (52) died in hospital.

Smith is still on PG&E's board.

He's been replaced as CEO by @poppepk.

With her company facing four new manslaughter charges, she's taken a different approach to Zogg than the company did to Camp.

She admits the company sparked the fire, but denies it was a crime.

Unlike Camp, PG&E pleaded NOT guilty to Zogg earlier this year in Shasta County.

@poppepk skipped the court date.

Evidence from PG&E's federal probation (for its San Bruno felonies) showed the company was aware of the safety hazard that sparked Zogg.

abc10.com/article/news/l…

PG&E's PR folks say "we must fully acknowledge our past" and "today, PG&E is a different company with new leadership under Patti Poppe."

We asked if Poppe read the Camp Fire files. No answer.

Poppe has only ever offered to speak with @ABC10 off-the-record, which we've declined.

PG&E has changed many of the strategies since the Camp Fire.

But there's a saying in business: "Culture eats strategy for breakfast."

"If they're not held accountable, the culture works. Everybody's happy, and everybody's making money," said Bradley, Colleen Riggs' grandson.

The lead prosecutor, Marc Noel (left) agrees.

"Unless things change, many more acres are going to be destroyed. Many more homes are going to be lost. And more importantly, many more deaths are going to occur," he said.

"There's been a lot of enabling going on in Sacramento."

We've done prolific investigating on that subject, which I invite you to explore down this rabbithole.👇

TL;DR - California's state government under Gov. @GavinNewsom has repeatedly acted to shield PG&E from the financial consequences of starting fires.

So what now?

Why does this massive trove of documents matter 4 years later?

Well, 16 million people still live inside PG&E's monopoly territory-- that's 1/20 Americans.

The company's behavior is life and death.

PG&E has a rap sheet of 91 felonies and 700+ misdemeanors.

As I put it in the "dear viewer" letter attached to these documents:

To judge whether PG&E’s apologies and promises to change are sincere, the details of its past
criminal behavior must be available.

Truth is a necessary component of accountability.

You can obtain the documents in a link toward the top of this article.

As the letter says, be advised: there's some deeply disturbing stuff in there. There's no nice way to prove to a jury that 84 people died in a fire.

abc10.com/article/news/l…

Earlier this year Butte DA Mike Ramsey and the DAs of 5 other counties settled fire cases with PG&E as a civil matter in lieu of criminal charges.

Ramsey says he sees PG&E making changes that give him reason for optimism, but he wants to see proof "in the pudding."

#DixieFire👇

Just *this week* PG&E admitted it's under yet another criminal investigation.

The #MosquitoFire in @Tahoe_NF/@R5_Fire_News.

A steel transmission pole was seized toward the bottom of this road.

PG&E says it gave the pole new "enhanced" inspections "within the past 5 months."

Our work continues.

My DMs are open and I'm at [e-mail]

Please share this thread, the above story link, and/or the YouTube video if you found this work valuable.

I'd be remiss if I didn't also acknowledge @KatherineBlunt and @WSJ, who joined us in the legal effort to seek these records and prevent additional redactions.

You can find all 4 years of @ABC10's #FirePowerMoney stories at FirePowerMoney.com