PG&E Says It May Have Started Yet Another Major Northern California Wildfire in June

PG&E equipment may have ignited a large wildfire in Colusa County that burned more than 19,000 acres at the start of the summer, the utility told state regulators.

In a new filing with the California Public Utilities Commission, PG&E said its system experienced an outage around 1:26 p.m. on June 17 near where the Sites Fire started. Cal Fire said the blaze began around 19 minutes later.

A worker sent to the scene of the electricity disruption on a distribution circuit near the community of Stonyford found part of a tree had fallen on what was then a de-energized power line, according to PG&E’s filing.

The Sites Fire would burn for more than a week before it was fully contained, turning into California’s ninth-largest wildfire this year and the largest for the Cal Fire Sonoma-Lake-Napa unit, according to state fire officials.

At its peak, close to 2,250 firefighters worked the blaze. It led to a series of evacuation orders and warnings, and it sent smoke into parts of Sonoma, Napa and Solano counties.

Although the fire burned a large amount of land, it did not injure anyone and did not destroy homes.

PG&E said it released a preliminary report on the incident this week because it received a claim that the fire had caused more than $50,000 in damage to fencing in the area.

Cal Fire would not say whether it’s investigating PG&E’s equipment as the cause of the blaze.

“Our investigation into the cause of the Sites Fire remains open, so we cannot comment on that report or the determination of the fire’s cause until our investigation has concluded,” Cal Fire spokesperson Jason Clay said in an email on Wednesday.

PG&E has come under scrutiny for starting several large wildfires in California over the last decade.

Those incidents include Butte County’s 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest in state history, as well as the Dixie Fire in the northern Sierra Nevada, California’s largest single wildland blaze ever. Both led to criminal prosecutions against PG&E.

PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the Camp Fire, and it agreed to a civil settlement of charges in the Dixie Fire.

A representative for the Colusa County district attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

A CPUC spokesperson said the agency’s role in this kind of incident is not to determine a fire’s cause.

“When a utility reports an electric incident potentially associated with a wildfire, CPUC staff perform site visits and collect data to assess if the utility violated any CPUC or state rules and regulations,” the commission’s Terrie Prosper said in an email.

A PG&E representative reached for comment on the Sites Fire acknowledged the outage but gave no further details about the incident, other than to outline steps the utility has taken to reduce wildfire risk.

Company spokesperson Matt Nauman noted that the utility is working to place hundreds of miles of power lines underground and continues to turn off power during windy and dry weather.

“Although we have made real and significant progress in driving down wildfire risk, wildfires remain a serious threat to the safety of our state and our customers. We remain focused on working every day to end catastrophic wildfires,” Nauman said.