California utilities are facing the very real possibility that billion-dollar blazes could become an annual occurrence, and they don’t know how to pay for them, Bloomberg reported. Shares of the state’s two largest utilities plummeted yesterday after both PG&E Corp. and Edison International released reports suggesting their equipment may have started the deadly fires now burning at both ends of the state. PG&E was the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500 Index and trading in its shares halted briefly early in the session before closing down 17 percent. Edison slumped 12 percent. Three of the worst fires in California history have occurred in the last 13 months. They’ve come as scientists blame global warming for altering the state’s water cycle, parching vegetation and causing hot and dry weather patterns to stall over the region, even during the state’s annual rainy season. Both PG&E and Edison are still adding up the billions of dollars in costs from deadly wildfires sparked last year by their equipment. PG&E already faced up to $17.3 billion in potential liabilities for 2017’s Northern California wildfires, according to a JPMorgan Chase & Co. estimate. Those blazes killed 44 people. Susquehanna Financial Group estimated Monday that the Camp Fire, which wiped out the town of Paradise last week and has killed at least 29 people, could add as much as $5 billion.
