Victims of wildfires blamed on PG&E Corp.’s power lines and government agencies that provided them disaster relief are tussling over a payout from the bankrupt utility, Bloomberg News reported. PG&E reached a settlement with fire victims to pay a total of $13.5 billion for damages tied to catastrophic blazes. California’s emergency services office and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA, want more than $6 billion — payouts that victims’ attorneys said on Thursday would leave less money for those directly affected by the fires. Every dollar that FEMA and California’s agency receive “is one less dollar available to pay victims,” a committee representing fire victims said in filings to the judge overseeing PG&E’s bankruptcy. The dispute casts a shadow on the settlement PG&E reached with victims that won court approval just last month. The company had spent weeks cobbling together the deal, which is crucial to its efforts to come up with a viable restructuring plan and emerge from bankruptcy by a state-imposed deadline of June 30. FEMA said that it is required by federal law to pursue claims from third parties found responsible for creating disasters. “It is important that responsible parties are held accountable for causing the expenditure of taxpayer dollars,” the agency said in a statement.
