PG&E Corp. agreed to pay $55 million to avoid criminal prosecutions for two big wildfires including the second-biggest in California history, Bloomberg News reported. Under a settlement with district attorneys representing six counties in the area, no criminal charges will be filed from last year’s near-record large Dixie Fire, and a criminal complaint stemming from the 2019 Kincade Fire will be dismissed, the company said Monday in a statement. The utility is still fighting charges in Shasta County, including involuntary manslaughter, over yet another wildfire in 2020 that killed four people. Preventing wildfires and resolving civil and criminal liability from the blazes has weighed heavily on PG&E for years. Fires sparked by power lines and transformers that have destroyed more than a million acres and killed scores of people sent the company into bankruptcy in 2019. PG&E recently completed a five-year period of criminal probation under a federal judge in San Francisco who frequently lambasted the company’s performance on fire safety. PG&E pleaded guilty in 2020 to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for the deadliest fire in state history in 2018.
