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California utility company PG&E Corp is exploring filing some or all of its business for bankruptcy protection as it faces billions of dollars in liabilities related to fatal wildfires in 2018 and 2017, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.
The company is considering the move as a contingency, in part because it could soon take a significant financial charge for the fourth quarter of 2018 related to liabilities from the blazes, the sources said.
A bankruptcy filing is not certain, the sources said. The company could receive financial help through legislation that would let it pass on to customers costs associated with fire liabilities, the sources said. But that is just a possibility, they said, so bankruptcy preparations are being made.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Monday January 07 2019, @11:21PM
Under a rule like that, what would motivate companies like PG&E to maintain their equipment enough to avoid setting fires in the first place? The cost of the first acre or first day would be far less than maintenance costs, so financially the smart thing to do would be to continue risking thousands of people's lives & homes, not make any effort to protect them... For that matter, how are landowners supposed to prevent walls of flames moving at 40-60 mph (or as the news put it, spreading at a rate of 1 Costco per minute) from traveling across their property, short of removing every bit of vegetation from their land so it looks like a desert?