Katherine Blunt and Russell Gold

PG&E Corp. knew for years that hundreds of miles of high-voltage power lines could

fail and spark fires, yet it repeatedly failed to perform the necessary upgrades.

Documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal under the Freedom of Information

Act and in connection with a regulatory dispute over PG&E’s spending on its

electrical grid show that the company has long been aware that parts of its 18,500-

mile transmission system have reached the end of their useful lives.

The failure last year of a century-old transmission line that sparked a wildfire, killed

85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise wasn’t an aberration, the documents

show. A year earlier, PG&E executives conceded to a state lawyer that the company

needed to process many projects, all at once, to prevent system failures—a problem

they said could be likened to a “pig in the python.”

Even before November’s deadly fire, the documents show, the company knew that 49

of the steel towers that carry the electrical line that failed needed to be replaced

entirely.

In a 2017 internal presentation, the large San Francisco-based utility estimated that

its transmission towers were an average of 68 years old. Their mean life expectancy

was 65 years. The oldest steel towers were 108 years old.

PG&E, which supplies electricity and natural gas to 16 million people, or about one in

20 Americans, operates one of the oldest long-distance electrical transmission

networks in the world. It was built beginning in the early 1900s to carry hydroelectric

power from the Sierra Nevada to the San Francisco Bay Area. Many of its original

steel towers and other equipment are still in service.

The danger posed by PG&E’s neglect of its transmission lines increased around 2013,

when a historic drought dried up much of California, creating extraordinary fire

conditions. In its 2017 internal presentation, the company said it needed a plan to

replace towers and better manage lines to prevent “structure failure resulting [in]

conductor on ground causing fire.”

Nevertheless, PG&E repeatedly delayed upgrades of some of its oldest transmission

lines, ranking them as low-risk projects, while it spent billions of dollars on other

work it considered higher priority, such as substation upgrades, according to federal

regulatory filings.

Among the problems, the utility has struggled to figure out which of its lines needed

the most attention.

PG&E Knew for Years Its Lines Could Spark Wildfires, and Didn’t Fix Them https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-knew-for-years-its-lines-could-spark-...

1 of 7 7/18/2019, 12:50 PM

Case: 19-30088 Doc# 3062-1 Filed: 07/18/19 Entered: 07/18/19 14:25:47 Page 1

of 7
PG&E employees work on broken power lines after the Camp Fire ripped

through Paradise, Calif. Photo: Joel Angel Juarez/Zuma Press

Until recently, PG&E hadn’t regularly climbed its towers to inspect their condition,

despite the suggestion of an outside consultant it hired, according to interviews with

current and former company officials and documents filed in connection with a

spending dispute between PG&E and state regulators. It began detailed inspections

of its transmission lines only after the Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise.

In addition to those inspections, PG&E said it began using drones and helicopters

earlier this year to capture images of its transmission structures to analyze their

condition, identify potential points of failure and prioritize repairs.

State fire officials concluded in May that a failure of PG&E equipment on a line

known as the Caribou-Palermo, built in 1921, caused the fire, the deadliest in

California history.

Federal and state regulators have paid little attention to the condition of PG&E’s

transmission system, and have largely left it up to the company to decide what to

upgrade and when. California officials are proposing adding more inspections and

oversight.

Utilities across the U.S. have neglected to maintain older high-voltage lines, many

built to support booming population growth in the decades before and after World

War II, said Gregory Reed, director of the Energy GRID Institute at the University of

Pittsburgh.

“We have known for a long time that we are dealing with aging and antiquated

infrastructure,” he said. “In a lot of cases, the business model was to wait for a failure

and then respond.”

PG&E Knew for Years Its Lines Could Spark Wildfires, and Didn’t Fix Them https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-knew-for-years-its-lines-could-spark-...

2 of 7 7/18/2019, 12:50 PM

Case: 19-30088 Doc# 3062-1 Filed: 07/18/19 Entered: 07/18/19 14:25:47 Page 2

of 7
PG&E sought bankruptcy protection in January, citing more than $30 billion in

potential liability stemming from lawsuits and other claims related to its role in

sparking fires. The company in December began “enhanced inspections” that

included climbing towers, some for the first time in decades.

After completing those inspections, the company disclosed June 19 that it needs to

make thousands of repairs. And it decided to permanently shut down the CaribouPalermo line after assessing the amount of work it would take to operate it safely.

Share Your Thoughts

Who should be responsible for ensuring that the nation’s electricity infrastructure is

safe? Join the conversation below.

PG&E said it already has repaired or made spot fixes to the most severe problems it

uncovered throughout its system. Risks remain, and the company said it is working

to prioritize and address them as wildfire season progresses.

“The reality is the number of safety risks that we’ve found from our standpoint is

unacceptable,” said Sumeet Singh, vice president of the company’s community

wildfire safety program.

Elizaveta Malashenko, the safety and enforcement chief for the California Public

Utilities Commission, said that after reviewing the inspection results, she “would not

be comfortable making a statement that [the Caribou-Palermo] was an outlier.”

Ms. Malashenko said the CPUC’s safety auditors have historically relied on utility

records rather than field inspections, which are far more costly to conduct. After the

Camp Fire, the agency has asked the state for $25 million to create a three-year

program to put its own inspectors in the field, in part because of the problems PG&E

has discovered within its system.

“No matter how you look at it, PG&E has a lot of work to do,” she said.

The part of PG&E’s grid that includes the Caribou-Palermo line, known as the

Caribou-Valona system, is so old that segments were considered candidates for the

National Register of Historic Places at one point by federal agencies. Approximately

800 of the original steel towers built to hold up the transmission lines are still in use,

according to PG&E correspondence with federal officials, uncovered through a

public-records request.

PG&E delayed safety work on the Caribou-Palermo line for more than five years, the

Journal reported in February. The company needed to replace 49 steel towers “due to

age,” and hardware and aluminum line on 57 towers “due to age and integrity,”

according to memos PG&E officials sent in 2017 and early 2018 to the U.S. Forest

Service, whose territory the line crosses. The Journal learned the scope of the work,

which hasn’t previously been reported, through a Freedom of Information Act

request to federal forest managers.

PG&E Knew for Years Its Lines Could Spark Wildfires, and Didn’t Fix Them https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-knew-for-years-its-lines-could-spark-...

3 of 7 7/18/2019, 12:50 PM

Case: 19-30088 Doc# 3062-1 Filed: 07/18/19 Entered: 07/18/19 14:25:47 Page 3

of 7
How to Prevent the Next PG&E Disaster

How to Prevent the Next PG&E Disaster

Vulnerabilities in PG&E's infrastructure combined with the impact of

climate change contributed to hundreds of wildfires in California,

including the deadly Camp Fire in 2018. Here’s a look at upgrades to the

utility giant’s power grid that might have prevented these blazes. Photo:

Reuters

PG&E has delayed maintenance work on several lines in Northern California’s

highest-threat fire areas, including at least one near the Plumas National Forest,

federal documents show. The company hasn’t detailed the scope of the work needed

for each line, but it has disclosed that some require upgrades similar to those needed

on the Caribou-Palermo line it stopped using.

The deferred maintenance became a problem when drought this decade killed

millions of trees, greatly heightening the risk of wildfire throughout Northern

California. State fire officials concluded that the company’s equipment sparked 18

wildfires in 2017, in most cases because trees made contact with lower-voltage lines.

In response, the company doubled down on tree trimming. The Camp Fire forced

PG&E to turn its attention to higher-voltage lines, which typically run through wide

PG&E Knew for Years Its Lines Could Spark Wildfires, and Didn’t Fix Them https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-knew-for-years-its-lines-could-spark-...

4 of 7 7/18/2019, 12:50 PM

Case: 19-30088 Doc# 3062-1 Filed: 07/18/19 Entered: 07/18/19 14:25:47 Page 4

of 7
paths cleared of trees.

Documents show that PG&E is unaware of the exact age of many of its transmission

towers and wires. In 2010, PG&E commissioned consulting firm Quanta Technology,

a subsidiary of Quanta Services Inc., to assess the age and condition of transmission

structures throughout its 70,000-square-mile service area.

The firm was unable to determine the age of about 6,900 towers in the 115-kilovolt

system. It found that nearly 30% of the remaining towers in that system, more than

3,500, were installed in the 1900s and 1910s. About 60% of the structures in the 230-

kilovolt system were built between 1920 and 1950.

It is common practice for utilities to use laser imaging equipment to inspect towers

instead of having workers climb them. Because PG&E had so many old towers,

Quanta concluded that the company should consider climbing at least a sample of

them every three to five years.

PG&E didn’t implement that recommendation, said Placido J. Martinez, a former

PG&E head of strategic asset management. “We felt we were doing enough,” he said.

State fire officials concluded that a failure of PG&E equipment caused the

fire that destroyed Paradise, above. Photo: josh edelson/Agence FrancePresse/Getty Images

Regulators have little say over such transmission-maintenance planning. Although

PG&E files transmission-spending plans with the Federal Energy Regulatory

Commission, the agency’s jurisdiction is over rates and terms of service. If state

officials or electric companies that rely on PG&E’s wires want to challenge the

utility’s spending, it is up to them to parse the annual federal filings, which often

exceed 1,500 pages. Projects that involve routine maintenance, such as replacing

PG&E Knew for Years Its Lines Could Spark Wildfires, and Didn’t Fix Them https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-knew-for-years-its-lines-could-spark-...

5 of 7 7/18/2019, 12:50 PM

Case: 19-30088 Doc# 3062-1 Filed: 07/18/19 Entered: 07/18/19 14:25:47 Page 5

of 7
aging towers, hardware and conductors, don’t require state or federal approval.

California regulators have hundreds of pages of rules for many aspects of utility

operations. Their rules for transmission are three sentences long. They simply say

that each utility must come up with its own procedures and follow them.

With no regulator keeping a close eye, the timetable for completing important

upgrades slipped. PG&E told federal regulators it planned to overhaul the CaribouPalermo line in 2013, yet it still hadn’t made improvements when a piece of hardware

holding a high-voltage line failed last November, sending sparks into the grass and

igniting the Camp Fire.

After the Journal reported earlier this year that the planned upgrades to that line had

been delayed, PG&E released a statement saying the work was “not maintenancerelated (i.e., work relating to identifying and fixing broken or worn parts).”

Internally, however, that is how the company characterized it. In a 2017 email to

Forest Service officials, PG&E land planner Paul Marotto wrote that the company’s

“planned maintenance includes structure replacement, conductor replacement,

conductor re-tensioning, installation of new insulators and structure modifications.”

PG&E officials said the work was needed in part because the strength of the aging

towers and wires had deteriorated.

Asked about the email, PG&E said it still disputes that the work was maintenance

related, saying it was needed to adhere to 2010 industry guidelines that called on

companies to ensure their transmission lines met design specifications.

PG&E has told state regulators it has struggled to consolidate data on the condition

of its equipment. Kevin Dasso, PG&E’s vice president of electric asset management

until earlier this year, said the lack of comprehensive information made it difficult to

determine which transmission lines were approaching the point of failure.

In 2018, when PG&E proposed a spending plan to federal regulators for thousands of

transmission-line upgrades, it used a risk-based system to prioritize the projects.

Nearly 600 projects, with an estimated $2.7 billion cost, had a higher risk score than

Caribou-Palermo, indicating PG&E considered that work more urgent.

PG&E said it has improved its records in recent years by conducting inventories in

the field and has built databases to upgrade its analytical capabilities.

Other PG&E transmission lines at least as old as the Caribou-Palermo remain in

service. One leg of the Caribou-Valona network, known as the Ignacio-Mare Island

line, delivers power to an electric switchyard at the edge of a high-fire-risk area in

Marin County north of the Golden Gate Bridge and a now-closed naval shipyard. At

least 28 of the towers on the line have been in place since 1921, according to a

company inventory.

PG&E has repeatedly delayed work on the line, which has segments sagging too close

to the ground, since first proposing it in 2014, federal regulatory filings show. The

$6.9 million project, which involves increasing the height of 44 towers, was initially

expected to be completed in 2015 but now is slated to start next year, the company

said.

PG&E Knew for Years Its Lines Could Spark Wildfires, and Didn’t Fix Them https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-knew-for-years-its-lines-could-spark-...

6 of 7 7/18/2019, 12:50 PM

Case: 19-30088 Doc# 3062-1 Filed: 07/18/19 Entered: 07/18/19 14:25:47 Page 6

of 7
PG&E began detailed inspections of its transmission lines only after the

Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The company also has delayed upgrades to several 115-kilovolt lines passing through

national forests that have become California’s highest-risk fire areas, the filings

indicate. A line partly in the Plumas National Forest was slated for work this year,

but was delayed and now is on hold because of the Camp Fire investigation.

A line built to carry hydroelectric power through the Eldorado and Stanislaus

national forests was scheduled for upgrades in 2016, but work isn’t expected to start

until the second half of next year. A line in the Los Padres National Forest near San

Luis Obispo was initially set for upgrades in 2015 that now are scheduled to start in

2021.

PG&E acknowledged in its 2017 internal presentation that it had poor age data on the

towers in its 60-kilovolt system. The company recently targeted one leg for extensive

work after discovering that 10 towers within the Golden Gate National Recreation

Area were at high risk of failure.

A June 5 letter from PG&E said the towers are in “critical condition with noticeable

material loss and ground erosion” and require round-the-clock monitoring. The

company estimated it will take more than a year to replace towers and make

permanent repairs.

Write to Katherine Blunt at Katherine.Blunt@wsj.com and Russell Gold at

russell.gold@wsj.com

Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

PG&E Knew for Years Its Lines Could Spark Wildfires, and Didn’t Fix Them https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-knew-for-years-its-lines-could-spark-...

7 of 7 7/18/2019, 12:50 PM

Case: 19-30088 Doc# 3062-1 Filed: 07/18/19 Entered: 07/18/19 14:25:47 Page 7

of 7