We now have a number to attach to the cluster-f%$# that is Pacific Gas & Electric’s malicious prioritization of profit over safety, 1,500 fires over the past 6 years.

They could have done the job right, but there are stock buybacks and dividends to be made:

Over the past week, the Kincade Fire has torn through nearly 78,000 acres of California wine country, forcing about 180,000 people to evacuate. At the same time, millions have gone without electricity, often for days at a time.

Hospitals scrambled to find refrigerators for medications, people bundled their children to keep them warm during cool nights, and seniors were left alone in the dark.

The state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., is responsible for these blackouts and possibly for the fire itself.

About the same time the Kincade Fire ignited, a jumper cable broke on a PG&E transmission tower in the area, the company told state regulators on October 24. By the time PG&E personnel arrived, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, had taped the area off and identified the broken cable.

A problem with PG&E equipment was also the cause of the Camp Fire, a California state agency said, which killed at least 85 people last year and razed more than 18,800 structures. It was the deadliest and most destructive fire in California history.

In fact, according to The Wall Street Journal, the utility company’s equipment led to more than 1,500 fires from June 2014 to December 2017.

………

PG&E CEO Bill Johnson said Californians should expect these types of preemptive service interruptions for another 10 years.

“We recognize the hardship of not having electric service,” a PG&E representative told Business Insider in an email. “While we recognize that the scope of these events is unsustainable in the long term, it was the correct decision given the large-scale, historic weather events and ensuing equipment damage that unfolded across our service area.”

But many Californians say they should have never been forced into this choice: deadly fires or multiday blackouts. Instead, PG&E’s critics accuse the company of shirking safety precautions to funnel money toward investor dividends.

The Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik suggested PG&E might now be “the most detested, and detestable, corporation in California, if not in the observable solar system.”

Worse than Comcast?

Daym!!!!!

……….

After a PG&E pipeline exploded in 2010, killing eight people, state regulators started investigating the company. They found that PG&E had collected $224 million more than it was authorized to collect in oil and gas revenue in the decade before the explosion. At the same time, it spent millions less than it was supposed to on maintenance and generally fell short of industry safety standards.

“There was very much a focus on the bottom line over everything: ‘What are the earnings we can report this quarter?'” Mike Florio, who was a California utilities commissioner from 2011 to 2016, told The New York Times. “And things really got squeezed on the maintenance side.”

A 2017 report to state regulators highlighted PG&E’s lack of a comprehensive safety strategy, unclear communication about safety between management and field personnel, and tendency to take action only after a major disaster.

Anticipating the cost of billions of dollars in legal claims associated with the Camp Fire and other fires from 2017 and 2018, PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January.

PG&E is completely beyond redemption.

Regulators have the power to liquidate PG&E by refusing to sign off on their bankruptcy, which would wipe out the executives and investors who have benefited from their deliberate negligence.

Break it up, take it over, and throw the executives in jail.