{"id":178243,"date":"2019-01-30T19:04:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T00:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/01\/30\/why-bankruptcy-laws-need-to-be-reformed\/"},"modified":"2019-01-30T19:04:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T00:04:00","slug":"why-bankruptcy-laws-need-to-be-reformed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/01\/30\/why-bankruptcy-laws-need-to-be-reformed\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Bankruptcy Laws Need to be Reformed"},"content":{"rendered":"
PG&E has has filed for bankruptcy to dodge the consequences of their unsafe and incompetent behavior<\/a>:<\/div>\n

On Tuesday morning, California utility Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy<\/a> (PDF), citing billions of dollars in potential damages and fines stemming from liability in several 2017 and 2018 wildfires. <\/p>\n

The utility noted in its Tuesday filing that it has secured $5.5 billion in debtor-in-possession financing to continue operating while it restructures. PG&E serves 16 million customers, primarily in northern California.<\/p>\n

PG&E announced that it would file for bankruptcy earlier this month, as investigations into some of California’s deadliest wildfires pointed to sparks from PG&E’s transmission equipment as the causes of more than a dozen fires over the last two years. Investigators have implicated PG&E in 18 wildfires that occurred during October 2017, according to The Wall Street Journal<\/i><\/a>. The fires “burned nearly 200,000 acres, destroyed 3,256 structures, and killed 22 people,” the WSJ noted. <\/p>\n

Investigators are still looking into whether PG&E’s equipment sparked the deadly Camp Fire that ripped through northern California last fall, killing 86 people. Late last week, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection announced<\/a> (PDF) that PG&E was not responsible for the deadly October 2017 Tubbs Fire, which killed 23 people. That fire, the department said, was caused by a “private electrical system adjacent to a residential structure.” <\/p>\n

Still, despite not being held responsible for the Tubbs Fire, PG&E says it could be on the hook for more than $30 billion in damages and fines related to California’s wildfires. Climate change has exacerbated wildfires in California, and the state allows fire victims to bring lawsuits against utilities whose equipment sparks a wildfire, even if that utility hasn’t been found negligent.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They need to be “Arthur Andersoned”, and their senior executives need to be jailed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PG&E has has filed for bankruptcy to dodge the consequences of their unsafe and incompetent behavior: On Tuesday morning, California utility Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (PDF), citing billions of dollars in potential damages and fines stemming from liability in several 2017 and 2018 wildfires. The utility noted in its …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,457,484,364],"class_list":["post-178243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-evil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178243"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}