Pacific Gas & Electric, the nation’s largest utility, is facing 31 charges including 11 felonies and manslaughter after their equipment sparked a wildfire in Northern California last year. The wildfire claimed the lives of four victims as they tried to escape the blaze. The victims ranged in ages from eight to 79.

The fire started on September 27, 2020, and ravished the rugged terrain near the city of Redding. Roughly 200 homes in the area and 89 square miles of land were scorched in the blaze. The fire claimed the lives of three victims as they tried to escape, while the fourth victim died in a nearby hospital.

State investigators began looking into what caused the fire last March. They concluded that a gray pine tree fell onto a transmission line belonging to PG&E.

Following the investigation, Shasta County and Tehama County filed a lawsuit against the utility company that details PG&E’s negligence to remove the tree as the cause of the fire. They contend that although the gray pine was marked for removal two years earlier, PG&E failed to remove it. The lawsuit explains the company’s "failure was reckless and criminally negligent, and it resulted in the death of four people."

Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett announced the charges in a press conference last month. “We have sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is criminally liable for the ignition of the Zogg Fire and the deaths and destruction it caused,” she explained.

The CEO of PG&E, Patti Poppe, shared her own statement regarding the charges and the investigation and explained that the pine tree that brought down the line was one of over eight million trees that were “ within striking distance to our lines.”

While Poppe expressed that her “heart aches” for the victims and the hundreds of homes that were destroyed by the fire, she contends that PG&E “did not commit a crime,” even though the company has accepted the state’s investigative conclusion that one of their power lines sparked the fire after a tree brought it down.

"This was a tragedy, four people died. And my coworkers are working so hard to prevent fires and the catastrophic losses that come with them. They have dedicated their careers to it, criminalizing their judgment is not right," Poppe pushed back against the charges.

This isn't the first time the utility company has been the center of controversy regarding wildfires in the west. In 2018, the company pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter after their equipment caused the deadly Camp Fire. Then CEO and President Bill Johnson accepted guilt in a court hearing explaining, “Our equipment started that fire.”

PG&E is also still on criminal probation after a pipeline explosion in 2010. The pipeline exploded in San Bruno, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area, and killed eight people.