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It may end up being the most expensive drone flight in California history.
Back in July 2021, an unidentified drone hovered over the Dixie fire origin, just long enough to ground air crews as they were starting to make headway. Now, PG&E wants regulators to allow it to charge nearly $700 million in claims for a fire its equipment started, saying the drone is responsible for the ensuing fire damage.
“It came at the wrong time,” said Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey, whose office led a multi-county state probe of the fire that broke out on July 13 but raged for weeks.
“It was getting on towards evening and a drone showed up,” Ramsey said in a recent interview. “The policy, appropriately so, of Cal Fire is when there’s a drone or something obstructing their flight path, they have to call the flight off.”
With air crews grounded to avoid hitting the drone, nightfall came, and winds picked up, Ramsey remembered. “We had our second largest wildfire in United States history.”
What was a two-acre fire eventually mushroomed to nearly one million acres, leveling more than 1,000 buildings. The total cost was put at $1.8 billion.
Cal Fire’s final report blamed PG&E for failing to cut down a diseased tree that fell on a power line. Ramsey says Cal Fire officials told him that were initially confident they could put out the fire, before the drone showed up, hovered a few moments, then left, leaving air crews helpless as darkness fell.
Five years later, just who was flying the drone remains a mystery. But its role in hindering the fire response is being considered by state regulators in deciding whether PG&E, or ratepayers, will have to pay nearly $700 million dollars in remaining damage claims.
PG&E’s insurance previously paid $500 million in damages and the state’s wildfire fund has accounted for $600 million in claims, according to the utility.
In a filing with the Public Utilities Commission – the state agency that regulates rates, PG&E notes that a state law allows them to charge ratepayers for fires fueled by “factors beyond their control.” Factors like that drone.
In the filing, the utility says the “premature grounding” of the air attack due to the drone, “impeded early fire-suppression efforts, enabling a relatively small fire to spread out of control.”
PG&E would not comment on the pending regulatory filing but stressed it was found to be a “prudent operator” in the timespan before the fire, having adopted various fire-risk cutting measures. The utility said it was, under the law, to seek rate hikes to cover costs.
“The amount PG&E requests in the application reflects the cost of providing utility services, particularly in areas with heightened wildfire risk,” the utility said in a statement.
While he understands the drone likely hindered the firefight, Ramsey rejects the logic behind PG&E’s regulatory filing.
“I’m very disappointed in PG&E for doing such an argument,” the veteran prosecutor said. “That’s like saying: ‘Okay, there’s a fire and unfortunately the fire engine gets a flat tire and can’t get there in time and the fire gets away — and so therefore, the person that sets the fire shouldn’t be responsible for the fire.’’’
“That is insane, both morally, logically, and legally,” Ramsey concluded.
What makes the argument so troubling, Ramsey says, is that the utility had been making progress over the last five years in showing its commitment to safety and change.
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