Wildfires are posing new financial risks for utilities outside of California as victims of recent fires possibly sparked by power equipment seek compensation for their losses.
Pacific Power, an Oregon utility owned by PacifiCorp, a unit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., faces more than $1 billion in potential liability costs from lawsuits related to a spate of fires that swept the state in 2020. Those incidents killed at least nine people, destroyed thousands of homes and burned more than a million acres of land and timber.
PacifiCorp declined to comment on the pending lawsuits. In court filings, it has disputed that its equipment ignited the fires in question and denied that it was negligent in operating its system.
Historically, it was California utilities that faced the highest liability risk when their power lines ignited fires and damaged property, due to a legal precedent in the state that established that such situations amounted to “inverse condemnation.” Now, lawyers suing Pacific Power are pushing for the company to be held to the same strict standard in Oregon.
So far, judges overseeing two cases have ruled in favor of those arguments. Lawyers on Friday also filed a wildfire suit alleging inverse condemnation against a utility in Washington in connection with a 2020 blaze.
Attorneys say those cases could lead to similar claims against other utilities throughout the West, where wildfire risk has grown substantially within the past decade. Severe drought, exacerbated by climate change, has heightened the consequences of power-line failures, which have sparked deadly and destructive wildfires in California and elsewhere in the region....WSJ
We should never forget the human costs of our current federal lands "policy":
At stake in the lawsuits is compensation for fire victims such as Kathy Kreiter and Tim Goforth, 70 and 68 years old, respectively, who said they were forced to evacuate their five-bedroom log cabin on the morning of Sept. 8, 2020, as the Archie Creek fire spread toward the small town of Glide.
At stake in the lawsuits is compensation for fire victims such as Kathy Kreiter and Tim Goforth, 70 and 68 years old, respectively, who said they were forced to evacuate their five-bedroom log cabin on the morning of Sept. 8, 2020, as the Archie Creek fire spread toward the small town of Glide.
They opened a gate to a pasture where they had been raising lambs in the hope the animals would survive, before the couple fled to Roseburg. They said they had to remove a tree that had fallen and blocked their escape, leaving no time to pack any possessions. Mr. Goforth suffered a serious eye injury in the process and lost vision as a result.
When they returned to the property several days later, the house was destroyed, and dead lambs were piled against the fence. The fire had been hot enough to melt their cast-iron cookware.
They opened a gate to a pasture where they had been raising lambs in the hope the animals would survive, before the couple fled to Roseburg. They said they had to remove a tree that had fallen and blocked their escape, leaving no time to pack any possessions. Mr. Goforth suffered a serious eye injury in the process and lost vision as a result.
When they returned to the property several days later, the house was destroyed, and dead lambs were piled against the fence. The fire had been hot enough to melt their cast-iron cookware.
Yes, a 3,000 word article on wildfire in the west and not one mention of our federal lands "policy". People are dead and maimed, animals burned to death and thousands of structures burned to the ground, all to meet some environmental nirvana
We have the apparently obligatory language on climate change and then there is this:
wildfire risk has grown substantially within the past decade.
We had droughts more than 10 years ago, we had power lines 10 years ago, so why the onslaught of fires, both in numbers and intensity? We really need a review of the Endangered Species Act and other statutes that prevent these lands from being managed.
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