Legal consequences of state investigators' finding that PG&E equipment involved in start of Dixie Fire

The Los Angeles Times is just one of many outlets reporting Tuesday on PG&E's role in the ignition of the Dixie Fire in July, 2021, one of the largest in California history.  Here's an excerpt from Gregory Yee's story:

State investigators have determined that a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. power line was responsible for sparking last year’s massive Dixie fire, which torched more than 960,000 acres in five Northern California counties as it burned clear across the Sierra Nevada.

According to a statement by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, investigators found that the fire “was caused by a tree contacting electrical distribution lines owned and operated by Pacific Gas & Electric located west of Cresta Dam.”

The department’s investigative report was forwarded to the Butte County district attorney’s office, according to Tuesday’s statement.

Cal Fire officials referred all questions regarding the report to prosecutors. The district attorney’s office could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

This, from Scott Rodd of Capital Public Radio, provides further context on the utility's fire-related legal woes:

The utility giant said in a statement that it “will continue to be tenacious in our efforts to stop fire ignitions from our equipment and to ensure that everyone and everything is always safe.” Those efforts include a multi-billion dollar undertaking to bury 10,000 miles of powerlines and to keep cutting off power in areas where there’s high wind.

The announcement is not a total surprise. In July, PG&E reported to the California Public Utilities Commission that its equipment may have caused the Dixie Fire. One of the utility’s employees responded to a power outage reported at Cresta Dam and found blown fuses and a tree leaning into PG&E equipment, with fire burning at the tree’s base.

At the time, Cal Fire investigators took several pieces of PG&E equipment.

Last year, Cal Fire investigators concluded the utility started the Zogg Fire, which burned 56,000 acres and killed four people. The Shasta County District Attorney’s Office charged the utility with manslaughter and other crimes in September.

In 2018, PG&E’s equipment started the deadly Camp Fire in Butte County. The fire leveled the town of Paradise and killed 85 people. PG&E later pleaded guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter. In the following months, the company sought bankruptcy protection as it faced tens of billions of dollars in potential liability for wildfires it caused.

Here's a follow up from Rodd today focusing on a newish wildfire liability fund:  

Pacific Gas & Electric could be the first company to access a wildfire liability fund established by the state over two years ago, intended to keep utilities solvent after causing major wildfires.

* * *

Gov. Gavin Newsom established the liability fund by signing AB 1054 in the summer of 2019, as PG&E faced tens of billions of dollars in potential liability for wildfires it caused. The bill established a $21 billion liability fund to help utilities cover the cost of major wildfires started by their equipment.

At the time, PG&E — the state’s largest utility — had already filed for bankruptcy protection and faced uncertainty about its future.

The state’s three largest utilities — PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — will pay for half of the $21 billion fund, and their customers will cover the other half through rate increases. Currently, the fund has about $11 billion, according to a report released last week by the California Catastrophe Response Council, which oversees the fund.

Utilities must pay $1 billion in claims before being able to access the fund. PG&E’s liability for the Dixie Fire is expected to surpass that threshold.

Michael Wara, a senior research scholar at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, is on the council. He said claims tied to the Dixie Fire could be a useful test of the fund’s responsiveness, and see where there’s room for improvement.

Also today, The Guardian has published a feature on Greenville, the Plumas County town destroyed by the Dixie Fire.  The photos by Rachel Bujalski are powerful, as are the stories collected by journalist Dani Anguiano.  

Prior posts about the destruction of Greenville are here and here.  

On the behavior of rural neighbors in the face of the Dixie Fire

The Dixie Fire is now the second largest in California history, the largest being the August complex fire from last summer.  I've noticed an interesting preoccupation that some reporters have with the behavior of rural folks in the face of the fire.  The New York Times featured this headline a few days ago, "Despite Dixie Fire's destruction, some residents aren't evacuating."  Here's the salient excerpt:  

As the Dixie Fire ravaging Northern California became the state’s second largest on record over the weekend, efforts to save tinder dry land, towns and homes from being destroyed have been complicated by residents who aren’t heeding one order: evacuate.

Oddly, the short update makes no other reference to the refusal to evacuate.  That is, the complications are not expanded on in the story. 

The Los Angeles Times, however, fills that gap with this August 7 headline, "As Dixie fire tears through communities, some refuse evacuation orders with guns in hand." Yet the journalists didn't get to the "guns in hand" part of the story until the 8th paragraph:

Greg Hagwood, a Plumas County supervisor, said that in the last 72 hours, as fire has swept through or threatened small mountain towns including Greenville, the evacuations have grown tense — in some cases, residents have met law enforcement with weapons.

“They are met with people who have guns and [are] saying, ‘Get off my property and you are not telling me to leave,’” he said.

In response to those who flatly refused to evacuate, he said, deputies were asking for next-of-kin information so they would have someone to notify if the holdouts died.

I saw some rural California folks on Twitter responding to that LA Times headline by explaining that rural folks tend to look out for one another--including each other's property.   In other words, staying behind to fight the fire--and fight to save their homes and those of their neighbors--is logical for them.  Here's a screenshot of one such tweet responding to the LA Times tweet of the story above:  

And here's a more positive spin on rural neighborliness, this from a New York Times story (dated August 9, 2021) about how some of these Plumas County communities are functioning right now: 

In the remote mountain communities that dot Plumas County, a thinly populated county near the border with Nevada, choking smoke hangs thick in the air. The power is out, and in some places water is scarce both for firefighting and drinking. Residents who have decided not to evacuate are collecting meat and groceries from their neighbors’ fridges. Others are isolated, holding out for deliveries from community firefighters of food, medicine and gas.

* * * 

Around Taylorsville, a tightly-knit community, people​ have been preparing for the fire​ for weeks, helping one another dig trenches with bulldozers, set up irrigation lines and spray homes​. Many ranchers have packed their​ most precious​ belongings and stored them in cattle trailers in​​ irrigated fields​ where they hope they will be safe if the fire comes down from the mountains​. ​People’s ​days revolve around tracking the fire’s every move​. ​The sound of generators fill the air.

Finally, here's a tweet about solidarity and self-sufficiency within Plumas County as it has faced the Dixie Fire: 

 A post from a few days ago, about the fire's destruction of Greenville, is here.   

Just thinking that it would be interesting to contrast coverage of the behavior of rural folks who stay behind in the wake of fire with that of urban (and other) folks who stay behind as hurricanes approach.  Are there similarities and differences in how these folks are depicted?  as rational or not?  

Remembering Greenville, California--and awaiting its rise from the ashes

Young musicians
Downtown Greenville, California, March 2013

I spent several days of the 2012-2013 academic year in Plumas County, California.  A good bit of that time was in Greenville, a town of about a thousand folks in an area called Indian Valley, less than an hour north of the county seat, Quincy.  Plumas County is about the size of Delaware, but it's sparsely populated, with just about 20,000 residents.  

Village Pharmacy (left) in a building dating to the 1860s,
was destroyed in the Dixie Fire Wednesday night.  
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2013

The year I spent working off and on with my law students in Plumas County is documented in this report that my students and I produced.  We were conducting what is called "participatory action research" in collaboration with Legal Services of Northern California, which had a grant to do do early outreach related to the Affordable Care Act's implementation.  

Historically Mountain Maidu territory, Greenville is one of the poorest parts of the county--and, indeed, one of the poorest places in California.  I took many photos (all (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2013), and I'm going to share some here as a reminder of what Greenville was--and might be again.  

Anna's Cafe, Greenville

Downtown Greenville, March 2013, with 
Way Fair Tavern and Anna's Cafe in 
background behind the flag

I say "might be again" because on Wednesday evening, Greenville was largely destroyed in the Dixie Fire, now the second largest fire burning the United States, and one of the largest fires ever in California.  As the crow flies, Greenville is not many miles from where the Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise in 2018.  Indeed, the Camp Fire and the Dixie Fire started in the same area, both in the Feather River Canyon.  The Camp Fire burned west and north from there, while the Dixie Fire burned mostly south and east.  Also threatened is the Plumas County town of Chester, which borders Lassen County, and the fire is now also burning into Lassen National Park.  

I'm featuring here a sampling of the photos I took in 2013 in and around Greenville.  (I took many, many more, so may do a few additional posts featuring different aspects of Greenville and Indian Valley).

Indian Valley Chamber of Commerce and a bookkeeping service,
Greenville, California, Spring 2013 

Hotel in Downtown Greenville.  The building whose
corner you can see on the right is the Village Pharmacy, pictured above. 

Lutheran church, 2013.  You can see after-fire photos 
of the church at the links below, where just the sign remains.

Music studio
Greenville, 2013

You can read more about what happened in Greenville on Wednesday here, here, here, and here.  You'll see there photos of what's left of some of the buildings I photographed in 2013. 

Hunter Ace Hardware, Greenville, Spring 2013

Greenville Rancheria Tribal Medical Center, Spring 2013

Greenville Library, Spring 2013

Way Station Tavern, which sat right across from Village Pharmacy 
and across Hwy 89 from Anna's Cafe.  You can see after-fire 
photos of the tavern at the links below 

This latest, by Anita Chabria for the Los Angeles Times, features the story of Kevin Goss, a pharmacist in Greenville and also a long-time member of the County Board of Supervisors. (As a county supervisor and business owner, Goss is mentioned in the report my students and I produced).  You can see a photo of his Village Pharmacy above, from 2013.  He was in escrow to sell the business to a pharmacist in Quincy when the Dixie Fire destroyed it.  

A woman was selling goat's milk-based products out of an 
outbuilding behind her home, on a residential street, Feb. 2013

Here's a Eulogy for Greenville, written by resident Meg Upton and published in the Plumas News.  It talks about politics--though it puts a good spin on how community spirit overrides politics in Greenville because they're too small and need each other too much to alienate one another.  And it reminds me of this very memorable photo I took in Greenville in 2013: 

Greenville, California, Spring 2013

Speaking of politics, Governor Gavin Newsom visited Greenville yesterday and posted this video on Twitter.  Mostly, Newsom focused on climate change's role in this disaster, but he also said the Dixie Fire and the disaster in Greenville is "about people's culture, their identity, lifestyles, a sense of place, memories that are attached to this, one of the oldest communities in California.  This is about our families, our kids ... we have a deep responsibility to rebuild." 

More photos to follow in a future post.  

Post script:  You can see after-fire photos of some of these places, including the Greenville public library, the Greenville Rancheria Medical Clinic, and the Way Station Tavern in this August 12 story from the Los Angeles Times.

More on wildfires in rural northern California

I've been periodically posting about this topic for a few months now, but I figured the series was worth another installation as the Caldor Fire--a major California wildfire--pushes into the Lake Tahoe Basin today.  Here's a New York Times story from a few days ago about the possibility of this happening.  Here's a current story from the Sacramento Bee about what is happening.  And here is the evacuation order and warning information as of about 9:30 pm Pacific time tonight. 

 

The Caldor Fire started more than two weeks ago at the western end of El Dorado County, which lies just east of Sacramento County, less than an hour from where I live.  Part of El Dorado County is exurban to the greater Sacramento metropolitan area.  The Caldor Fire, which started near a premier wine region of El Dorado County called Fairplay, has since burned primarily eastward, in the direction of Lake Tahoe.  The counties wineries and other rural attractions like Apple Hill have been saved--so far.  

Several days ago, CalFire officials indicated that the fire had become the state's highest priority--indeed, the nation's highest priority--because of the Tahoe link.  I felt a little miffed, I admit, because it didn't seem entirely fair to divert resources from the longer-burning Dixie Fire a few hours to the north, in Plumas and Lassen counties.  (After all, "first in time, first in right" is a great American legal principle, and the Dixie  Fire came first.)  The only reason for that diversion, it seems, is that the Tahoe area is more built up and more economically vibrant, a big tourist draw--well, that and the fact that the folks who can afford to live in Tahoe tend to be wealthier than those in Plumas and Lassen counties.  Here are two screen shots of a Twitter thread a few days ago encapsulating that dynamic. 

And here is my prior post speculating about this issue.  

The other story I want to link to tonight is out of Plumas County; it's another dispatch from Annie Correal writing for the New York Times.  Correal grew up, partly, in the Indian Valley area of Plumas County, and in this dispatch she writes of the role of independent fire-watchers, many of them from the area, who accumulate local followings for their postings about the fire on social media.  These folks are especially important in communities like Lassen and Plumas counties who draw fewer media from the region to cover what's happening in these places that are little seen in uber-urban California.    

Earlier posts about the Dixie Fire are here, here, and here.  

Whether to re-build rural towns destroyed by wildfire

That is the subject of two stories in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, one focused on the economics and sustainability of doing so, the other framed--at least by its headline--in terms of rural climate change skeptics.  Both are written by Anita Chabria and Erika Smith.  The dateline for both stories is Greenville, California, which was destroyed by the Dixie fire last summer, an event I wrote about here and here.  

The thesis of the first column is pretty clear from the headline, "California spends billions rebuilding burned towns. The case for calling it quits."  Here's an excerpt: 

Most days, Ken Donnell steals a moment to gaze at the forested valley that surrounds this remote grid of streets in the mountains.

Before the Dixie fire came barreling through the Sierra Nevada last year, leveling everything here but a few houses, businesses and a school, this was a charming — if dying — Gold Rush-era town that about 800 people called home. Now, much of the charm is gone along with most of the residents, replaced by the skeletal remains of conifer trees and the deathly silence of block after empty block.

But even as Donnell has mourned, his mop of gray hair a fixture at community meetings on how to bring the town and the surrounding Plumas County valley back to life, he has become grateful.

It’s good that Greenville burned down when it did, he believes. Sooner rather than later. Because one day, in a not-so-distant future ravaged by climate change, many of Northern California’s far-flung rural towns — founded in another time and for another economy — might not get rebuilt at all.

Gone could be the political and public will to spend hundreds of millions of dollars — with Southern California taxpayers footing a big chunk of the bill — to replace homes and businesses for a small number of people, knowing that it’s all likely to burn down again as extreme heat and drought keep decimating unmanaged forests.

* * * 

Something must change.

What California is doing is dangerous and unsustainable, yet it continues down a well-trodden path, never hesitating to rally around people who have lost their livelihoods to a disaster, whether it be a mudslide or an earthquake — but especially a wildfire.

We are #ParadiseStrong, #SantaRosaStrong, #GrizzlyFlatsStrong and now #GreenvilleStrong. And we’ve spent billions in taxpayer dollars to prove it, along with ensuring that Pacific Gas & Electric, responsible for sparking far too many of these destructive conflagrations, is on the hook to pay billions more and to help rebuild.

The framing for the other column is even more provocative and political.  It is titled, "Rural climate skeptics are costing us time and money. Do we keep indulging them?" An excerpt follows:  

This is the part of the state where climate change has become a full-fledged existential threat. Sure, Southern California is prone to its fair share of disasters, but it is in Northern California where catastrophic wildfires aren’t just likely but are certain to destroy remote small towns for decades to come.

Greenville, which burned down in last year’s Dixie fire, should serve as a potent reminder of this risk. But maddeningly, the people who love living in these rural wildlands don’t see it that way. Instead, they look at it as just one more challenge to overcome, like spotty cellphone service and far-off grocery stores and hospitals.

It’s a belief so widespread, so divorced from the terrifying reality of climate change, that the rest of us in California can’t keep ignoring it. Doing so is simply costing too many lives and too much money, and wasting too much time. Soon, living in rural Northern California won’t be as safe, as sustainable or even as beautiful as it once was. The Dixie fire was just the beginning.

* * *

Why the Dixie fire was able to enter Greenville at all, tucked away in the Indian Valley about 100 miles northeast of Lake Tahoe, has become the stuff of conspiracy theories. But what it left behind is undisputed fact.

Streets of empty lots where homes and businesses once stood. A non-functioning sewer system. Soil so contaminated that millions of dollars in environmental restoration will be needed. Stumps where trees once provided shade from the sun.

* * * 

[One] line of thinking veers into grievance politics, insisting that catastrophic conflagrations wouldn’t be happening if left-leaning, big-city environmentalists hadn’t killed the logging industry in their right-leaning rural small towns. From there, the victimhood can morph into extremism, isolationism and paranoia.

Of course, the truth is a lot more complicated, given that forest mismanagement started with industrial logging of big — more resilient — trees from our forests. But these residents do have a point.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been allocated for prescribed burns and mechanical thinning projects. And yet the treatment work is still being done far too slowly — an average of three to five years from conception to implementation. In some cases, it can take as many as seven years.

* * *

Are taxpayers who live in lower-risk cities willing to subsidize people who live in higher-risk rural towns, even if those people don’t have the means to live somewhere safer? And which is the fairest, most equitable use of public resources?

* * *

At some point, Californians must decide: Are we willing to pay more to maintain the status quo and rebuild every small rural town that burns down? Or do we want those who live there to pay more or even retreat to safer places?

* * *

For all of the anti-government, Trumpian rhetoric in Northern California about residents breaking away to form a right-wing State of Jefferson, most of their towns wouldn’t exist without massive public investment from liberal cities. And yet, if these same residents are forced to take on more financial responsibility for the risk of rural living, there will almost certainly be pushback.

Obviously, both of these columns are well worth reading.  Other prior posts on Legal Ruralism that mention Greenville or Plumas County can be found here.  

Postscript:  In the wake of Hurricane Ian, don't miss this column asking the same question about rebuilding in coastal Florida, some of which is highly urban.  

More fire coverage out of rural northern California, including two prisons where the fire is bearing down

Let me lead with the brilliant Hailey Branson-Potts' story out of Susanville, California, the county seat of Lassen County, population 34,895.  Branson-Potts writes for the Los Angeles Times, and she regularly reports out of rural northern California.  She recently reported stories here and here out of Lassen County, so she knows it well.  Remember that Susanville is home to two state prisons, one set for closure in 2022.  Here's the part of her story that touches on the presence of 5,400 prisoners in the literal line of fire, eight miles east of central Susanville at High Desert State Prison (with 3,220 inmates, it is at 139% capacity) and California Correctional Center (with 2,187 inmates, at 65% capacity).  The initial quote is from Dana Simas, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, about plans as of Wednesday afternoon:  

At this time, there are no directives to evacuate, and the institutions are in no immediate danger. We are also monitoring air quality and working with our public health and health care partners to ensure the safety and wellness of our population and staff.

Branson-Potts continues:   

Simas said the state corrections department is in “constant communication” with Cal Fire and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, as well as local officials, regarding the Dixie fire. Officials also are monitoring air quality and is providing N95 masks to staff and inmates at both prisons.

The institutions, Simas said, “have long-standing response plans in place to ensure continued daily operations, as well as the safety of our staff and incarcerated population through natural or other disasters.”

Simas said she could not discuss details about where and how prisoners would be relocated during an evacuation “for safety and security purposes.”

In other fascinating news regarding the prison closure, there is this about a court ruling out of Lassen County that could--and let me emphasize the could--be a game changer re the planned closure:

Earlier this month, a Lassen County Superior Court judge granted the city of Susanville a temporary restraining order halting the state’s plans to close the facility.

“It does not appear to the Court that the necessary requirements imposed upon the executive branch in facilitating the decision to close the California Correctional Center have been complied with,” Judge Mark Nareau wrote in his decision to grant the temporary restraining order. “The executive branch of the government of the state of California, like the citizens it serves, must comply with the law.”

In another story, Branson-Potts reports with Lila Siedman out of El Dorado County, where the Caldor Fire ignited over the weekend (as discussed in yesterday's post and in this coverage by Capital Public Radio) .  

The Caldor fire in El Dorado County has exploded to more than 50,000 acres, destroying a school, a church and numerous other structures.

Thousands of rural residents fled the flames, and two civilians were seriously injured Tuesday as the fire tore through rugged terrain with zero containment.

Caldor fire response spokesperson Chris Vestal said the blaze exhibited unusually high flame lengths and rapid spread. An incident report described its behavior as “unprecedented.”

* * *

It was at about 1,300 acres Monday afternoon when it began surging because of changes in atmospheric conditions.

Pushed by gusty winds, the fire hurtled north, and “unfortunately in the path of that fire has been communities,” said Mike Blankenheim, unit chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s Amador-El Dorado Unit.

Lastly, the Cache Fire started this afternoon in Lake County.  A tweet with some photos of the destruction there is here.  The area near Hayfork, in Trinity County, is also on fire. 

What I'm hoping we'll get in the near future is a sense of the extent to which, as new fires have emerged, limited resources are moved from more remote and rural areas (e.g., Lassen, Plumas, and Lake counties) to more populous ones (e.g., El Dorado County).  

Indian Valley native in New York Times on the Dixie Fire and Rural Life

Annie Correal, who grew up in the Indian Valley in Plumas County, California, has published this in the New York Times, where she works.  It's a very personal reflection on the #DixieFire and its impact on Plumas County, which I've recently written about here, here, here, and here.  

A short excerpt of her piece follows, highlighting the sense of abandonment many feel in the face of the most recent wildfires, as resources are shifted each time a new fire erupts in a more populous area:  

“They just want to let us burn,” said Butch Forcino, repeating a common refrain heard among the valley’s weary residents, who have watched fire crews appear and disappear. He lost his home in Indian Falls to the fire and, like many of those displaced, has been living in a trailer in a friend’s field.

* * *

Most have stayed despite evacuation orders, tending to their hundreds of head of cattle even as the largest wildfire burning in the United States bears down.

Some officials have tried to encourage them to leave, saying they put themselves and firefighting crews at risk. But at a time when about 100 large blazes are burning across the West, stretching federal and state resources to the limit, they fear that if they do not protect their homes, no one will.

Please read the rest of Correal's poignant essay, and also my prior post about folks refusing to evacuate because of a sense of duty to protect their neighbors property--and a fear that if they didn't protect their own, no one else would.  In other words, some don't trust CalFire to protect their property.  This fear has surely been aggravated in the past few days as we have heard repeated announcements on state and national media that the highest fire priority in the nation is stopping the Caldor Fire from reaching the Lake Tahoe Basin.  This suggests that it has taken a threat to rich folks' homes to get authorities to pull out all the stops to get a fire under control.  These recent events have renewed my concern about whether adequate resources were dedicated in late July and early August to stopping the spread of the Dixie Fire in nonmetro, sparsely populated Plumas and Lassen counties.  Were those communities just not important enough to marshal more resources?  

Also, the photos accompanying this story are as extraordinary as the writing.  Don't miss them.  

Remembering Greenville, California (Part II): the public sector

Sign on Grenville High School, 2013
The message now seems ironic

Last week, I posted some 2013 photos of Greenville, California (all (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2013).  I shared them because Greenville, one of the four population centers in Plumas County, California, was nearly entirely destroyed by the Dixie Fire about 10 days ago.  In this post, I'm going to share more photos of Greenville, taken in 2013, with a focus on public infrastructure--schools, the sheriff's substation, the fire department, the community center, the Indian education center.  

Greenville Fire Truck, 2013

Roundhouse Indian Education Center, Greenville, 2013

Greenville High School 2013
Interesting that Future Farmers of America is the co-brand

A sign at the Greenville school complex, 2013

Indian Valley Elementary School, Greenville, 2013

Ambulances at Greenville, 2013

Public transit in Greenville, 2013

Greenville Substation, Plumas County Sheriff, 2013

On the side of the old jail, pictured below, which sits behind Sheriff's Substation

These next photos are the Indian Valley Community Center, which featured a range of modest facilities.    

Scholarship guidelines for classes at 
Indian Valley Community Center, 2013

Indian Valley Community Center, 2013

Indian Valley Community Center, 2013

The Indian Valley Recreation Scholarship Fund flyer above states that it "helps ensure all people, regardless of ability to pay, have access to programs that enrich lives and teach life-long lessons.  Donations to the fund help a child learn to swim, play on a team, practice life skills or discover a new talent."  The chart below that language shows the amount of discount/scholarship, pegged to Health and Human Services Poverty Guidelines or WIC Guidelines.  

When my students and I were working in Plumas County in 2013, we visited with the man responsible for trying to sell the Indian Valley Hospital building.  The facility had then recently closed, with folks channeled to either Quincy, Chester, or Susanville, the latter in neighboring Lassen County.  

Interior of Indian Valley Hospital, then recently closed, March 2013

Helicopter pad for Indian Valley Hospital, 2013

For Sale Sign at Indian Valley Hospital, 2013 

Some post-fire photographs of these places are in this series posted August 12 by the Los Angeles Times.  The after-fire photos include one of the Greenville fire station.   I have seen photos on other websites that suggest the school complex at Greenville survived.  

Today's Los Angeles Times update on the Dixie Fire is here.  

Looking out for the rural disabled in the midst of natural disasters

The New York Times published a big story today on the challenges of protecting people with disabilities amidst natural disasters like the recent wildfires in California.  Amanda Morris reports from the Dixie Fire, including Plumas County.  

As wildfires burn with greater size and intensity across the American West, forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes each year, communities in the danger zone are struggling to protect their disabled and older residents.

This is a particular problem in Northern California, where some of the biggest blazes are now burning, including the Dixie fire, the second largest in state history. The region is home to a significant population of people with disabilities — the percentage in the area is roughly twice the state average — many of whom live in largely rural areas that lack the critical infrastructure and resources needed to support them during disasters.

The Camp fire wiped out the town of Paradise in 2018, killing at least 85 people — the majority of whom were older or disabled, according to Butte County data. The next year, a state audit found that the county, which includes Paradise, had not adequately prepared to protect people with “access and functional needs,” and that the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services had not provided enough guidance to local officials about how to develop emergency plans for them.

Since then, a growing number of California communities have partnered with local disability organizations to develop better plans to alert, evacuate and shelter vulnerable populations. But plenty of weak spots remain, and officials acknowledge that many people could still find themselves in danger. 

Other posts about the Dixie Fire are here, and other posts about disability issues are here.   

Rural Californians struggle to keep homeowners insurance in wake of wildfires

PBS reported a few days ago from Greenville, California, destroyed by the Dixie Fire in early August.  Here's an excerpt from the story, Cat Wise being the journalist and Kevin Goss a pharmacist and member of the County Board of Supervisors, whose pharmacy was destroyed:

The state of California has issued a moratorium that will prevent insurers from dropping homeowners in wildfire-scorched areas over the next year. And the California FAIR Plan is supposed to ensure that all homeowners, including high-risk ones, have some basic fire insurance. But barriers remain.

Kevin Goss:

Insurance is always a problem, homeowners insurance. And some of these folks could not afford the higher rates that these insurance companies are having to charge to insure these homes.

Cat Wise:

It's only the beginning of a long process of cleaning up, but Kevin Goss says that, so far, they have gotten the help they need because this small town sits at a crucial waterway.

Kevin Goss:

They are actually moving at a pace that is urgent, as we are the headwaters to the Feather River that feeds Oroville, which is one of the main water sources for the state of California.

So, this debris, they do not want to go into that water system.

Cat Wise:

These green wattles are supposed to keep that debris from contaminating the water system.

Still, Chad Hermann says the aftermath of a wildfire in a rural community like Greenville is a far different picture than when fire strikes wealthier California enclaves

Chad Hermann:

When you look at the fires that they had down in Sonoma, you have an infrastructure with a fantastic money base, between the wineries and industry. In the real mountain communities, you don't have that.

We're not a rich county. So, when you have a group of people who have very little to begin with, and they lose everything, it makes it very difficult to come back from that. And we still have people without adequate housing. So we have people that are still in tents and travel trailers.

Cat Wise:

Kevin Goss is hopeful that the town he's known all his life will rise again with better fire-wise planning and more resilient construction materials to prevent the town from burning again.

Kevin Goss:

Some folks, the trauma is going to be too much for them to come back. And it's just — it's permanently seared in their brain and they don't want to go through that again. Folks like myself and others are going to say, hey, you know what? We're going to build this thing back to where it can survive a fire like this.

Most folks want to come back to their home. I mean, even though it looks like this, it's still their home. It's their piece of property. It's their — where they grew up or where they have had all these memories.

Note the contrast with Sonoma County, where wine country interests ensure more resources for fighting fires.  

Earlier posts about the Dixie Fire and the destruction of Greenville are here.  

Lawyers scramble to represent California wildfire victims as plaintiffs

Ad from my Twitter feed, Sept. 26, 2021

Lily Jamali reported for KQED, in a story picked up by National Public Radio yesterday.  It's about lawyers, local and from far away, soliciting clients at an event in Plumas County, amidst the Dixie Fire rubble.  The lawyers want to represent those damaged by the Dixie Fire in a lawsuit against PG & E, or anyone else who may be found responsible for the fire's recent destruction.  It's an important story that names names, meaning names of attorneys who've represented plaintiffs in relation to other lawsuits, like those arising from the Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise.  And those lawyers have not always made good on their representations to clients.  At the end of the audio story is an admonition from the Plumas County District attorney to residents to choose their attorney wisely.  

An August, 2021 Wall Street Journal story on the shortcomings of the litigation against PG&E that arose  from the Camp Fire is here.   

College lecturer arrested for arson in northern California

Bill Chappell reports for Capital Public Radio under the headline, "A Former College Professor Accused Of Serial Arson Is Denied Bail In California."  Here's part of the story:  

Firefighters battling the Dixie Fire have also been facing a second enemy: a serial arsonist who went on a spree of setting fires in July and August — and who sought to trap fire crews with his fires, according to agents from the U.S. Forest Service. They allege former college professor Gary Maynard is the culprit, citing their tracking of his movements and other evidence.

"Where Maynard went, fires started. Not just once, but over and over again," the government said in a court memorandum arguing for Maynard to be denied bail.

A judge agreed to that request during a brief hearing Wednesday, saying there are no "conditions or combination of conditions that would provide the necessary level of safety to this community should the defendant be released."

He added: "Based on that finding, the defendant will be detained as a risk of non-appearance and a danger to the community."

Maynard's next court appearance is scheduled for Aug. 24, a representative of the U.S. attorney's office in Sacramento told NPR.

While court documents allege that Maynard is connected to more than a half-dozen dangerous fires in Northern California, he is currently charged with starting only the Ranch Fire. That blaze broke out on Saturday morning in a remote area where, according to court records, Maynard had just camped for the night. It's one of three fires that officials said Maynard set in recent days — all of them close to the Dixie Fire's northeastern footprint.

* * *

Maynard, 47, is a former professor who has taught at colleges in New York and California, according to online records. Last fall, he taught in the criminology and criminal justice department at Sonoma State University, which says in its official bio for Maynard that he has a doctorate in sociology and three master's degrees.

His teaching and research, the school said, focuses on topics that include the "sociology of health, deviance and crime" and environmental sociology. Maynard also has connections to other schools, from Stony Brook University in New York (where he received his doctorate) to Santa Clara University, where he also taught.

The details about tracking Maynard's movements--as well as the judge's concern that it would be too difficult to keep tracking  his movements--reminds me of my "The Rural Lawscape:  Space Tames Law Tames Space."  It's hard to police rural areas because of the vast distances implicated, which is certainly the case in the area where Maynard was allegedly operating.  

Are California communities prone to wildfire getting enough support from state and federal government?

This op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, published in the wake of the Dixie Fire's destruction of Greenville, California (read more here), suggests that rural communities are not getting enough state and federal support.  I was musing on that argument--and tossing the idea out to my Twitter community--when the Caldor Fire broke out in El Dorado County over the weekend.  Now, tonight, I see the media here in the Sacramento region suggesting that the lack of resources to devote to the Caldor Fire has contributed to its spread and the attendant destruction.   Thankfully, Governor Newsom has declared a disaster in El Dorado County, which will bring in federal resources.  

I'd just really like some reputable journalists to investigate this situation--to explore the extent to which the state and nation simply don't have enough resources to fight all the fires--rural and urban, east and west--that that we are going to encounter given current climate conditions.  What should we do about this going forward, given that this is apparently the new normal.   

Air tankers have been flying over my house en route to El Dorado County most of the day.  I live in eastern Sacramento County, bordering El Dorado County, and I'm guessing the tankers are coming from Travis Air Force Base between here and the Bay Area.  

Post Script:  In Cal Fire's update on the Caldor Fire at 5 pm on August 18, they acknowledged the competition for resources among the many fires still being fought in California.  Meanwhile, another fire, the Cache Fire, today destroyed a mobile home park in Lower Lake, in Lake County, California.  Still more competition for resources.  

California governor's budget proposes investments in rural workforce development

This is from Sofia Bollag's story in today's Sacramento Bee--a rare mention of a California investment in the state's rural reaches and their residents:

Newsom’s plan also funds programs to train workers in new industries in rural California as part of the state’s response to climate change. One program would put $44 million into developing a modern-day logging industry in California. Instead of old growth trees, the state wants to promote businesses that would clear and haul smaller trees and shrubs that fuel fires. That lower-value timber could be made into composite products, such as the kind used in IKEA furniture, an administration official said, which would give private industry a financial incentive to help the state prevent forest fires. 

This reminds me of Tweets I saw in the wake of the Dixie Fire, which destroyed the Plumas County town of Greenville in August, about the revival of a mill in nearby Crescent Mills to process the timber detritus of that fire.

Here's a December, 2021 story from the Bee about the struggle to process the burned trees from the Dixie Fire, that one featuring a mill in Chester, at the Plumas-Lassen County line.   

The story about the California budget continues:  

California’s lumber industry has been in decline for decades, largely because of environmental restrictions. Now, California doesn’t have nearly enough lumber mills to process the millions of trees that threaten to fuel megafires, forestry experts say. 

Another program would put $50 million into the state’s four California State University farms to research ways farms can adapt to climate change, such as by testing drought resilient grasses and finding more efficient ways to feed livestock, said administration officials who agreed to speak only on background to candidly discuss the governor’s budget plans.

Newsom’s budget also proposes giving $83 million to California State University Bakersfield to research how to help oil and gas workers transition into new careers as the state decreases its use of planet-warming fossil fuels. The budget would add another $250 million to help those workers train for and find new jobs.

The Bakersfield campus sits in Kern County, home to much of California’s oil and gas industry, where workers will be displaced by Newsom’s policies to restrict drilling and ban sales of new gas-powered cars.

Wow.  I wonder when a California state budget has attended to so many rural and rural adjacent issues.  See the full story for more on how the budget would tackle California wildfires.  

A plan to revive Sierra-Nevada towns with a new hiking trail to draw eco-tourists

That is the gist of Jessica Garrison's story out of Portola, California, population 2104, in nonmetro Plumas County.  The headline is "‘We have to remake ourselves’: Can a new trail help revive this crest of the Sierra?" Here's an excerpt that provides the economic background on this initiative to remake the "Lost Sierra Route" trail, which would bring more tourism to towns that have been experiencing population loss.  

Yard by dusty, backbreaking yard, workers have set out to build 600 miles of trails to connect remote mountain towns such as Sierra City and Chester that once flourished because of gold mining or logging but now are withering. Downieville, for example, was once one of California’s most populous towns; as of the 2020 census, its population was less than 500.

The project — dubbed “Connecting Communities Through the Lost Sierra Route” — aims to reverse the decline. If all goes as planned, mountain bikers, off-road bikers and hikers would flood in, drawn by the opportunity to traverse from town to town a la the Swiss Alps. They would exult in the stark beauty of the landscape, spend oodles of money in local restaurants, bars and hotels, and then go home again — hopefully without driving up housing prices too much.

* * *  

“We had an economy based first on gold and then on timber, and both of those have waned,” said Lee Adams, who sits on the board of supervisors for Sierra County, which had a population of just 3,200 people according to the 2020 census.

“We have to remake ourselves,” added Plumas County Supervisor Kevin Goss, who represents Greenville, the town that was burned to the ground last year by the Dixie fire. Included in the wreckage was Goss’ business, a pharmacy. “I am looking for … anything to create a little more tourism.”

Goss spoke of bringing high-speed internet, food trucks, luxury camping, “anything and everything” that might boost the economy. Even before the Dixie fire incinerated Greenville last summer, Plumas County was already seeing its population decline.

But, of course, there are downsides:  

Already, some locals are fed up because of a lack of parking on weekends. And they think they know who to blame: all those cars with bike racks on the back, and other accouterments that seem to scream “Bay Area Driver.” Not to mention a housing crisis that already feels dire.

Sierra City, mentioned above, is a place where the Pacific Crest Trail pass through a town.  I've written about it here.  And here's a post about Downieville, also in Sierra County.  Posts about Plumas County are here and here.  And here's a post about the so-called "Lost Sierra," also out of Plumas County which, by the way, is the size of Delaware with a population of about 20,000.

California wildfires ignite an insurance crisis, Cal Matters reports, but with nary a mention of "rural"

Dan Walters reported on Monday for CalMatters, the nonprofit website, about the impact recent wildfires--and the destruction of entire towns and hundreds of houses--will have on insurance availability in the Golden State.  Oddly, though, Walters doesn't mention the disproportionate impact of these shifts on rural folks--at least what Californians consider "rural," and what others call the "wildland-urban interface."  Here are the first few paragraphs: 

As if California needed another crisis, the state’s seemingly perpetual wildfires are forcing millions of homeowners in fire-prone areas to pay skyrocketing premiums for insurance coverage — if, indeed, they can buy it at all.

As the number and severity of wildfires increase, insurers are increasingly reluctant to renew policies and even if they do, premiums often double or triple.

Insurance is required for most homeowners since their mortgage lenders demand it. And if they cannot obtain regular coverage, they are forced into the insurer of last resort, FAIR, that has very high premiums and limits on coverage.

Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has repeatedly invoked a law he authored three years ago as a state legislator, imposing one-year moratoriums on policy cancellations for property in or immediately adjacent to the sites of major fires.

In 2020, Lara’s moratoriums covered 2.4 million policyholders after fires scorched more than 4 million acres and consumed hundreds of homes and other buildings. When this year’s fires are finally extinguished, including the immense Dixie fire and the Caldor fire that nearly wiped out South Lake Tahoe, Lara will extend the moratoriums to their burn zones.

And then, from famously posh Marin County, Walters reports this:

There is some scapegoating. This month, Assemblyman Marc Levine, a Democrat from fire-prone Marin County, fired off a letter to insurance trade groups, telling them, “I do not believe that the costs of utility mismanagement, or the impacts of climate change should be arbitrarily and capriciously passed through to my constituents in the form of homeowners’ insurance being declined, non-renewed, or their insurance premiums being raised exorbitantly. Particularly when there has been no change of conditions or circumstances.”

One could think of Marin County as an example of rural gentrification, but I tend to think of it as suburban and exurban San Francisco.  It has one of the highest per capita incomes among California's 58 counties.  My point: I'm less worried about Marin County residents being able to afford insurance than I am counties more rural, farther north, and more clearly impacted by recent fires.  I'm surprised that Walters, who started his career in Humboldt County, isn't more sensitive those other California places.  

Some earlier posts about California wildfires in more rural places are here, here, and here (focusing on WUI:  Wildland-urban interface).