Pacific Gas and Electric, California’s largest utility, said on Sunday that blown fuses on one of its utility poles may have sparked a fire that has burned through 30,000 acres in Northern California.
The blaze, known as the Dixie Fire, has spread through remote wilderness about 100 miles north of Sacramento, in an area close to the burn scars of 2018’s devastating Camp Fire, which itself was caused by PG&E equipment failures.
The utility made the disclosure in a preliminary report filed with the California Public Utilities Commission. Matt Nauman, a PG&E spokesman, said that the report was submitted “in an abundance of caution,” and that the utility was cooperating with a state investigation into the fire’s origin.
PG&E has been linked to some of California’s most destructive and deadliest wildfires. It pleaded guilty last year to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the Camp Fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise.
In June, the utility reached a $12 million settlement with two Northern California counties after last year’s Zogg Fire was determined to have been caused by a pine tree contacting PG&E transmission lines. The 56,000-acre fire killed four people and destroyed more than 200 buildings.
