California fire investigators are looking at a distribution line as the possible cause of the Zogg Fire, which killed four residents and destroyed more than 200 structures southwest of Redding, Calif.
The 56,000-acre fire started on Sept. 27 near the rural Shasta County community of Igo. Among the victims were a 45-year-old mother and her 8-year-old daughter, who died trying to escape the flames.
A PG&E distribution line, the Girvan 1101 12-kV circuit, serves customers in the area of Zogg Mine Road and Jenny Bird Lane, where the fire began, PG&E said in an incident report to the California Public Utilities Commission on Friday.
Wildfire camera and satellite data on Sept. 27 showed “smoke, heat or signs of fire in that area between approximately 2:43 p.m. and 2:46 p.m.,” it said.
“A PG&E SmartMeter and a line recloser serving that area reported alarms and other activity between approximately 2:40 p.m. and 3:06 p.m. [on Sept. 27], when the line recloser de-energized that portion of the circuit,” PG&E said. “The data currently available to PG&E do not establish the causes of the activity on the Girvan 1101 circuit or the locations of these causes.”
On Oct. 9, investigators with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) told PG&E they had taken its equipment as part of their investigation of the Zogg Fire, PG&E said.
“PG&E is cooperating with CAL FIRE in its investigation,” the utility said. “This information is preliminary.”
CAL FIRE has not yet determined how the fire started, PG&E noted.
Involvement in another major fire would mark the fourth year in a row that PG&E equipment has been blamed for highly destructive conflagrations. Its equipment started the worst fires of the October 2017 “fire storm” in Napa and Sonoma counties and the November 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise.
The company emerged from bankruptcy in June after agreeing to pay fire victims, local governments and insurers $25.5 billion in the 2017-18 fires and pleading guilty to 85 felonies stemming from the Camp Fire. (See PG&E Sentenced; Bankruptcy Plan Approved.)
CAL FIRE also determined that a PG&E transmission line started the Kincade Fire, which tore through Sonoma County wine country in October 2019.
The company has avoided blame so far for any of the major wildfires of 2020, one of the worst fire seasons on record. A series of massive fires sparked by lightning on Aug. 17-18 includes the August Complex, the first California wildfire to exceed 1 million acres. It was 67% contained as of Sunday, state and federal fire officials said.
In total, more than 8,000 wildfires have burned nearly 4 million acres in California this year.
Until Friday’s report — which PG&E also sent to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — only one other investor-owned utility in California had fallen under suspicion for starting a major fire in 2020. (Calif. IOUs Escape Blame for Fires so Far.)
In a Sept. 15 report to the CPUC, Southern California Edison said the U.S. Forest Service had asked the utility to remove a section of its overhead conductor as part the agency’s investigation of the Bobcat Fire, still burning in the mountains and foothills northeast of Los Angeles.
SCE said it had experienced a “relay operation” on the 12-kV circuit at approximately the same time and in the same place as the fire started, but it contended that a fire camera had recorded smoke from the blaze prior to the incident.
“While USFS has not alleged that SCE facilities were involved in the ignition of the Bobcat Fire, SCE submits this report in an abundance of caution given USFS’ interest in retaining SCE facilities in connection with its investigation,” the utility told the CPUC.