Pacific Gas and Electric submitted its latest wildfire prevention plan to the California Public Utilities Commission on Friday as it faces threats of more intensive oversight from the CPUC and a federal judge prior to this year’s fire season.

PG&E said the key to its $3 billion 2021 Wildfire Mitigation Plan is an improved computer system to predict risk more precisely.

“This new technology will allow us to more accurately prioritize our efforts within the highest fire-threat areas,” Debbie Powell, interim head of electric operations, said in a statement.

The updated risk modeling uses historical data on weather patterns, fire ignitions and outages, PG&E said in its plan. It also employs “fire-spread technology that shows the locations where specific infrastructure failures can lead to ignitions that have the highest consequences for our communities.”

That will allow the utility to focus its vegetation management and grid hardening efforts on the top 20% of high-risk circuit segments, the plan said.

The utility’s 2021 targets include installing 300 weather stations to complete its long-term goal of deploying a total of 1,300 weather stations, performing enhanced vegetation management on 1,800 miles of high-risk lines and hardening 180 miles of at-risk lines with covered conductor and stronger poles, among other measures.

Whether the utility’s plans will appease some of its staunchest critics remains in doubt.

‘Maybe Criminally Reckless’

Those critics include U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup, who oversees PG&E’s criminal probation related to the San Bruno gas pipeline explosion in 2010. In a hearing Wednesday, Alsup said he would likely impose new probation terms requiring PG&E to improve its vegetation management and public safety power shutoff (PSPS) practices.

Alsup said he believes the Zogg Fire, which killed four people in September, was likely started by a leaning pine tree that PG&E should have cut down. The line it hit remained energized during a PSPS event to prevent wildfires, even though PG&E had shut down other lines nearby, the judge said. (See PG&E Line Was Active when Zogg Fire Started.)

“I think it was reckless, maybe criminally reckless, for PG&E to have left that tree, that gray pine looming,” Alsup said. “It was leaning at a 60-degree angle over that line. Gray pines … have a shallow root system. That tree had also been burned earlier. That tree was a clear and present danger to the line, and whoever made the decision to leave that tree up should be looked at very carefully. And PG&E did leave it up.”

One new probation condition proposed by Alsup would require PG&E to consider whether lines had been cleared of dangerous trees when it decides which circuits to de-energize in PSPS events.

“Here is a fundamental problem I have with the way PG&E is doing this, the judge said. “When you decide on a PSPS and which lines to cut off, just hypothetically take two otherwise similar distribution lines. One is one that has been fully worked and is in full compliance with state law and [CPUC requirements]. The other is one that has not been worked at all. Your approach does not distinguish between those two.”

PG&E’s risk assessment and PSPS decisions consider weather patterns and historical wildfire data, the judge said. It stands to reason, however, that a line that has not been fully worked presents more of a danger than a line that has been cleared of problem trees, he said.

“The conditions that I’m requiring, or at least that I would propose to require, I believe would have saved those four people’s lives” in the Zogg Fire, Alsup said. Among the victims were a mother and her 8-year-old daughter who died fleeing the flames.

PG&E lawyer Kevin Orsini acknowledged the judge’s point but said the utility’s current approach “indirectly” factors tree trimming into its PSPS decisions. The utility wants the judge to soften his proposed conditions.

If “you take into account whether or not the line has been worked, that wouldn’t have had a different result with respect to the Zogg Fire,” Orsini said. About 1,000 trees in the area had been removed based on the recommendations of three foresters, but not the tree that may have started the fire, he said.

Alsup said he would entertain arguments to amend the probation conditions. The next hearing on the matter is scheduled for March. 9. But he ended Wednesday’s hearing by saying that since the San Bruno explosion, “PG&E has been a terror … to the people of the state of California.” With one more year left to oversee PG&E’s criminal probation, Alsup said he intends do all he can to change the utility’s safety culture.

“In this last season, I want you to do this right,” Alsup told Orsini.

CPUC to Weigh in

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) has yet to determine the cause of the Zogg Fire. Last year Cal Fire investigators seized PG&E equipment and a section of a gray pine in its investigation.

PG&E has told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission it expects to pay victims at least $275 million in damages for the fire, which destroyed more than 200 structures and burned over 56,000 acres.

Shasta and Tehama counties, where the Zogg Fire occurred, have sued PG&E in state court, and the Shasta County District Attorney’s office is investigating whether criminal charges are warranted.

If PG&E is found to have caused the fire, it would be the fourth year in a row that the utility’s equipment started a catastrophic blaze. The company was blamed for the wine country fires of 2017, the Camp Fire of 2018 — the deadliest in state history ­— and the Kincade Fire in 2019. The fires killed at least 111 people, destroyed 22,627 homes and other structures and burned approximately 500,000 acres.

In addition to Alsup, the CPUC has been trying to get PG&E to end its streak of death and destruction.

In November, CPUC President Marybel Batjer told PG&E that it could face a stricter regimen of oversight and enforcement because of concerns about its line maintenance. (See PG&E Faces ‘Enhanced Oversight’ by CPUC.)

“My concerns arose from what appears to be a pattern of vegetation and asset management deficiencies that implicate PG&E’s ability to provide safe, reliable service to customers,” Batjer wrote to the then acting CEO Bill Smith, citing Alsup’s findings.

A bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in July requires PG&E to submit to greater scrutiny by the CPUC and potential state control for repeated and uncorrected safety problems. Under the terms of the law, the CPUC can appoint a third-party monitor, followed by a receiver, and eventually rescind PG&E’s license to operate as the monopoly utility for most of Northern and Central California.

The CPUC has three months to approve PG&E’s wildfire mitigation plan, which is set to take effect in June, shortly before the state’s summer-and-fall fire season typically starts.