Like most everyone who lived in the zip code that designated the Paradise ridge, I’ve been getting solicitations from lawyers inviting me to join the lawsuit against Pacific Gas & Electric. I haven’t responded to any of those invitations to sue yet, though I’m intrigued by the prospect of being compensated by that company for losses caused by their negligence. Like most PG&E customers, I’ve had issues with them for decades, often recognizing that they were gouging rate payers and that we all were held captive by a “public” utility that was a private enterprise, based on profit and the need to satisfy shareholders with ever greater return on their investments. Those profits came at the expense of people who often couldn’t afford the rate increases that were always being assessed. Then, too, the lock PG&E had on politicians and the Public Utilities Commission made consumers feel powerless because there was only one source of gas and electric power, at least for most people.
In the course of my life, I’ve lived in places where it wasn’t necessary for me to be a customer of PG&E, and I always liked it when I didn’t need to be a client of that monopoly, one I had seen use its power to ensure that it got its way with politicians and those people and entities who were supposed to police how the company conducted itself. For a decade, my electrical needs were met by the Rural Electric Association that served people who lived in the sticks of Plumas County. I liked being served by that outfit and noted the differences between how the REA operated and how PG&E operated. For another six years, we lived in Washington State, in one of the public utility districts in which oversight was more responsibly regulated and monitored. We also lived in Sacramento for a time, and we once again find ourselves living there, now served by the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District (SMUD) which seemed before and seems now like a better thing.
I used to write editorials critical of PG&E back in the 80s when I was editing the Green Mountain Gazette up in Quincy. PG&E’s record and reputation was already shady, and though the line workers and repair guys and other front-line service personnel were usually damn good, the guys in the suits were looking out for their jobs and their perks, all of which were dependent on keeping the bottom line high, the operating costs low, and the profit margin higher in service to the shareholders who took precedence over customers. I noted, too, a pattern that PG&E exhibited in being neglectful of public safety concerns, then getting bailed out when the company’s negligence or ineptitude or false economies created a big public liability, with taxpayers getting stuck for the damages done or the losses incurred. Either that, or PG&E would threaten bankruptcy, as they are doing now.
With all that history of antipathy and even hostility toward PG&E, you’d think I’d be anxious to join one of the suits being filed against them. But lawyers are one category of people I am even more wary of than I am of big corporate exploiters of basic human needs. And though I know that class action suits of this kind usually don’t cost the clients anything until or unless the cases filed are successful in court, I am hesitant about getting caught up in a whole lot of paperwork or time-and-energy consuming efforts that may drag on in the courts for years. And, given the power and influence PG&E has demonstrated in getting out of earlier liabilities for a lengthening trail of earlier screw ups, the whole effort could be for naught.
But I surely would love to claim some loot from the people who have charged me excessively for so long for using resources that belong to all of us, the power generated by water that isn’t owned by PG&E. Then, too, PG&E, like the oil companies, is heavily subsidized by taxpayers. And there is no doubt in my mind that the fire that happened on the morning of November 8th could have been avoided with greater care and responsibility on the part of PG&E management who were more concerned about profits than taking care of the business of keen-eyed upkeep, maintenance, and public safety. Any money that might be awarded to fire victims would seem no less than what I and and many others are entitled to for damages that money can’t fix and for suffering that has no price. But I’d take it, not because I am in particular need, but because it seems just to compensate people for injuries inflicted. It seems only right that PG&E should be held responsible and accountable for the harm they’ve done to so many.
The problem is these corporate CEOs always have a way of weaseling out of paying for the harm done. Even now, the honchos at PG&E are being awarded huge bonuses, money in the millions for several of the top guns. If being held responsible for screwing up is “why they get the big bucks,” that sure wouldn’t seem to apply to these people at the top of that reckless and heartless corporation. Will they pay? Hell no. They’re in line for big rewards for their service, not to customers, but to the investors, damn few of whom lived on the Paradise ridge. And I don’t think any of those execs due to get millions in bonuses have been exposed to much fire or rain in their plush mansions. Especially not fires set ablaze by their indifference to upkeep and public safety.