I have every sympathy for the folks who lost homes here in California last year; it could easily have been my house. But what a lot of discussions miss regarding SCE's role in the Altadena fire is that SCE is a public utility, and California's Public Utilities Commission has not been allowing SCE (or other utilities, like PG&E) to charge rates that would allow them to do the required maintenance to prevent fires. In another case, some years ago, I understand that a fire in Northern California started next to a PG&E substation; the brush had not been trimmed, so I'm told, because environmental regulation didn't allow it.

From where I sit, this is not simply a "power company bad" situation; the state has played a significant role.

> California's Public Utilities Commission has not been allowing SCE (or other utilities, like PG&E) to charge rates that would allow them to do the required maintenance to prevent fires.

Source requested.

SCE made billions in profit last year. If they cannot upkeep their infrastructure while making large profits, they should be regulated to spend more profits on infrastructure or they should be nationalized and controled entirely by the state.

SCE does not get to have both large profits and say they are not allowed to charge enough.

California pays ridiculous rates as it is, sometimes over 40 cents per kwh.

The real problem is the climate, the fuel, and structure hardening. In some big fires, it was power lines, but in others it was a cigarette or arson, or a camp fire, or lightning, or a car parked on dry grass, or people using power tools that made a spark.

Trying to pin down liability just based on the ignition source just makes a deep pockets lottery. If the power company lights a massive fire, you get a payout. If someone throws a cigarette out their window, they go bankrupt and you get nothing.

Eventually if you have a dry forest with a lot of dry brush and you have enough hot windy days, it's going to catch on fire. If the power lines are perfect, maybe you'll delay it a few years, but the same thing is going to happen. Either you deal with the problem from a fuel standpoint, or you make peoples' houses harder to burn, or you're going to end up with a bunch of burned down houses. There really isn't some magical solution where you can just blame it all on PG&E.

> “…the brush had not been trimmed, so I'm told, because environmental regulation didn't allow it.”

Haha. California gets a bad rap. Hands down it’s a tragedy. More like budget cuts and negligence, than anything to do with environmental regulations. I’d like to read that source.

PG&E diverted safety money for profit, bonuses: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/PG-E-diverted-safety-...

After choosing profits over maintenance, California utility giant forces blackouts on customers: https://www.salon.com/2019/10/09/after-choosing-profits-over...

PG&E Spent Billions on Lobbyists and PR Instead of Upgrades: https://theintercept.com/2019/10/11/pge-power-shutdown-calif...

John Oliver on utilities, including PG&E: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-YRSqaPtMg

Can we stop just automatically assuming that the poor, beleaguered companies would definitely be acting in the public's interest all on their own if only it weren't for the big bad regulators? It really seems like, in 2026, there should be ample evidence to the contrary by now.

Doesn't California already have some of the highest electricity costs in the country? Is there really not enough money coming in for SCE, PG&E etc to do necessary maintenance? That's shocking.

EDIT: Looking further, PG&E's net profit every year for the past few years seems to have been extremely large, so I don't know that I buy it...

I have two hundred pages of details that do not conform to this line of thinking