“I am not shying away from the hazard of wildfires and burying my head in the sand about the effects of it. “I've spoken to victims, and it's heartbreaking,” PG&E CEO Patti Poppe told The Press Democrat in August, halfway through her second year leading the utility. PG&E, for its part, emerged from bankruptcy under new management and with new commitments to wildfire safety. The 2017 North Bay firestorm and 2018 Camp Fire drove changes in how California reacts to, and seeks to prevent, utility-caused wildfires. To understand why Miller and so many other victims who lost everything remain uncompensated, its necessary to look back to the years immediately after the fire, when widespread outrage and calls to “make it right” were diluted by the powerful forces of high finance, the legal system and political deal making. That price left the trust corpus $2.5 billion below what victims were promised. When the trust received 477 million PG&E shares in July 2020, the company was trading at $9 per share. “It all depends on the stock, so at the moment, there's no way to know,” Yanni said. It is unclear when or even if, victims will receive what they’re owed. “My purpose is to make the victims as whole as possible,” she said. The goal, Yanni said, is to get to 90% by the end of the year. To date, 82% of the people who have filed a claim, roughly 57,000 people, have received a “determination notice” stating the amount the trust intends to offer them. The Trust employs roughly 300 people to assess and process claims, according to trust administrator Cathy Yanni.Īfter a long wait, the trust is making payouts. Meanwhile, the trust’s overhead, including payments to law firms, public relations firms and lobbyists, topped $132 million by the end of 2021. The trust’s roll out has been plagued with questions about administrative spending and transparency, leaving victims to fear they’ve been left with the short end of the stick.
There are many reasons the tragedy lingers in these communities, but the long wait for compensation for physical and emotional losses from the utility compounds the injury. “This money, it's about protecting her life,” Stanghellini said.įive years after the fire, tens of thousands of North Bay and Paradise residents remain in brutal limbo, unable to pick up their lives from flames that cost them homes, livelihoods and loved ones. Stanghellini is counting on trust funds to pay herself back for the new mobile home, pay for additional modifications to accommodate Miller’s age and maybe bring in a caregiver. In Miller’s case, insurance only covered a small portion of her burned home.
It’s my lawyer stalking them to try to get her paid out.” “Nobody tells us anything,” Stanghellini said. She doesn’t know when she’ll see the rest. More than two years after the trust was established, Miller has received less than 40 percent of what is owed to her.
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