PG&E has acknowledged to regulators that it found bullet holes, a broken transmission-tower hook and other flaws with equipment at sites where the catastrophic Camp Fire is believed to have started last month.
In its most detailed accounting yet of the problems that might have led to the Nov. 8 wildfire that consumed most of Paradise, the beleaguered utility told state officials that its inspectors have found a “broken C-hook” on a high-voltage tower near the community of Pulga, northeast of Paradise. Lawyers for Camp Fire survivors suing PG&E have suggested the broken hook might have allowed a live “jumper” cable to make contact with the tower itself, showering the dry ground below with sparks.
Separately, at a power pole in the Big Bend area of Concow several miles away, PG&E employees found that “the pole and other equipment was on the ground with bullets and bullet holes at the break point of the pole and on the equipment,” PG&E senior director of regulatory relations Meredith Allen wrote in a letter to the Public Utilities Commission.