SAN FRANCISCO, July 31 (Xinhua) -- California utility Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. (PG&E) Wednesday strongly disapproved of a media report accusing it of taking no timely action to repair aging power lines that caused fatal wildfires in Northern California, local media reported.
San Francisco-based PG&E filed a response to a report of The Wall Street Journal that accused the utility of delaying the repair of 49 power towers on the transmission line known as the Caribou-Palermo line, which were supposed to be replaced even before a major wildfire erupted and killed 85 people last November.
The Journal report said PG&E was aware of the problems with the aging power towers, together with 57 other towers that needed replacement of their hardware and aluminum lines, but the utility delayed its maintenance work for five years.
California state investigators officially released a report in May, blaming PG&E's power lines for sparking the two-week deadly wildfires known as Camp Fire in Butte County, about 280 km north of San Francisco last year.
PG&E said in the response to the media report that the tower identified as the ignition point of the Camp Fire was not one of the towers slated for replacement, though it admitted having proposed to replace 60 towers on the line that runs through Butte County to meet federal safety requirement.
"The suggestion that PG&E has ignored investment in its transmission lines is inaccurate," PG&E said in the response requested by U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who asked the utility to make a public statement by July 31 to clarify "which paragraph is accurate."
PG&E said it has spent up to 294 million U.S. dollars every year from 2008 to 2018 on the maintenance of its power towers and transmission facilities.
The California utility, which serves nearly 16 million people in northern and central California, has been sued by fire victims for its power lines causing wildfires and leading to their loss of property in two deadly wildfires in 2017 and 2018.
The company filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2019 in the face of liabilities estimated at more than 30 billion dollars in connection with the catastrophic wildfires.
