My take on this is that PG&E way/is behaving negligently and the investigation that resulted from the fire uncovered that. They are literally the cause of the fire in the sense that their actions are what produced the initial flame.
However, I don't think the fault should lie with them because something was going to start a fire and they just happened to be the unlucky bunch stuck holding the match. There is no way you could say "if it wasn't for their negligence there wouldn't have been a fire."
> There is no way you could say "if it wasn't for their negligence there wouldn't have been a fire."
This thread is going in circles. What people are saying is that PG&E should be expected to do what's required of them to maintain their equipment, and that failing to maintain their equipment was a cause of this specific fire. You're right, it's basically bad luck that their decades of negligence led to this disaster, but it still did lead to it. Whether or not there was a pre-existing condition that made fires more likely.
Because the majority of fault lies at California/Federal government whoever is in charge of clearing the forests regularly not PG&E.
Again going back to the Beirut Explosion analogy -- yes the welders could have taken better precautions. Perhaps someone could have maintained the explosives better too. Maybe we could even hire firefighters on standby and install alarms next to the port.
But none of this removes the large pile of explosives that shouldn't be placed there.
Where I'm from in NorCal it's all National Forest except for the parts that are private land.
A quick search indicates that some 58% of California forest is managed by the Feds and about 3% by the state.
So -- in addition to PG&E being at fault, shouldn't we be talking about Washington more than Sacramento here?