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Comment by alwaysdoit | Hacker News Reader

I agree that they should be held responsible for negligence or poor faith actions. But I'm not sure they should be responsible if their equipment caused a fire because it was shot full of bullet holes by some idiot with a gun[1]. My understanding is the law currently holds them responsible if their equipment was involved, regardless of whether or not they were negligent.

[1] https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/fires/article22...

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Keep in mind that, at scale, equipment is always breaking, whether the breaks are intentional or unintentional. The question is not whether the tower was broken by bullet holes or something else but how the equipment had been in this broken state beforehand. The task of a utility is to have a sufficient maintenance schedule to insure that most pieces of equipment unlikely to be broken even a few are. Overall, the "1,500 fires" part is what's damning, not any single fire. Again, overall, PG&E has terrible maintenance record and this is the impetus to hold them liable derives.

Read that article carefully. That report doesn't establish a timeline for that damage and certainly doesn't establish that shooting the pole caused the fire. That was an attempt by PG&E to muddy the waters on responsibility for the blazes.

They should be held responsible for it if they don't repair it in a reasonable amount of time. They are required by law to keep equipment in safe working order, but they have a terrible track record of doing that.

I wouldn't blame PG&E if somebody damages their equipment and causes a fire that day or sometime soon after. But if it's been months and the equipment is still lying on the ground with bullet holes in it that proves PG&E didn't inspect it or repair it for a long time.

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