As of this writing, the “Camp Fire” in Northern California has claimed seventy-seven lives, destroyed over ten thousand structures, and burned over 150,000 acres, making it the deadliest and most destructive fire in state history. Almost a thousand people are still listed as missing, and the fire is only 65 percent contained. In Southern California, the Woolsey Fire has burned almost a hundred thousand acres and is almost 90 percent contained. Earlier this summer, the Carr Fire in Redding burned almost three hundred thousand acres, destroyed over a thousand structures, and caused thirty-eight thousand evacuations. Last summer, a cluster of firestorms in Santa Rosa killed forty-three, burned over two hundred thousand acres, and destroyed ten thousand homes, including the one I grew up in.

This new normal has prompted renewed discussion of climate change, and rightfully so: California’s last several summers have been among the hottest, driest, and longest in its recorded history. Firefighters describe conditions unlike any they’ve seen before, with sustained hurricane-speed winds circling firestorms so powerful that they create their own weather. Images of skeletonized cars and ashy ruins have become standard iconography of climate horror in America.

Locally, Californians have identified another pattern behind the deadly blazes: unsafe cost-cutting practices from the state’s largest for-profit utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E).