forgot. home to creatures both strange and wonderful. amazing things happen up in the trees. this blurry picture of my mom and dad from 2018 was taken in las vegas. i took it because i don't have that many pictures of my parents together, because they ain't together. it was an unusual event made more unusual because we'd all gone to vegas to escape this. >> devastating news out of california. >> the camp fire. >> the camp fire. >> the camp fire. >> houses in flames, forests being scorched. >> this never happened before. >> the most destructive fire in

california history. >> agh. lucky for us the fires hadn't made it to where my family lives in oakland, but the air had gotten so bad that it wasn't safe to breathe. so my wife and i took me, the asthmatic, my elderly parent, and our kids straight to vegas. not because we wanted to gamble, but because it was close and there were cheap flights. now back then, it seemed like a oneself-in-a-lifetime thing. >> fire rescue, what is your emergency? >> but ever since, the fires in california have a gotten worse. >> dixie fire. >> woolsey fire. >> are more towns burned to the ground, more forests devastated and more refugees. this episode is about californians and fire, because we got to learn how to get along. ♪ ♪

now if you're thinking that you're safe because you live outside of california, nope. wildfires happen across america, from alaska to florida. and they happen all over the world. >> wildfires sweeping across -- >> australia. >> cape town. >> estonia and turkey. >> nigeria. >> all the way to the north pole. >> and even if they aren't happening near you, the effects are definitely coming to your doorstep. there is less food due to crop damage. there is tainted water. and oh, that toxic air. so i'm heading north from my home in oakland to a part of my state that has been the epicenter of some of the largest, most destructive and deadly wildfires in california

history. one of those fires began at 6:15 a.m. on november 8th, 2018 off camp creek road in butte county when a downed power line ignited a small blaze that quickly grew into what would become known as the camp fire, one of california's most devastating and deadly fires on record. >> it was november. so i don't want to say our guard was down. but in november, typically we would be having rain and winter, and we weren't. >> now when we talk about fires we think about firefighters running into a burning house to put the fire out. but in a wildfire situation, it can be a whole town. and often it's the town the firefighters live in. that's the situation chief joe tapia, chief sean norman and captain matt found themselves in. they are cal fire officers from butte county. they were among the firefighters

dispatched to tackle the blaze in their own backyard. i want to talk about the camp fire and how that affected this community, how it affected the three of you. >> matt and joe both lost their homes there. so that's what was different about the camp fire is that it finally hit our home community. >> just a blanket statement. i han'uthe camp fire much. >> okay. >> hopefully i don't choke up. i haven't had to get that out of my system yet. >> yeah, you know. even with the work that you do and the work you do every day, it's got to be hard to think about this side of it and this side of it, you know. so i understand. >> yeah, so i was off-duty, and i got a text message from a buddy of mine who was in the valley. and he goes hey, man, a pretty big fire. and he sent me a picture of this header. and i thought he was looking out to the west side of the valley. and he said no, bud, that's you. and literally, i looked up and i went oh, man. hopped in the truck and went to work. >> it's got to be hard to be the

person who is thinking about your family and your house, and also i have to go out into the field. >> right now in california, millions of people remain at risk as firefighters battle what's become the most destructive and deadliest outbreak of wildfires in the state's history. >> some of the worst damage seen in the northern town of paradise. all that day was about for the first eight hours was finding pockets of human beings. >> please, god, please, god. >> we have people trapped. and everyone has a propane tank up there, right? so the explosions were nonstop. and the fire front was getting closer. so the louder they got through the smoke, you knew it was coming. >> oh, wow. >> there was a ton of traffic coming into paradise. had to get home and get their dogs, get their kids. so they're jamming traffic up. i said hey, we have to do something with skyway. so i just stopped at the intersection and turned everybody around. that was one of the hardest things i've ever done you. had people that my kids are at

home. and i had to be like i'm sorry, but everybody here is going to die if we don't get all four lanes going south. >> i saw people running on foot, carrying babies and dogs and their hair catching on fire from embers. at one point, we're herding them into a walgreens to shelter them. i think we ended up with over 100 people in there. and i remember the firefighters going is this going to work? and i go i don't know. but if they're outside when the fire front hits, it's going to kill them all. it was chaos. >> by the end of the day on november 8th, almost 19,000 structures had been destroyed and 85 people had died. >> how many times did we try to get to a person that we couldn't make it to, or get somebody, you know, too late. >> i just can't imagine what that feels like. >> i think the campfire is

really a story of stories. and so there is two words that are interchangeable a lot, and that's bravery and heroism, but they're different. in bravery in our job is an expectation, right. but you're looking at two people who stayed in the fight that day even though they lost everything they owned. and these two are in that rare air of being a hero because of that. >> i would imagine nobody would have blamed you both to say i got to go be with my family. what made you stay and do the work? >> when i saw the house was gone, i kind of took a moment and said all right, well, go back to work. >> oh my god. >> i think i just kind of shut that part of it off. there is nothing i can do about that, but here's what i can do. yeah. you go back to your training. >> wow. >> as a kid, firefighter is one of those jobs like astronaut or lion tamer. it sounds like a fun adventure, but you don't actually end up doing it. i wonder if when matt, joe and sean first signed up for their job if they had any idea what they were getting into.

seems like fire season has gotten worse, is that true? >> when i first started, fire season seemed to be three or four months out of the summertime. and 25 years later, we're still in fire season in december. >> it's changing. when i first started, i remember going to a fire that was 18,000 acres, and people told me hey, that's a career fire. we wouldn't even bat an eye at 1800 acres. the dixie did 150,000 in one day. >> please talk to the misunderstanding of what people think firefighters do, specifically in this area? >> we can get deployed to these fires in any part of the state at almost any time. and i don't know when i'll be coming back home. is it going to be tonight or is it going to be two months from now? >> i don't think most of us realize that you guys are gone for weeks on end like that. >> my record is 58 days straight. >> at least 30 plus. yeah. >> i did 59 days straight last summer. >> yeah. >> fire season, it's getting

longer, and it's getting worse. and i see the stickers, you know. santa rosa strong, sonoma county strong, napa strong, paradise strong. i can just keep naming communities off, right, where these fires have destroyed these communities, taken lives, changed lives. this thing is an iceberg. there is way more to it that no one sees. >> yeah. yeah, wow. despite knowing that the problem is only getting bigger and bigger, firefighters continue to put their lives on the line to protect us. i typed in grandma's name and birth year...

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okay. need another reason to heighten your already heightened sense of post 2020 panic? nine out of the ten largest wildfires in california history have occurred in the last decade. in 2021, the dixie fire alone burnt 963,000 acres. that's bigger than rhode island. feel even more panic now? good. me too. with a problem this big and scary, there must be people with solutions that can also calm me down with some slightly peppy and measured tones. yep, i'm talking weathermen. specifically, meteorologists. really appreciate you both really have meteorology hands. patrick brown is a meteorologist, climate expert and professor at san jose state university's wildfire interdisciplinary research center. and holt hanley, a great weatherman, is his grad student

and on-air weather anchor for kspw. his focus is wildfire forecasting. because that's a thing. i live in oakland. there hasn't been a wildfire since i've been living there. but i have asthma. so during fire season, sometimes i look at the air quality off my phone, and it's don't go outside. seal every window. >> that's really the pathway that most people are affected by the fires. there is even an economic analysis of the 2018 season. they found that the economic impact of the health effects of the lowered air quality was just as high as all of the destruction of structures literally things burning down. >> so my perception in the time that i've been here is that the wildfires are affecting a bigger swath of california. >> yeah. basically like ten times more area is burning per year now than there was in the '70s or '80s. >> why is that? >> so, you know, there are two things. the climate change issue, that's a global problem. and it's going to continue to get warmer in the west, that

means dryer, more conducive to fires. but also, we have huge buildup of fuels because of fire suppression. >> what do you mean? >> california is a fire adapted ecosystem. so essentially for many decades, the western united states implemented a strategy of putting out fires as soon as they were ignited. >> patrick is talking about what's known as the era of fire suppression. remember smoky the bear? >> only you can prevent forest fires. >> well, smoky was too good at his job. generations of kids like me grew up thinking that fire was bad. it turns out that's not quite true. fire is a part of nature. the california landscape actually wants and uses fire. in fact, some of the trees, like the giant sequoia, actually need fire to reproduce, for real. but once white colonizers came west, timber became a precious commodity and fire the enemy to

be stamped out. then in 1910, wildfires destroyed three million acres across the u.s. west. so the u.s. forest service made it their policy to put out any fire as soon as it started. as a result, forests became dense and overgrown. there were too many small young trees and dead trees and dry brush accumulated on the floor. add drought and climate change to the mix and you have the perfect kindling for a wildfire. isn't there a part that the wildfires started to do things people hadn't seen them do before? >> yeah. one thing i noticed is how fast the wildfires move. you can look at it one hour. and then in the next hour, the situation is completely changed. i think we definitely saw that on the caldor fire this last year. the best way to think about this is the fire behavior triangle, weather, fuel, topography. on that fire we had a red flag warning, which means it's extremely dry out. we had extreme winds, which makes it easier for the fire to move forward.

it's in very steep terrain. fire likes to move uphill. and then we had a lot of dead fuels because of drought. >> are there technologies being worked on or things that you feel hopeful about that we're developing? >> yeah, the wharf-f fire, the forecast model we run takes all the factors, the weather, the fuel, the topography and show you an exact picture of how that fire is going to move over time. so we have two different trucks. when is a lidar truck. one is a radar truck. it's basically like storm chasing for wildfires. >> oh, wow. >> basically drive the trucks up, collect a bunch of data, and the ultimate goal is to be able to create the simulation and give that to firefighters. >> if you really know what the fire is going to do that day, then you can deploy resources in the most efficient way. >> i mean, storm chasing already sounds crazy. but fire chasing sounds even crazier. while it's comforting to know that new technologies are being developed, we got a bigger problem. to quote george clooney from

"oceans 11," "we need more people." yep, california has a shortage of firefighters. according to one report, in 2021, only half of u.s. forest service fire engines were fully staffed. state and federal agencies struggled to retain firefighters because burnout, long deployments, and often low pay. yeah, low pay to fight fires. and there is another reason california is running out of firefighters, and this reason might break your brain. since 1942, we've been using low security inmates to fight fires. today approximately 1/3 of california's wildland fire fighting force are currently incarcerated, which saves the california taxpayers an approximately $100 million per year. but because of prison reform and the early release of some incarcerated folks since 2020, there are not enough people to throw at the fires. how's your brain? and to make matters worse, once

these people are released from prison, they often can't find jobs as firefighters even though they're already trained because, well, people don't like hiring ex-inmates. my brain! how did you meet? >> we was locked up together, straight up. >> okay. >> luckily brandon smith and royal ramey are here to fix that. they're professional firefighters who started their careers in california's fire conservation camps while they were incarcerated. what was that decision like to join the fire crew? >> better situation. >> we live in an area like this instead of concrete walls and barbed wire. >> one of the highest paying prisoners. >> how much did it pay? >> at that time it was about $1.45 a day. but then we work on fires, you get a dollar an hour. >> that's still crazy, right? >> right. >> that's still. >> i didn't have no idea what i was getting myself into. but as time went on, it grew on me, and i fell in love with it. >> i found a sense of purpose for myself.

i found a way i could give back. you have all these folks with signs saying thank you, firefighters. what? you thanking me? >> like you're a real american. >> right. >> so what was it like when you got out? >> i mean, it was hard. i spent almost two years trying to firefight. i would be applying to jobs. i'm sorry, sir, you're not qualified. i'm sorry, you don't have all the certification. >> why aren't they hiring you? >> straight up, the united states of america has a problem utilizing incarcerated people, period. >> we were firefighters before. we came home. we should be able to do it again. >> if there is any job want to do it and you the skills? come on. this would be the job. >> nah. >> yeah, no. >> firefighters probably like the most respected career in the country, right? so when you talk about formerly incarcerated people who are transitioning over into a space of the highest moral regard, a lot of people don't want us in space. black folks formerly

we're formerly incarcerated people. but what folks don't realize, we're already out here. we've been protecting your homes for the past three years when i was locked up. it's interesting. the person that gave us our first shot was a black woman. her name was chief betty ashe. black women. >> always, always, always. >> once we did this professionally, realizing people coming home ain't going to have the pathways we have, we wanted to be that support system. >> to create that support system, in 2015, brandon and royal established the forestry and fire recruitment program, a nonprofit which provides training, coaching, and employment pathways to help currently and formerly incarcerated firefighters transition into firefighting careers. >> when we started this thing, he quit forest service. >> oh, wow. >> i sacrificed by job for cal fire. >> you gave up the goal to actually give back. >> this is more of a legacy that we need to push because there's not too many black role models in this space to be able to say hey, i was there. it's doable, and we can be able

to lead folks to the promised land in a sense. >> we get formerly incarcerated firefighters a paid training. we give them a job for six months to a year. so after a year, you got your training certificates. we help you how to apply for these jobs. now you should be ready to go and thrive. >> for sure. >> the proof is in the pudding at the end of the day. we helped over 125 people get jobs in the fighter service. >> wow. so you know how to clear the path. >> right. look at us. two brothers formerly incarcerated somehow figured out a way to build this nonprofit and truly help people out, because we wanted to do it. >> good work. >> absolutely. >> thanks for coming out. this— thankfully, meta portal helps reduce background noise. zero lace model. adjusts to low light. and pans and zooms to keep you in frame. take a look at this. so the whole team stays on track. okay, let's get you some feedback. i'm impressed.

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california's dixie fire is threatening thousands of buildings. >> the dixie fire. >> the massive dixie fire has now grown to be the second largest in state's history. >> we're seeing truly frightening fire behavior. >> fire tore through greenville, california. >> small town of greenville. >> essentially been wiped off the map. >> this entire town is gone. >> it was just in august of 2021 that the dixie fire destroyed the town of greenville. but the media has long since moved on. four months after the disaster, though, not much has changed for the people who call this place home. jesus.

never seen anything like this. you can still smell, like, ash and burn, but also smell the trees. there is like a pine smell. there is also maybe a chemical smell, maybe because of all the plastic. it makes my stomach hurt a little bit. never seen this stuff this close up before. >> yeah. it was heartbreaking, man. >> it's been four months. a lot of the stuff has just been sitting here. >> yeah. we're in the midst of it. we're in the midst of the fire. you can still -- it looks like a bomb still went off. >> man. >> i'm just devastated. we're all in this together, you know. this is our whole greenville tribe, even the nonnatives. >> my new tribal member danny manning and his family have called greenville home for generations. >> here, we don't have a reservation.

we're part of the community. so the tribe is a big part of this town. >> long before it was ever called greenville, these were the sacred ancestral lands of the miwok people. >> you know we used to be large around here, but you got to remember that we've already been through the apocalypse. 97% of our tribe was either murdered or died from disease, because this was ground zero for the gold rush. >> the white settlers' search for power and money fueled their genocide of thousands over indigenous people in california. but danny and his people have not given up. >> you know, we're always trying to protect our sacred mountains and what we got left of our culture, real parts of our creation story all happened right here on this ground. >> it's understandable then that the tribal members of this community who have already experienced so much intergenerational trauma were hit hard by the fire. a tragedy compounded by the fact

that until recently, native wisdom about how to co-exist with the fire had been suppressed. >> it said before the whites came here that people could ride horses like three side by side all through these forests around here, that it was that open. >> wow. danny is a seasoned firefighter. he helped establish a native-run fire department for the greenville rancheria. which he serves as assistant fire chief. talk about the importance of the firehouse led that was led by your tribe? >> we teach more of the traditional knowledge, not just putting out the fire, but taking care of the earth. and if you take care of the earth, the earth will take care of you. you know, the old native ways. >> to learn more about this, danny invited me to sit down with tribal member trina cunningham who is director of the consortium and a tribal conservation specialist. >> one of the important aspects of it to me is the relationship of humanity with nature. and it seems that we've forgotten that relationship. >> yeah. >> and forgotten that natural

law is the number one ruler. for example, our ancestors knew that fire is the only thing that at a landscape scale can fight fire. >> since time immemorial, indigenous folks maintained forests known today as cultural burning by setting low intensity, controlled burns at different times, they cleared away dead brush and fuels from the forest floor, protecting the forest from larger fires. but cultural burning was about more than just preventing catastrophic wildfire. the practice also helped promote growth of different traditional food sources and fire resistant species. indigenous folks knew what they were doing. >> i mean, that's the way the tribes did it. and they never put out a fire. if there is a fire that happened on a ridge, they let it burn down and do what it's going to do naturally. it's the only way to manage that much land. >> is there a part of this that maybe you feel like if we had been in charge of this land, this would not have happened?

>> this fire absolutely would not have happened if it were cared for by tribal people. and we want to be able to share our knowledge, and people are continually asking us, can we do cultural burning. well, are you tribal? and why would you want to do cultural burning without us? >> ooh, yeah. look what happened when the white man got yoga. look how that went. >> we're starting to try to sway the agencies to think about native burning. >> yep, yeah. >> and that's passing on that traditional knowledge that it does have value, even if you're not indian. >> like here and now today, how can we change human behavior, and how can we rebuild that relationship of humanity to this earth? >> only way to maintain these forests is quit fighting mother nature. because mother nature is going to win. >> yeah. you know, even in the talk about how the climate is changing, we act like the earth is coming to an end. no, the earth is still going to be here. we just may not be here with it. >> yeah.

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conduct prescribed burns, aka good fire. but you got to know what you're doing to get the permit. >> so we're going to take out this top little corner. we're going take our time. >> today i'm going the hang out with some people who definitely know what they're doing at a prescribed burn on private property. >> always try to be downhill of the fire. >> leading the way are wildfire analyst zeke lunder and don hankins, a member of the plains miwok tribe. and a professor of pyrogeography at chico state university. >> a couple of miles ago the camp fire burned a quarter mile from here. they've been living with this extreme fear of fire. so we got this effort started locally to make it easier for landowners to burn their own land. >> the object is to not kill the big trees, but we do want to kill little baby trees. we want to kill brush. >> the more communities live in these kinds of environments can use fire, the better off they're going to be. >> if you each grab a torch, we'll get moving on. this. >> my 8-year-old dream's come true.

this is part of a larger conservation project that don and zeke are involved in. training people in the practice of prescribed fire. >> we got lots of different fuel types out here. we got oak leaves. we got pine needles. the pine needles burn better. >> i'm learning along with the other members of the community. they want to help protect our state by safely using good fire in a controlled setting. the key word is controlled. >> good day to light a fire. there you go. >> that's good. let's go. we're just burning up the easy, dry grass. and we're just going to work our way down slope with our ignitions. >> small spot fires are slowly lit down the hill, supervised by zeke and don. everyone has a radio and a weather spotter checks for any changes in the wind. and cal fire officers are standing by. can you tell i'm trying to say don't try this at home? >> picking up fire and dropping it through the forest, the way we were all taught not to do as children.

>> so the idea is not that we're never going to have fire here again. but when we do, it won't be hot enough to kill all these trees. >> it will stay low to the ground. >> yeah. we're looking great here. >> all with pitchforks with start coming in here. >> fire is a very social thing. if you can have the family involved, it should be like second nature to have that level of comfort in the culture around fire. >> wow. look at that. look at that over there. whoa! >> i mean, if i was just walking and i saw fire this high, i would be ahh! but very quickly out there today, i sort of was like this is what we're supposed to do. >> i think that's where we used to be going back 150 years or more, and that's where we need to be. >> you want to come out here and light something with a torch? >> yeah, sure. >> light one right there. and let's light every one step, okay. >> okay. >> fire is the teacher. going on down. and if you spend time with fire, then you get the lessons.

yeah, it's perfect. >> wow. a very zen mind state. >> exactly. there is a lot of people who can benefit from doing this. >> you ain't kidding. i pay $125 for therapy. i just come up here. >> the leaders are supposed to be in charge of california's environment still feel they're at war with wildfire, and no one is getting it right. as long as we keep fighting that war, we're spending billions of dollars a year and fire is still burning down the lands. we've been fighting for 100 years. now it's teamed up with climate change. we need a truce, you know. come up with some terms, a settlement. like we've occupied fire's territory. and if you build a settlement in fire's territory, you can keep living there, but you got to be all right with fire coming in whenever it wants, you know? >> it's so weird that a second ago there was five-foot flames. now it's sort of out.

it's super fascinating. is there a reason for optimism like this? >> i don't think that we're going to be able to prescribe burn our way to help the entire landscape be safe. but i think it can help. >> i think we are heading in a good direction with it. now the state is finally at the point with policies that came forward today to recognize cultural burning. so it's now codified in some state law, and i was able to work on some of that policy development. the state has a plan that's coming forward. we're targeting the to burn 5,000 acres by 2025 within the state. that's not enough, but it's a starting point. and i think that the more that people get used to this idea, then it will happen. so that we can have fire on our own terms out here. >> first time lighting fire, not getting yelled at by my mom. >> you got to admit, this is kind of cool.

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the phrase “slice of heaven” comes to mind... marco's. pizza lovers get it. california is the most populous state in the u.s. with over 39 million people, and our homes are getting closer to the wilderness. this is called the wildland

urban interface. basically, if fire is a gang, then we're invading its territory. and since there is no quick fix to climate change or our forest fuels problems, wildfires aren't backing down from their territory. so why don't we just leave? well, people have called this land home since long before it was called california. and home can't be so easily replaced. walking through paradise, you can feel a town that refuses to go away. but you can also see that it's still going to take a lot of time to get it to come back. four years later, so many residents are still living in trailers. like retiree kevin meir. >> it took a while to adjust to the downsizing. that's what i call it. at the time, i was quite naive too, because i thought oh, i'll rebuild within a year. but that was not going to happen. the challenges have been, besides monetary is just getting

in line with 30,000 other people trying to rebuild, you know. and so you just get in the queue. >> julian martinez wants to help people like kevin who are still hoping to rebuild. he is a paradise native who lost his home to the fire. but he is determined to help reconstruct his town. >> this is home. i would regret not coming back and helping to be a part of rebuilding. it's almost kind of like therapy. >> so tell me about this house that we're sitting in front of. >> this house was started by another builder. they weren't able to finish the house. so the owner had a third party come in and do an evaluation on it and found that she had been overcharged. it got left in this condition. so we got on board to help the lady get it moving again. >> wow. when i think about the wildfires, i think about hurricane katrina in new orleans. there is the devastation that happens when the event happens,

and then the devastation afterwards of not knowing who to trust and people who come in and take advantage of people at their moment of need, you know. >> uh-huh. one of the really unfortunate parts of it is there is probably a billion dollars that went through this town and left. >> what did that billion do? how did it go through the town? which had contractors from all over the country that came for things like debris removal was a big one. i would think that in a disaster, it would be more effective to incorporate a local workforce into the recovery efforts more. >> yeah, yeah, yeah. >> they brought in thousands of trailers for the workers to stay in. meanwhile, all the residents are in economic peril, just left behind. >> wow. >> the trees were another thing. millions and millions and millions of dollars of trees just gone. >> like the trees got taken out and somebody made money off those trees? >> somebody did. but nobody up here. it just makes you really angry. the aftermath, we're still seeing it play out. and we're talking about all these different issues in

paradise, one of which is the trailer ordinance. the town council was very aggressively kicking people off their properties. >> off their own properties? >> off their own properties. you had to have a permit to live in a trailer on your own property. but they would only give you a permit if you had an active building permit. so the people who didn't have the money to rebuild, who had nowhere else to go, but they still owned this piece of property acquired a trailer, weren't allowed to live on their own property. >> it was very, very stressful. i lost many nights' sleep trying to hustle and get my permit done. and me and 10,000 other people. there is people that rebuilt and have their homes. and there is us that don't. there is getting to be a bigger divide because they don't want to look at us, which i understand. it ruins their property value. about 60 people are protesting that they don't have the financing. we can't build as fast as we like. so they extended it for another two years.

and that's been a godsend. >> talk more about ways you think people can rebuild in a safer way. >> so we have the wui, the wild land urban interface. basically, building codes that went into effect. these building codes do help prevent houses from burning down. the other is defensible space. just by keeping all the brush away from your house, give it some space, use lots of rock. be proactive about how you maintain your yard, decrease the chances of your house burning down immensely. >> if you want to live up here in this beautiful picturesque part of the world you have to do it responsibly. >> oh, yeah. it definitely comes with some maintenance. wait 'till you hear this— thankfully, meta portal helps reduce background noise. zero lace model. adjusts to low light. and pans and zooms to keep you in frame. take a look at this. so the whole team stays on track.

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starting over 1500 wildfires, this includes it the campfire, pjd pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter, for many in northern california including me, pg&e has become a four letter word. >> a poll of people i talk to, pg&e, word association?>> fire. [ laughter ] >> corporate greed. >> outdated. >> fall guy. >> accountability. >> yes, that would be nice. >> fighting for the a cat -- account ability, is the executive director of turn, the utility reform network. >> we've been around for 50 years fighting for customers of pg&e.>> law professor sandoval, a former commissioner of the pete cpuc who regulates them. >> it was convicted of multiple

violations, related to the natural gas explosion in 2010, and so like any felon, pg&e is on probation, the first order of federal criminal probation is commit no more crimes, in the course of the probation they started multiple wildfires, as well. >> during the probation. i was watching goodfellows, sounds very similar. >> if they started different fires, a person, with lots of in jail but you can't lock a corporation in jail.>> what upsets people is that there is a pattern of pg&e doing inspections, need to be cut down and power lines need to be repaired, and they are not repairing them, and before you know it, we have a major fire. that is part of what happens with the campfire.>> the grand jury report concluded the fire started when he hook on one of

the electrical transmission towers broke. causing a high voltage cable to fall, the sparks from the resulting short-circuit ignited the dry brush below. although pg&e's records were unclear on specific, it was estimated that the broken seahawk along with other components had been in use for about 97 years. c hook. yes.>> they had inspected that transmission tower and reported they were going to replace the critical parts, but they never got around to it>> the campfire is not the only time pg&e's negligence have caused major fire damage to california, investigations say they were responsible for the deadly zoll again kinkade, and dixie fire that destroyed greenville.>> i spend my time working for free as cocounsel on the federal

probation case because i want to help promote and protect public safety, i want to rehabilitate pg&e. one of the things that we brought up in the proceeding is that pg&e continues to engage in criminal thinking. it wasn't just an accident, it was a product of recklessness. if pg&e was a person within their first year of incarceration, they would've had to have taken criminal thinking classes. they help you to stop engaging in criminal thinking in order to rehabilitate yourself. corporations are not required to take a class to make them recognize their critical thinking, that's part of what we propose, was the board, right? >> take some classes in criminal thinking if are going to make those, commit be 5 am on saturday? [ laughter ]>> they have committed to improving

infrastructure and wildfire mitigation plans but anticipated it will take many years and billions of dollars to complete, and guess who pays for all of that, the pg&e consumer, they charge us not to burn us down. and until that is in place, one of pg&e's primary wildfire mitigation strategies is just shut the power off. because it is hard for powerlines to start a fire if there is no power, so pg&e does rolling blackouts regardless of the fact that some people need electricity to you know, survive. >> expressing these massive power shutoffs, they are supposed to be a last resort but pg&e is using them too much as a first resort because it is so cheap. >> if you're not upset enough yet, i should mention that pg&e is a privately owned public utility that generates about $20 billion in revenue annually and through all of this, it still pays out dividends to shareholders, my brain again.

>> people need to reach out to the governor, elected assembly members and senators, and demanded that the utility companies be held accountable.>> i would say holding them accountable is the least that we can do. not everyone is as hard on pg&e is me. >> pg&e?>> fall guy. >> fall guy? >> yes.>> too much blame on pg&e? >> yes, they didn't come with the policy to put out every fire ended with the force get out of balance. >> the fires might start with them but if we did a better job of taking care of the land the firewood and spread the wake wake >> right.>> the wildfires in california are example of what's going on all over the country, big problems that are out of control that are made worse by american capitalism, the belief that science is just another opinion, climate changes in real and maybe most importantly, instead of learning from the indigenous people of this land, united

states attempted to wipe them and their knowledge out. this type of thinking is not just a california problem, not just a fire problem, they stretch from california to the new york island. and if we don't figure it out, this land will burn with you and me. ♪ hello, welcome to reviewers joining us here in the dates, and all around the world, you are watching cnn newsroom, i am rosemary church. some of the strongest schelling in parts of ukraine since the war began, and while grain is finally set to ship out after months of russian blockades. iraq is at a tipping point. iran and others watching closely as protesters keep storming the parliament.