advanced security that helps protect your devices in and out of the home. i mean, can i have a bite? only from xfinity. nah. unbeatable internet. made to do anything so you can do anything. 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 campfire -- >> the campfire. >> houses, flames, forests being scorched. >> this has never happened like this before. >> the most destructive fire in

california history. >> ahh! 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, our elderly parents and kids straight to vegas. not because we wanted to gamble, but because it was close and there were cheap flights. back then, it seemed like a once in a lifetime thing, but every year since, the fires in california have gotten worse. >> the dixie fire. >> the hill fire. >> there are more towns being burned to the ground, more people whose lives are devastated, and more wildfire refugees. this episode is about californians and fire, because we've 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 -- >> sonia and turkey. >> 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's less food due to crop damage. there's 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 in 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 into what quickly grew into what would be known as the campfire, 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 is the town the firefighters live in. that's the situation chief totapia, chief norman, and captain matt blade found themselves in. they are cal fire officers in

butte county. they were among the firefighters dispatched to tackle the blaze in their own backyard. >> i want to talk about the camp fire. >> matt and joe both lost their homes there. >> that's what was different about the camp fire, is because it finally hit our home community. >> just a blanket statement, i haven't talked about the camp fire much, so, you know, hopefully -- 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 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, 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 goes, no, bud, that's you. and literally, i like looked up and i went, oh, man, you know, hopped in the truck and went to

work. >> it's got to be hard to be the person who's like 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 just 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. >> it was getting closer. >> oh, yeah. >> there was a ton of traffic coming into paradise. they had to come home, get their dogs and kids. so they're jamming traffic up, and i said, we have to do something with skyway. so i just hopped on the intersection and turned everybody around. and that was one of the hardest things i've ever done, because

you had people that were like, no, 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 a hundred people in there. and i remember the firefighters going, is this going to work? and i'm like, 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 1,000 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? you know, or get somebody, you know, too late. >> i just can't imagine what

that feels like. >> i think the camp fire is really a story of stories. and so, there's 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 own. and these two are in that area of being a hero because of that. >> i imagine no one would have blamed you to say, i've got to go and be with my family. what made you go? >> when i saw my house was gone, kind of took a moment and said, all right, well, go back to work. >> i think i just kind of shut that part of it off, like, there's nothing i can do about that, but, here's what i can do. >> you go back to your training. >> 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. >> i wonder when matt, joe and

shaun first signed up for their job, they had any idea what they were getting into. >> when i first started, fire season seemed to be three to four months out of the summertime and 25 years later, we are 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 18,000 acres. the dixie did 150,000 in one day. >> please speak to the misunderstanding of what people think firefighters do, particularly in area. >> we can get deployed to these fires in any part of the state, at almost anytime time, and i don't know when i'm going to be coming back home. is it going to be tonight or 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 and there's 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. there's a monster problem and our hero needs solutions.

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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 addidixie fire alo burned 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 who can also calm me down with some slightly peppy and measured tones. yep, i'm talking weathermen. specifically, meteorologists. really appreciate you both really having meteorology hands. mick brown is a meteorologist, climb expert, and professor at san jose state university's wildfire interdisciplinary

research center, and whole hanley, a great weatherman name, is his student. his ph.d focus is wildfire forecasting, because that's a thing. so, i was saying, i live in oakland. there hasn't been a wildfire since i've been living there, but i have asthma, so, like, during fire season, sometimes i look at the air quality app on my phone and it says, don't go outside, seal every window. spl >> that's really the pathway that most people are affected by the fires. there was 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. >> wow, yeah. so, my perception in the time that i've been here is that the wildfires have -- are affecting bigger swaths 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's two things. the climate change issue, you know, that's a global problem. and it's going to continue to get warmer and in the west, that means drier, more conducive to fires. but also, we have huge buildup of fuels, payoff fire suppression. >> what do you mean? >> so california is a fire-adapted ecosystem. so essentially, for more decades, the western united states implemented a strategy of putting out fires as soon as they were ignited. >> patrick's 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. 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,sequd

fire to reproduce, for real. but once white caolonizers came west, timber became a precious commodity, and the fire enemy to be stamped out. then in 1910, wildfires destroyed 3 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 leaves and dry brush accumulated on the forest floor. add drought and climate change to the mix, and you have the perfect kindling for a wildfire. >> isn't it also part of the wildfires started to do things that people haven't seen fires do before? >> one thing i've noticed is how fast the wildfires move. you could look at it one hour, and in the next hour, the situation is completely changed. i think we definitely saw that on the cal dor fire this past year. the best way to think about is

that fire behavior triangle, weather, fuel, topography. on that fire, we had a red flag warning, which means that it's extremely dry out. we had extreme winds, which makes it easier for the fire to move forward. it was in very steep terrain. fire likes to move uphill. and we had just 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-s fire, which is the forecast model we run, takes all of those different factor, the weather, the fuel, the topography, and show you an exact picture of how that fire will move over time. we have two different trucks. one is a lidar truck, it's like storm chasing for wildfires. they drive the trucks out, 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, you know, storm

chasing already sounds crazy, but fire chasing sounds even crazier. >> while it's comforting to know that new technologies are being developed, we've 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 of burnout, long deployments, and often low pay. yeah, low pay to fight fires. and there's another reason california is running out of firefighters. and this reason might break your brain. since 142, we've been using low-security inmates to fight fires. today, approximately one third of california's wideland firefighting force are currently incarcerated, which saves the california taxpayers an estimated $100 million per year.

but, because prison reform, and the early release of some incarcerated folks, since 2020, there are not enough people to throw out 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 are already trained, because, well, people don't like hiring ex-inmates. ahh! my brain. >> how did you two meet? >> we was locked up together. >> okay. >> straight up. >> luckily, brandon smith and royal ramey are here to fix that. they are professional firefighters who started their careers in california's fire camps while they were incarcerated. >> what was that decision like? >> we were out living in an area like this, instead of concrete walls and barbed wires. >> you're one of the highest paying prisoners. >> how much does that pay? >> at that time that we was in, it was about $1.45 a day, but when you work on fires, though, you get $1 an hour. >> i mean, that's still crazy,

right? >> right. >> like, still! >> i didn't have any idea what i was getting myself into. but as time wore on, it grew on me. >> i found a sense of purpose for myself. you have all of these folks with these signs saying, thank you, firefighters, like, 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 hop into firefighting. i would be applying to jobs, they would be like, i'm sorry, sir, you're not qualified. like, i'm sorry, you don't have all the certification. >> when i aren't they hiring you? >> straight up, the united states of america has a problem utilizing incarcerated people. period. it was like, we was firefighters before, we came home, we should be able to do it again. >> if there's any job, like, you want to do it and you have the skills, come on. this would be the job. >> no. >> firefighters, probably like

the most respected career in the country. so when you think about formally incarcerated people who are transitioning over into a space of the highest moral regard, a lot of people don't want us in this space. we're black folks, formerly incarcerated people, but what people don't realize, we're already out here. we've been protecting your homes for the past three years when we was locked up. it's interesting, the person who gave us our first shot was a pl black woman. chief betty ash. shout-out to black woman. we want 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 with employment pathways to help current and formerly incarcerated firefighters to transition into firefighter careers. >> he quit fire service. >> you gave up the goal 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 promisedland in a sense. >> we get formerly incarcerated firefighters a paid training, we give them a job, for six months to a year. after a year, you got your training certificates, we done help you how to apply for these jobs, so 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 125 people to get jobs in the fire service. >> so you know how to clear the path. >> two brothers, formerly incarcerated found out a way to help build this nonprofit and help people out, because we want to do it. >> good work. >> absolutely. absolutely. and shine argan oil plus kera-system up to 72 hours frizz control 97% humidity protection fructis sleek & shine number one in anti-frizz by garnier, naturally!

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california's dixie fire is threatening thousands of buildings. >> the massive dixie fire has now grown to be the second largest in the state' sthistory. >> we're seeing truly fryingening fire behavior. >> fire tore through greenville, california. >> this entire town is gone. >> it was 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, 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's like a pine smell. there's also like maybe a chemical smell, because of all the plastic. you have 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, so a lot of this stuff has just been sitting here. >> yeah, we're in the midst of. it we're in the midst of the fire. you can see, it looks like a bomb still went off. >> man.

>> i'm just zdevastated. we're all in this together. >> 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 myanu people. >> we used to be large around here, but you've 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' thirst for power and money fueled their genocide of thousands of 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've got left of our culture, you know, 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 coexist 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. >> danny is a seasoned firefighter. he helped establish a native-run fire department for the greenville ranch ria, which he serves as assistant fire chief. >> talk about the importance of firehouse that was led by your tribe. >> we teach more of a 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's director of the manu tribal consortium and a

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 forest using a practice today known 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. >> that's the way the tribes did it. and they never put out a fire. if there was a fire that happened on a ridge, they let it burn down and do what they're

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, you know, can we do cultural burning. and it's like, well, are you tribal? and why would you want to do cultural burning without us? >> oh, yeah. look at what happened when the white man got yoga. look at 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? >> the only way to maintain

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while california hopefully learns more lessons about the holistic practices of cultural burning, at least we are finally beginning to understand that you do need to fight fire with fire. in order to protect the land from the bad fire, more and more permits are being issued to conduct prescribed burns.

aka, good fire. but you've got to know what you're doing to get the permit >> so we're going to take out this top little corner, but we're going to take our time. >> today i'm going to 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 pyre. >> leading the way are zeke lunder and hank, a professor of pyro geography at pico state university. >> they've been living with this extreme fear of fire. so we got this effort started locally to make it easier for land owners to burn their own land. the objective is to not kill the big trees, but we do want to kill little baby trees and kill brush. >> the more that communities that 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 dreams 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. zpr we have lots of different fuel types. oak leaves, pine needles. pine needles burn better. >> and i'm learning along with 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 duo. >> that's good. let's go. >> we're just burning up the easy, dry grass. and we're going to work our way downslope with our ignitions. >> small spot fires are slowly lit down the hill, supervised by zeke and don. everybody has a radio and a weather spotter checks for any sudden changes in the window and cal fire officers are stann sta by. can you tell me i'm trying to say, do not try this at home.

the idea is not that we'll never have fire here again, but when we do, it won't be hot enough to kill all of these trees. >> it will stay low to the ground. >> all of you with pitchforks can start coming in here. fire is a very social thing. so 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 over there. whoa! if i was just walking and i saw a fire this high, i would be like, ah! but very quickly out there today, i sort of was like, this is what we're supposed to do. >> and 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 the torch? >> sure. >> i'll have you light one right there. >> and let's just like light every one step. >> okay. >> fire is the teacher. go on down. if you spend time with fire, you

get the lessons. yeah, that's perfect. >> wow. i'm in a very zen mind state. >> there's a lot of people who could benefit from doing this. >> you ain't kidding. i pay $125 an hour for therapy. i'm just going to come up here. >> it's hard to see that the leaders that are supposed to be in charge of california's fire still feel like they're at war with a wildfire. and no one's getting it right. we're spending billions of dollars a year and still burning down the tires. we're at a spot that fire won. we've been fighting fire if a hundred years and now it's teamed up with climate change. we need a truce. come up with some terms of 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've got to be all right with fire coming in wherever it wants, you know? >> yeah. >> it's so weird that like a second ago, there was like five-foot flames. now it's just sort of out. it's super fascinating.

is there a reason for optimism with this? >> i don't think that we're going to be able to prescribe burn our way to have the entire landscape be fire safe, but i think it can help. >> i think we are headed in a good direction with it. now the state is finally at the point with policies that came forward this year to recognize cultural burning. it's now codified in state law and i was able to work on some of that policy development. the state has a plan that's coming forward. like, we're targeting to burn 500,000 acres by 2025 within the state. >> wow. >> 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 and not getting yelled at by my mom. >> you've got to admit, this is kind of cool.

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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's no quick fix to climate change our or forest fuels problem, 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 muir. >> it took a while to adjust to the downsizing, that's what i call it. at thenaive, too. i thought, i'll rebuild within a year. but that just was not going to happen. the challenges have been, besides monetary issues, just getting in line with 30,000

other people trying to rebuild. you know, so you just get in the queue. >> julianne martinez want to help people like kevin who are still hoping to rebuild. he's a paradise native who lost his home to the fire, but he's derp determined to help reconstruct his town. >> this was 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 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 onboard to help the lady get it moving again. >> wow. when you think about the wildfires, you've got to think about hurricane katrina and new orleans. there's the devastation that happens when the event happens

and the devastation afterwards like not knowing who to trust and people who come in and take advantage of people in their moment of need, you know? >> mm-hmm. one of the really unfortunate parts of it is there's probably $1 billion that went through this town and left. >> what did that $1 billion do? how did it go through the town? >> we had contractors from all over the country that came for things like debris removal was a big one. you know, i would think that in a disaster, it would be more effective to incorporate a local workforce into the recovery efforts more. 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 then somebody made money off of 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 of these different issues in paradise, one of which is the

trailer ordinance. the town counsel was very aggressively kicking people off their property. >> off their own property? >> 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, but still acquired this property, acquired a trailer, but weren't allowed to live on their own property. >> it was very, very stressful. i lost many night's sleep trying to hustle and get my permit done, and me and 10,000 other people. there are people who have rebuilt and have their homes and us that don't. there's getting to be a bigger divide, because they don't want to look at us, which i understand, you know. it ruins their property value. it's about 60 people are protesting that they don't have the financing, we can't build as fast as we would like. so they extended it for another two years. and that's been a godsend.

>> talk more about ways that you think people can rebuild in a safer way. >> so we have the wui. the wildlife urban interface, so building codes that went into effect, that do help houses from burning down. the other thing is defensible space. keeping the brush away from your house, using lots of rock, being proactive about how you maintain your yard decreases the chances of your house burning down significantly. >> so if you want to live up in here in this beautiful, picturesque part of the world, you have to do it responsibly. >> oh, yeah, definitely comes with some maintenance. e. that's not good. well, except humana. they see me. after my back surgery, humana sent a home health nurse for five days. helped me get set up, showed me how to manage my meds... ...even sent me a week's worth of healthy frozen meals. get out. good i-dea. better care begins with listening. humana. a more human way to healthcare.

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as more and more people move into wilderness areas, it's not surprising at all that around 84% of the wildfires in the united states today are started by humans. people start huge fires in many different ways. arson, a gender reveal party, and criminal negligence on the part of corporations. specifically, pg&e, northern california's gas and electric utility. over a six-year period from 2013 to 2019, pg&e were responsible for starting over 1500 wildfires. this includes the camp fire. and that one pg&e pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary

manslaughter. for many in northern california, including me, pg&e has become a four-letter word. i'm just taking a poll of everybody i talk to. word association. pg&e. >> fire. >> corporate greed. >> outdated. >> outdated. >> fall guy. >> lacking. >> my word is accountability. >> accountability, yeah, that would be nice. fighting for that accountability is mark toney, the executive director of the utility reform network. >> we're an organization that's been around for about 50 years fighting for customers of pg&e. >> and law professor katherine sandoval from santa clara university. she is a former commissioner of the cpuc, the body that regulates pg&e. >> so pg&e was convicted of

multiple violations related to the san bruno natural gas explosion. >> back in 2010? >> uh-huh. >> 2010. >> so like any felon, pg&e is on felony probation. and the first order is commit no more crimes. in the course of their probation, they've started multiple wildfires. >> during their probation? >> yes. >> they're committing further crimes. i was just watching "goodfellas." >> if a person committed this, they would be locked up in jail. but you can't lock a corporation in jail. >> what really upsets people is there is a pattern of pg&e doing inspections, finding out that the trees need to be cut down, power lines need to be repaired, and then not repairing them. and before you know it, we have a major fire. that's part of what happened with the camp fire. >> the grand jury report on the camp fire concluded that the fire started when a c-hook on one of pg&e's electrical transmission towers broke. this caused 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 specifics, it was estimated that the broken c-hook along with other components of the tower had been in use for about 97 years. yeah. >> they had inspected that transmission tower and had reported that they were going to replace the critical parts, but they never got around to it. >> and the camp fire is not the only time pg&e's negligence caused major fire damage to california. investigations have concluded that pg&e were responsible for starting the deadly zogg fire, the kincade fire and most recently the dixie fire that destroyed greenville. >> so i spend my time working for free as co-counsel on the federal crawl probation case.

i want to help promote and protect accountability. i want to rehabilitate pg&e. one of the things we brought up in the proceedings is that pg&e continues to engage in criminal thinking. it wasn't just an accident. it was the product of recklessness. so if pg&e was a person, within their first year of incarceration, they would have had to have taken criminal thinking classes. they help you to stop engage in that criminal thinking in order to rehabilitate yourself. corporations are not required to take a class to make them recognize their criminal it's hard to know where to >> i have to take some class in criminal thinking. if we're going make them take those classes, can they be at 5:00 in the morning on a saturday? pg&e have committed to improving their infrastructure and wildfire mitigation plans, but it's anticipated that these upgrades will take many years and billions of dollars to complete.

and guess who pays for all that? the pg&e consumer. they charge us not to burn us down. and until that's all in place, one of pg&e's primary wildfire mitigation strategies is just shut the power off. because it's hard for power lines to start a fire if there's no power. so pg&e does rolling blackouts regardless of the fact that some people need electricity in order to, you know, survive. >> you're experiencing these massive power shutoffs. they're supposed to be a last resort, but pg&e is using them too much as a first resort because it's so cheap. >> and 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, through their

elected assembly member, to their elected senators, and demand that the utility companies be held accountable. >> yeah, i'd say holding pg&e accountable is the least we can do. not everyone is as hard on pg&e as me. pg&e? >> fall guy. >> fall guy? >> yeah. >> you think there is too much blame on pg&e? >> yeah. >> okay. >> because pg&e didn't come up with the policy to put out every fire, and they didn't let the forestlands get totally out of balance. >> so the fire mace start with them. but if we were doing a better job of taking care of this land, the fires would not spread this way. >> right. >> the wildfires in california are just an example of what has gone 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, that climate change

isn't real, and maybe most importantly, that instead of learning from the indigenous people of this land, the united states attempted to wipe them and their knowledge out. this type of thinking is not just a california problem. it isn't just a fire problem. these problems stretch from california to the new york island. and if we don't figure it out, this land will burn with you and me. nbc news on the hour. >> in california, screen actress marilyn monroe is dead. she was found dead in her bed. >> the successful lonely actress led a speck tarly life. >> the story of marilyn monroe is an authentic tragedy. it began in tragedy and ended in tragedy and in between always a tragic