A revelatory, urgent narrative with national implications, exploring the decline of California's largest utility company that led to countless wildfires - including the one that destroyed the town of Paradise - and the human cost of infrastructure failure
Pacific Gas and Electric was a legacy company built by innovators and visionaries, establishing California as a desirable home and economic powerhouse. In California Burning, Wall Street Journal reporter and Pulitzer finalist Katherine Blunt examines how that legacy fell apart-unraveling a long history of deadly failures in which Pacific Gas and Electric endangered millions of Northern Californians, through criminal neglect of its infrastructure. As PG&E prioritized profits and politics, power lines went unchecked-until a rusted hook purchased for 56 cents in 1921 split in two, sparking the deadliest wildfire in California history.
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