On Tuesday, Bill Johnson, chief executive of Pacific Gas & Electric, confessed to burning a California town and killing 84 people in a devastating wildfire in November 2018.

For over half an hour, Johnson repeatedly replied "Guilty, your honor," as Judge Michael Deems recited the 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in alphabetical order while flashing the images of the victims. The CEO, who is set to step down from his position this month, also pleaded guilty to unlawfully starting the fire, The Guardian reports.

The company has agreed to pay a fine of $3.5 million for its crimes. It also agreed to cover the cost of the investigation amounting to $500,000.

Negligence

PG&E has repeatedly failed to maintain a transmission line throughout the years. In 2015, a tree the company failed to maintain hit one of their power lines, causing a fire that burned more than 70,000 acres in Sacramento and killing two civilians.

In 2017, four fires started in Napa when trees hit transmission lines in several locations. The fire raged across 100,000 acres and burned more than 1,470 structures.

In 2018, a live wire broke from the Caribou-Plaerno line and ignited the California Camp Fire, wiping out Paradise town's 14,000 homes and killing 85 people in what is considered the most destructive wildfire in the state's history.

According to the New York Times, regulators discovered that the company has repeatedly violated state law, causing five of the ten most destructive fires in California.

An investigation revealed a company email noted that some of the company's utility structures were on the brink of collapse. It also claimed the tower, which is 25 years beyond its useful life, endangered crews trying to repair it. However, the structure remained.

Beyond wildfires, the company, the company is also responsible for a 2010 explosion of a gas pipeline that claimed the lives of eight people and destroyed a suburban neighborhood in San Francisco.

California Camp Fire

Just days after the fire, a search team sifted through what remained from Paradise with hopes of locating more than 600 people who were unaccounted for.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke visited the site to assess the damage. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he claimed he had never seen devastation as widespread as the fire the wiped out Paradise.

The Butte County Sherriff's office deployed over 200 search personnel, canine teams, and anthropologists to find and identify the remains as quickly as possible. Human remains were found in both cars and homes.

The search teams and investigators were faced with big challenges, including identifying the dead based on teeth or bone fragments. The remains that were found were sent to the Sacramento County morgue where forensic experts tried to identify them. However, some of the records also burned when the local dentists' office was caught by the fire, leaving many unidentified.

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