SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- California's major utility company Pacific Gas & Electric Corporation (PG&E) admitted Thursday that a devastating wildfire which killed 86 people last year was most likely caused by a failure of a high voltage power line managed by its employees.
PG&E, which released an update on its 2018 financial results Thursday, said that the 2018 Camp Fire is still under investigation, but it believes that "its equipment will be determined to be an ignition point of the 2018 Camp Fire."
The Camp Fire, which started in Butte County, Northern California, on Nov. 8, 2018 and burned for 17 days, killed 86 people and destroyed more than 18,800 structures, including businesses and homes, after it swept across a total area of about 621.6 square kms.
The disaster was considered to be the deadliest and most destructive wildfires in California's history and also the world's costliest natural catastrophe in 2018.
PG&E said it has taken a total of 14 billion U.S. dollar in pre-tax charges to pay for the damages claimed by victims of the 2018 Camp Fire and the 2017 Northern California wildfires.
The company conceded that its 2017 and 2018 wildfire losses could in total exceed more than 30 billion dollars.
In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday, the San Francisco-based utility expressed worries that it may have huge difficulty in keeping normal operation of its business that serves over 16 million Californians in the northern and central regions of the state.
