Biggest culprits of wildfires like California's include arson, power companies – not climate change

A year ago at this time, California’s deadly Palisades wildfire was raging in Los Angeles County. It would be weeks before it was fully extinguished. Authorities have charged Justin Rinderknecht with allegedly starting the fire by rolling a burning car into the woods. Twelve people were killed.

Climate change is often cited as the culprit in California’s rash of wildfires in the past three decades, but the true causes are typically arson and power companies.

In 2024, California Democrat Sen. Adam Schiff sought to address what he considered the root of his state's wildfire problem by saying, “First and foremost, we have to address climate change.

Likewise, in 2020, California Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi stated, “Mother Earth is angry. She's telling us with hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, fires in the West, whatever it is ... The denial of the science of climate change is something that some people are going to have to answer to their children and grandchildren for.”

But the climate change narrative has sidelined a critical factor. Nobody knows that better than Mike Ramsey, the district attorney of California's Butte County who successfully prosecuted the power company PG&E for starting the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history.

"In the late nineties, we noticed a number of fires were being caused by PG&E failure to clear vegetation around their lines. Trees and high-powered lines don't mix very well,” Ramsey told "Full Measure."

Even as the Camp Fire burned, investigators had zeroed in on the cause: a PG&E transmission line, neglected for decades, that collapsed into brush that wasn’t properly cleared. 

“They looked up into the tower and could see that an arm had come down and that had most likely started the fire. Next day they called me and said, 'It looks like this is a PG&E-caused fire,'” Ramsey also said. “As it turns out that it was decades of negligent maintenance and obviously criminally negligent maintenance that came about. The hook that failed had been in that location for, we figured 98 years.”

Ramsey is referencing a “C” hook that wore down, bringing down a 115,000-volt power line into the grass below, starting the fire.

In 2019, PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and agreed to a $13.5 billion settlement for victims, plus $522 million to Butte County and the town of Paradise.

PG&E Equipment also sparked numerous other deadly fires. And authorities fault Southern California Edison for additional fires.

Beyond utility failures, arson is also a major human factor in California’s fires. The 2024 Park Fire, California’s largest man-ignited arson blaze, was allegedly set by Ronnie Stout. He’s a convicted child sex offender accused of pushing a burning car into a gully, torching nearly 430,000 acres. 

This isn’t just California’s story – nationwide, about 85% of U.S. wildfires are human-caused, from accidents and equipment failures to arson.

Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson is the managing editor of "Full Measure and the author of bestsellers “Slanted,” “The Smear,” and “Stonewalled.”

The nonpartisan Sunday TV program “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson” is broadcast to 43 million Sinclair TV households on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW and Telemundo stations.