(TNS) — PG&E's "unsafe conduct" caused a gas explosion in San Bruno and several fatal Northern California wildfires, but a federal judge will allow PG&E to primarily focus on tree-trimming rather than be forced to launch a complete inspection of its power grid.

"The judge's actions don't really ensure the safety of the system," said Mike Danko, a Redwood City-based attorney who represents some Northern California wildfire victims. "I guess this is a first step towards safety."

Nevertheless, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup, who is supervising PG&E's probation in the wake of its criminal conviction for felonies it committed before and after a deadly gas explosion in San Bruno, blamed PG&E's deficient safety efforts for causing both the San Bruno disasters and a string of lethal wildfires in Northern California in 2017 and 2018.

(TNS) — Intense mega-fires have become the “new abnormal” in California. The wildfires are out, for now. Thank you, firefighters! But the fight over who should bear the costs of future damage compensation and risk mitigation is heating up.

Citing wildfire liabilities upwards of $30 billion, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the state’s largest electric utility, recently filed for bankruptcy. Headlines hail this the first of many “climate change bankruptcies.” But climate change is only one factor. These fires would not be so big if we did not send power through thousands of miles of tinderbox forest at high-risk times. Liabilities would not be so large if fewer people lived in high fire-risk areas.

The strongest data privacy law in the country may be about to get sharper teeth, and lobbyists representing the tech industry think it’s a disastrous idea.

Companies that amass user data could be the target of mass class-action litigation from California consumers if they’re accused of violating the California Consumer Privacy Act, under a proposed amendment to the law filed Feb. 22.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, or NSAIDs, have supplanted opioids as the most common therapeutic drug group prescribed to injured workers in California, according to a new California Workers’ Compensation Institute study.

The study also finds that payment data show that both dermatological medications and anticonvulsants now rank ahead of opioids in terms of total reimbursements.

Situational awareness is critical for a police officer, and when it comes to confronting a subject suffering from a mental illness or other behavioral issues, knowledge of the subject’s state of mind could help the officer de-escalate a possibly explosive situation.

That’s what Kern County has provided for its law enforcement officers and first responders with the deployment of Smart911’s enhanced profiles that provide critical information on a subject’s mental health, addiction, and other issues that might aid the responder’s situational awareness.

(TNS) — The strongest and potentially wettest storm of the winter season is bearing down on Southern California this week, threatening to unleash debris flows in burn areas in Orange and Riverside counties as the region’s wild winter continues.

The atmospheric river-fueled storm, packed with subtropical moisture, will take aim at large swaths of the already-soaked state beginning early Wednesday and lasting through Thursday.

Poor communication, short staffing and infighting among agencies may have endangered firefighters who nearly died during the massive Mendocino Complex of wildfires in Northern California, according to a new report released.

The Los Angeles Times reported that staff from three fire agencies examined an Aug. 19 incident where Los Angeles and state firefighters were trying to keep the three-week-old blaze from charging through wilderness and reaching homes.

Boeing Co. was accused of negligence tied to a wildfire that tore through Malibu, California, in November and that purportedly started on the grounds of the nearby, disused Rocketdyne testing site.

A group of homeowners sued Boeing along with Edison International, the parent of the utility they say was at fault in igniting the fire, on Tuesday in Los Angeles. They claim Boeing failed to properly manage the vegetation on the Santa Susana Field Laboratory and allowed the fire to spread to surrounding neighborhoods.

(TNS) — Equipment owned by California's three largest utilities ignited more than 2,000 fires in three years — a timespan in which state regulators cited and fined the companies nine times for electrical safety violations.

How the state regulates utilities is under growing scrutiny following unprecedented wildfires suspected to have been caused by power line issues, blazes that have destroyed thousands of homes and killed dozens of people.

(TNS) — A critical emergency alert system designed to warn UC Davis students and staff failed to fully notify the campus until more than an hour after Davis police Officer Natalie Corona was shot and killed blocks from the university, officials announced, calling the breakdown “unacceptable.”

The WarnMe-Aggie Alert sends text and email messages to UC Davis students and staff and is designed to alert 70,000 people. But the system initially notified only a fraction of those people about the events unfolding less than a mile from the campus and locked campus public safety officials out of some notification lists.