FILE - George Coble carries a bucket of water to put out a tree still smoldering on his property destroyed by a wildfire on Sept. 12, 2020, in Mill City, Ore. FILE - George Coble carries a bucket of water to put out a tree still smoldering on his property destroyed by a wildfire on Sept. 12, 2020, in Mill City, Ore.
The Portland utility is one of several owned by billionaire Warren Buffett’s Omaha, Nebraska-based investment conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway. The property owners, suing on behalf of a class of thousands of others, alleged that PacifiCorp negligently failed to shut off power to its 600,000 customers during a windstorm, despite warnings from then-Gov. Kate Brown’s chief-of-staff and top fire officials, and that its power lines were responsible for multiple blazes.
In a written statement, lawyers for the plaintiffs called the decision historic and said it “paves the way for potentially billions of dollars in further damages for the class members.”“Escalating climate change, challenging state and federal forest management, and population growth in the wildland-urban interface are substantial factors contributing to growing wildfire risk,” PacifiCorp said in an emailed statement after the verdict.