“These fires were predictable and preventable and devastated the lives of thousands of Oregonians,” Rosinia told jurors. “They had the knowledge, they understood, and they chose to do nothing.”
Rosinia on Tuesday told jurors that before that Labor Day, PacifiCorp had been repeatedly warned by state regulators for deficient tree-trimming and vegetation management around its power lines, The utility's employees were also told that increasingly alarming forecasts about the coming Labor Day windstorm and extreme fire danger had come from the National Weather Service days before the fires as well as a dire warning from the utility’s own contract meteorologist, he said.
Dixon, in his opening statements, said the plaintiffs were trying to blame PacifiCorp with an overly simplified, hindsight version of what happened — without context about the realities of climate change and the role that forest management has in causing and preventing wildfires.