Power Fire
2004 wildfire in Northern California
The Power Fire was a large wildfire in Northern California's Amador County in October 2004. The fire began on October 6 and burned approximately 17,000 acres (6,900 hectares), largely in the Eldorado National Forest, before it was contained on October 21. The fire was begun by workers trimming vegetation around Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) power lines, and the federal government sued both PG&E and the company contracted to do the trimming. The contractor eventually paid the federal government $45 million (equivalent to about $59.6 million in 2024).
Background
California's 2004 wildfire season was milder than the previous year. Over the course of the year a total of 7,898 individual wildfires burned a total of 311,024 acres (125,867 ha). Prior to the Power Fire in early October, over 171,000 acres (69,000 ha) had burned.
Progression
The Power Fire was ignited on Wednesday, October 6, 2004, by employees of Quanta Services subsidiary VCS Sub (or Provco). They had been hired by electric utility Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) to clear vegetation from around a 12-kilovolt transmission line near the utility's dam at Salt Springs Reservoir in the Eldorado National Forest. During their work the employees took a break to smoke in a forested area and left their cigarettes lit, starting the fire.
The public source identifies “Power Fire” as 2004 wildfire in Northern California. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Power, Fire and wildfire.
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This entry incorporates text from “Power Fire” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.