California wildfire victims to get ‘hundreds of millions’ as PG&E payments ramp up
The trust distributing payments to PG&E Corp. wildfire victims is set to release another multimillion-dollar round of funds. The Fire Victim Trust said Friday it will make begin making payments Monday representing a 30% share of each verified claim.
So far, however, only a small fraction of the claims filed by more than 71,000 homeowners and businesses have been verified, and trust Administrator Cathy Yanni said about $30 million will go out the door Monday. The deadline for filing claims was in late February.
But the volume of claim verifications will grow substantially, and this round of payouts will be “certainly in the hundreds of millions,” Yanni said. The payments will likely take months, she said.
These 30% payments are different than a series of preliminary payments the trust began making last November. Those payments, capped at $25,000 apiece, total $80 million so far, Yanni said.
Ultimately, the trust has been set up to disburse $13.5 billion that PG&E agreed to pay, mainly to victims of the 2017 wine country fires and the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed most of Paradise. Victims of the 2015 Butte Fire also are eligible.
The payments are to cover uninsured property damage as well as emotional distress, Yanni said.
Questions have arisen about the trust’s ability to pay the full 100% on every claim. PG&E funded the trust with a 50-50 blend of cash and PG&E stock, under a settlement agreement with victims’ lawyers during the utility’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.
The cash and stock were supposed to total $13.5 billion, but a decline in the stock’s market value prompted Trustee John Trotter to warn victims in January that the fund was $1 billion short of “its intended settlement value.” The stock price has risen just 8 cents a share since then, closing Friday at $11.51, meaning the fund is still well below the $13.5 billion target.
However, it will take several years to complete the payouts, which the trust believes would provide enough time for the stock price to recover.
This story was originally published March 13, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "California wildfire victims to get ‘hundreds of millions’ as PG&E payments ramp up."