For over a decade, California’s wildfires have continued to grip attention. They aren’t just regional disasters, they affect every taxpayer paying tens of billions each year for firefighting, recovery, and federal disaster aid. Politicians and experts frequently point to climate change as the culprit. Today, we examine the real way people are fueling our own disasters.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

We arrived to the hilly terrain of Paradise, California on an unusually foggy morning six years after the historic Camp Fire. Mayor Steven Crowder was elected two days before the fire started in November of 2018.

Sharyl: Are you worried about another fire?

Crowder: Not like we were before. I mean, we’re taking a lot of preventative steps.

The Camp Fire was the deadliest and most destructive in California history killing 84 people and causing $16 billion in damage mostly here in the town of Paradise.

In its wake, some pinned the blame on climate change.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) (Oct. 9, 2024): First and foremost, we have to address climate change.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (Sept. 10, 2020): Mother Earth is angry. She’s telling us, whether she is telling us with hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, fires in the West.

But the climate change narrative has sidelined a critical factor. Jesse Torres is with CAL FIRE, the state’s firefighting agency.

Sharyl: I realize there are a lot of different causes for fires, but if you could isolate the single biggest cause or two in California of these wildfires, what would you say they are?

Jesse Torres: I would say in my opinion, the biggest two would be human cause and arson.

Sharyl: So people on purpose and people by accident?

Torres: Correct. Yeah.

Sharyl (on-camera): Of the big wildfires in California that you’ve probably have heard the most about—all of them were caused by people.

Nobody knows that better than Mike Ramsey. He’s the Butte County District Attorney who successfully prosecuted the power company PG&E for starting the Camp Fire.

Mike Ramsey: In the late nineties, we noticed a number of fires were being caused by PG&E failure to clear vegetation around their lines. Trees and high-powered lines don’t mix very well.

Even as the Camp Fire burned, investigators had zeroed in on the cause: a PG&E transmission line and tower, that collapsed and then melted into the brush below.

Ramsey: They looked up into the tower and could see that an arm had come down and that had most likely started the fire. Next day they called me and said, “It looks like this is a PG&E-caused fire.”

Sharyl: CAL Fire told you that?

Ramsey: Yes.

Sharyl: Do you think that was their way of saying, “Don’t bother to look for an arsonist”?

Ramsey: No. They found the arsonist. And that was PG&E.

To be clear, PG&E was not convicted of arson. Ramsey says that is because he couldn’t prove that the company had collective knowledge about poorly maintained equipment that employees failed to act on.

Ramsey: As it turns out that it was decades of negligent maintenance and obviously criminally negligent maintenance that came about the hook that failed had been in that location for, we figured 98 years. And what happened is this line, this C hook over the years, hanging up there and going, and this is a very windy canyon, and we call it the, the Jarbo winds, which are 50, 60 mile an hour winds that go through there. Over the years, it had just worn, worn, worn until it failed. And then when it failed, the insulators came down, the line slapped into the steel structure, and then the aluminum and the steel with that 115,000 volts through it, we figure it’s about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It just then melted the line in portions of the tower and just shot that down into the grass below.

Sharyl: So it was a nearly a hundred year old hook holding all that up?

Ramsey: Yeah.

In 2019, PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and agreed to a $13.5 billion settlement for victims, plus $522 million to Butte County and the town of Paradise. PG&E equipment also sparked the 2017 Tubbs Fire, killing 22 in Sonoma and Napa counties. The 2017 Thomas Fire, killing 2 and burning 280,000 acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. And the 2021 Dixie Fire, California’s second-largest, killing 1 and charring nearly 1 million acres.

Southern California Edison triggered the 2018 Woolsey Fire, killing 3 and burning nearly 100,000 acres in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. And authorities also suspect Southern California Edison in the 2025 Eaton fire that killed 17 and burned 17,000 acres. The Justice Department is suing that company for $40 million in costs.

Beyond utility failures, arson is also a major human factor in California’s fires. The 2024 Park Fire, California’s largest man-ignited arson blaze, was allegedly set by Ronnie Stout. He’s a convicted child sex offender accused of pushing a burning car into a gully, torching nearly 430,000 acres.

And more recently, an arson arrest in the California’s third-most destructive blaze: the 2025 Palisades Fire in Los Angeles County killing 12. Suspect Justin Rinderknecht allegedly started it by rolling a burning car into the woods.

CAL Fire arrested more than 150 people for arson last year.

President Trump has long pushed back hard against the climate change narrative, pointing to mismanagement by people.

President Donald Trump (January 24, 2025): And California must adopt the common sense policies to prevent fires. You got a lot of dry stuff it’s bone dry, and you know I predicted this seven years ago I said “Do it get it done,” and nobody, everybody laughed they thought it was. I said “forest management,” they thought it was such a funny term “haha that’s so funny,” now it’s not funny anymore, you know, we were right You wouldn’t have any fires.

Climate change theorists direct attention to the winds and heat that drives California’s wildfires to such disastrous proportions. Ramsey says his historic prosecution of PG&E intentionally put the focus on the human spark that lights the match.

Ramsey: What happened was the law firm, criminal attorneys, former AUSAs that were trying to save the company, as they said, “If you prosecute them criminally and convict this company, ’cause it’s investor owned” then they made the mistake of saying, “You will kill the company.” And I looked at them and I says, “But you killed 84 of my citizens. I don’t give a damn about your company dying or not, perhaps it deserves to die.” It was the largest corporate homicide case in the United States history. But we needed to make a statement.

Sharyl (on-camera): PG&E was forced into bankruptcy proceedings by the cost of the Camp Fire. This isn’t just California’s story—nationwide, about 85% of U.S. wildfires are human-caused, from accidents and equipment failures to deliberate arson.

Watch video here.