The Ross wildfire has burned more than 80,000 acres across Palo Pinto and Jack counties, forcing evacuations, closing roads and disrupting schools.
Page F3From§Eachthe early evening edition — 30 August 2026
California burns 85,000 acres; Newsom's bid to shield utilities from wildfire lawsuits stalls.
As it ran on the front
Let's run the numbers as filed, hon, because the filing and the fire don't agree on much else.
The Ross Fire is logged at 85,000 acres, spread across two counties, per the loss report. That is the debit side of the ledger — homes, land, whatever adjusters are pricing out this week in those two counties. On the credit side, the same period, Sacramento logged a different kind of entry: the Governor's proposal to stop insurance companies from suing the utility companies whose equipment is the usual cause of a fire like this one did not clear the legislature. Lawmakers blocked it.…
…(cont) Read plainly, the two entries sit next to each other like this: acreage burned, then a proposal to make sure the company whose line started it doesn't get billed for it, then a legislature that said no to the proposal. The insurers keep the right to sue. The utilities keep the exposure. Nobody in this filing disputes the acreage.
What's worth reconciling is not the fire — fires get counted accurately, we have decent instruments for that — it's the sequence of the proposal. A governor's office does not typically volunteer to shield a utility from its own insurer unless someone on that utility's side of the ledger asked first. The record doesn't say who asked. The record only shows what got proposed, and what got blocked, and in whose favor the blocking landed.
Two counties are still totaling their losses. The utility companies whose lines run through those counties are not, as of this filing, totaling anything. That gap — between the party doing the counting and the party that might owe the count something — is not a rounding error. It is the same gap that turns up, filing after filing, on the side of the ledger that already has representation in the room where the proposal got written.
No further entries this week. The books close as filed: 85,000 acres, one blocked bill, and a liability question the legislature left exactly where it found it.
“Newsom tried to keep insurance companies from suing the power company after its wires burn down two counties' worth of land. His own legislature had to save him from himself. That's not a policy fight, that's a bill collector getting turned away at the governor's own door.”
“The Governor's proposal wasn't about protecting anybody, it was about limiting duplicative litigation costs that ultimately get passed to ratepayers anyway. It keeps rates down, is the argument — I mean, it keeps somebody's rates down. Not sure whose anymore. Let's just call it a rates conversation.”
The receipts
Newsom’s office pushed for the change as part of a wider effort to protect California’s wildfire liability fund and prevent utilities from potentially being driven into bankruptcy.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.