Pacific Gas and Electric

PG&E's 2019 bankruptcy was unique: caused by wildfires ignited by the utility's own infrastructure, resulting in $30 billion in liabilities and 84 deaths in the Camp Fire alone. The company had systematically underinvested in grid maintenance for decades, prioritizing dividends over vegetation management. PG&E exemplified infrastructure decay - the biological equivalent of an organism cannibalizing its own maintenance systems to fuel reproduction. The bankruptcy restructured debt but didn't fix the underlying pattern. PG&E emerged in 2020 facing the same fire risks with the same aging infrastructure.