Buffett’s Oregon fire costs grow as he sours on utility sector
NEW YORK: Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s PacifiCorp was hit with another US$29.3mil in damages for Oregon’s 2020 Labour Day fires, the latest blow for the company after chairman Warren Buffett recently warned that he no longer views investments in western US utilities as safe.

Tuesday’s verdict in Portland state court came in the second of three “mini-trials” designed to assess how much the largest grid operator in the western US ultimately will have to pay owners of about 2,500 properties destroyed in a series of blazes blamed on power lines knocked down by strong winds.

The award for actual damages and emotional distress to 10 fire victims follows about US$175mil previously ordered for 26 victims.

The costs keep piling up for PacifiCorp. Berkshire recently disclosed in a regulatory filing that it booked a US$1.9bil probable loss from wildfires in 2023 and faces claims in Oregon and California of about US$8bil.

That includes demands from state and US government agencies totalling more than US$1bil for various firefighting and clean-up costs.

In his annual letter to shareholders, Buffett called Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE), which includes PacifiCorp, an “even more severe earnings disappointment” than the conglomerate’s railway business.

“It will be many years until we know the final tally from BHE’s forest-fire losses and can intelligently make decisions about the desirability of future investments in vulnerable western states,” Buffett wrote in the letter.

While destructive wildfires are now an almost routine part of summer in the American West, PacifiCorp’s decision to take its chances with a jury last year marked the first time that a lawsuit over large-scale devastation blamed on a utility’s equipment went to a trial. — Bloomberg
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Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s PacifiCorp was hit with another US$29.3mil in damages for Oregon’s 2020 Labour Day fires, the latest blow for the company after chairman Warren Buffett recently warned that he no longer views investments in western US utilities as safe.