Igo Ono Residents Use Town Hall To Discuss Zogg Fire Settlement And Ongoing Danger

Residents talk outside the county-owned Igo Ono Volunteer Fire Department station after a town hall on September 5. Photo by Annelise Pierce.

9.9.23 2:30 pm: We have updated the article to clarify that Supervisor Chris Kelstrom represents a small portion of the unincorporated area of Igo, including where one of the town hall organizers lives.

9.8.23 2:13 pm: We have updated the article to include a reference to a letter to the California Attorney General sent by Supervisor Tim Garman.

Editor’s Note: A somber reminder that the Zogg Fire claimed the lives of four well-loved Shasta County residents: Karin King (79), Kenneth Vossen (52), Alaina McCleod (46) and her daughter, Feyla McLeod (8).

About thirty-five community members from the small unincorporated towns of Igo and Ono in western Shasta County showed up to a community meeting on Tuesday night, September 5. 

Residents gathered at the Igo Ono Volunteer Fire Station to ask questions of two Shasta County Supervisors, Kevin Crye, and Chris Kelstrom, both of whom have taken an interest in how the recent distribution of Zogg Fire settlement funds was decided.

Igo Ono residents slowly begin to fill seats at the Igo Ono Fire Department station for a community town hall. Photo by Annelise Pierce.

The 2020 Zogg Fire burned more than 55,000 acres of Shasta and Tehama counties and destroyed or damaged almost 250 structures. Four residents of Igo Ono died in the fire, which was caused by a pine tree falling on a PG&E electric line on Zogg Mine Road.

Zogg settlement funds have become a hot topic since Igo resident Brian Collier raised questions related to Zogg Fire settlement distributions at a May Shasta County Board of Supervisors meeting.

The most recent Zogg settlement funds are the result of criminal charges related to the Zogg Fire brought by Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett against Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E). That legal action eventually resulted in the DA winning a civil prosecution settlement of $50 million from PG&E. Those funds include $45 million dollars intended to improve county-wide fire safety and emergency preparedness. (You can see the full breakdown of the planned Zogg Fire settlement distributions related to the DA’s civil prosecution case, here.)

An earlier Zogg Fire settlement was the result of a separate civil lawsuit filed not by the DA but by the county. That lawsuit resulted in a $12 million settlement to compensate for damages caused by the fire. The funds were allocated by the Board of Supervisors in 2021 and have already been distributed.

Many residents of Igo and Ono, which together have a combined population of about 200, wish more of the recent DA Zogg Fire settlement had been allocated directly to their community’s ongoing needs related to reducing catastrophic fire risk. They also want to know what happened to the earlier $12 million settlement, and what it accomplished for Igo Ono area.

According to residents, including volunteer firefighter Mac Girtler, the Igo Ono fire station still lacks basic fire response equipment including access to water and a generator.

Katie Girtler, Mac’s wife and the mother of two children who attend Igo Ono Elementary School, also spoke during the meeting. She worries that her children and the thirty-one other kids who attend Igo Ono Elementary, spend their days at a campus without the safety of a nearby fire hydrant. And she’s distressed that the school’s field is still destroyed from when it was used as a staging area during the Zogg Fire three years ago, despite the influx of settlement funds.

Other residents who attended the meeting have concerns about how they will evacuate during the next fire on narrow roads that have still not been widened since Zogg. Three of the four people who lost their lives during that fire died in their cars, trying to escape, when they drove off the road in thick smoke. 

Shasta County Supervisor Kevin Crye (left) and Chris Kelstrom field questions from Igo Ono residents. Photo by Annelise Pierce.

Residents of Igo Ono are hoping that raising their voices now may help them find a solution to ongoing concerns about unaddressed fire danger, something supervisors Crye and Kelstrom said could be addressed by being vocal at upcoming board meetings.

Gayle Martin, who spoke towards the end of the town hall, told her fellow community members that’s exactly what she plans to do.

“I think we all ought to show up,” Martin told her fellow community members. “Let them know that this (lack of funding for safety concerns) is wrong. We were the ones burned out. We were the ones who ran from the flames. We were the ones who saw our community fall. We were the ones to be there and help pick up our neighbors.”

In response to questions from Shasta Scout after the meeting, DA Bridgett said she was not invited to the town hall. She emphasized that it’s important for community members to remember that the criminal charges that her office filed against PG&E differ from the civil lawsuit the county filed in multiple and significant ways.

“The primary goal of a civil prosecution is to hold PG&E responsible, punish them, and prevent them from harming the community again,” Bridgett wrote. “The focus is on doing what is best for Shasta County and California as a whole, not any specific person or client.”

“A civil prosecution is not filed on behalf of any one individual nor is it intended to seek damages or losses. It is brought on behalf of the people of the state of California (in the) county of Shasta,” Bridgett wrote by email, emphasizing that only the DA, not the Board of Supervisors has authority to bring civil prosecution cases and decide settlement distributions.

In contrast, she said, the civil lawsuit brought by Shasta County against PG&E for the Zogg Fire was used to seek damages and losses for the community. Settlement funds from that lawsuit were intended to address community damage and loss and rebuild areas affected by the Zogg Fire. The Board of Supervisors allocated those funds in 2021.

“The difference between the County’s civil lawsuit and (the DA’s) civil prosecution cannot be understated,” Bridgett wrote. “The County civil lawsuit was for damages/losses . . . the DA’s Office files civil prosecutions – to hold responsible, punish and prevent future harm.”

Garman, who represents most of the Igo Ono area as a county supervisor, was also absent from the town hall. That’s because two supervisors had were asked to attend before he was, making his involvement impossible due to the parameters of the Brown Act.

Collier said he initially invited Kelstrom, who represents a small portion of Igo, including Gas Point Road, where Collier lives. Another community member reached out to invite Crye, Collier explained.

He said Garman wasn’t invited because he voted against the Board’s decision several weeks ago to send a letter to California’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta, asking him to look into the Zogg Fire settlement.

“As I told Tim Garman,” Collier texted Shasta Scout after the meeting, “votes have consequences and not being invited (to the Igo Ono town hall) was one of them.”

Supervisors Kelstrom and Crye as well as Board Chair Patrick Jones all voted in favor of sending the letter, which questions whether the District Attorney should have done more to pursue a criminal prosecution against PG&E as well as how she distributed the recent settlement funds.

Garman, who represents most of the people of Igo Ono as their district supervisor, told Shasta Scout by phone after the event that he respects the rights of the people of Igo Ono to include who they’d like to their town halls and is interested in meeting with them in the future if invited.

He said he didn’t vote to send the letter to California’s attorney general because he believes the DA’s process of civil prosecution against PG&E was accomplished legally. While he says he would have personally made a different decision in how to allocate the settlement funds received he also acknowledges that its within the DA’s legal jurisdiction to make those decisions. He added that he did send his own letter to the Attorney General a few weeks before the Board voted to approve a different letter. That letter, which was provided to Shasta Scout, asks the AG to review the settlement and fund distributions in response to citizen concerns.

“I can’t say much more about that letter (the Board sent) because of attorney-client privilege,” Garman added, “But I will say that our County Counsel had twenty-six points of legal contention with it.”

This is the first story in our emerging series about the Zogg Fire settlement funds. 

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