I'd add a 3rd Question: How will they deal with the water being turned off if that proves to be true?  A second law a suit for the private company that controlled the water or would this suit be altered to include the water company? Success?  Depends on if witnesses to downed power lines being alive to testify.  Also, it depends on significant Damages.  If for example, the  home owners have huge payouts for their property then some would say the trauma of fire/loss is outweighed by the pay out.  For those who lost family this would not be true. Here's a question:  Why did fox news and I assume all MSM start reporting a fear of mud slides due to rain over Butte County burying the area in mud like 5 days ago.  It has to be a historic storm to cause mud slides here.  I live in Ca now just an hour north of Paradise and we did not get a rare or major storm here.  Now in the new forecast there is  another rain storm coming again in just a few days.  This is weird too.  It goes weeks here without rain and now 2 3 day rains in 1 week just days apart.  Since they can control the weather are they going to cause mudslides there?   To me, and I could be wrong but Mudslides are a southern CA thing and rare here.  California is the size of the Eastern coast board of  America.  To think it all has the same weather is not reasonable.  We get more rain here than there so we have trees with deeper roots.     How did they reliably know there would be a second storm10 days b4 the second storm is scheduled to come?