This first appeared in The Los Angeles Times.

It’s going to be a while before investigators determine what sparked the Camp fire in Northern California foothills near Chico. But the high-voltage power lines operated by Pacific Gas & Electric that malfunctioned shortly before the fire began may be at fault.

Power lines may have also sparked the Woolsey fire in Southern California, which has so far charred 100,000 acres and destroyed about 1,500 structures.

It may well turn out that the power lines were damaged by intense winds, causing them to spit sparks that ignited surrounding brush. Power lines were at fault in the December fire that scorched 440 square miles and more than a dozen fires that ravaged California’s wine country last fall.

Though power lines have sparked fires for as long as the lines have existed, in recent years they have become a major threat as climate change-driven conditions — what Gov. Jerry Brown calls the “new abnormal” for California — have converged with human development in high fire-risk terrain. If this terrifying trend continues, it will jeopardize not just lives and landscapes, but also the existence of the electrical utilities that most Californians rely on to power their homes.

State law requires utilities to pay for damage to private property when their equipment starts a wildfire, whether or not there was negligence involved. The threat of liability has led all three of California's big investor-owned electrical utilities to warn that fire costs could bankrupt them.

This year state lawmakers passed a bill with the primary focus of easing the utilities' financial burden. The measure allows regulators to shift costs to customers when utilities were not negligent. That relief might keep the utilities from going belly up, but it won’t give them any more incentive to prevent fires.

There’s much more to do when it comes to preventing wildfires. Do we need stricter rules for when power must be cut off to prevent sparking? Require power lines to be moved underground? Buried lines are expensive and can be prone to flood and earthquake damage, but might be worth it in some high fire risk areas.

Should the state require a higher standard for electrical infrastructure if and when fire-ravaged communities rebuild? Or do we upend the current utility model altogether? Break up the investor-owned utilities or make them public? It’s not clear how the change would lower fire risks, but everything should be up for discussion.

The link between power lines and fires needs to be a top priority if Brown’s “new abnormal” is indeed the state’s future.