Resolution criteria

This market resolves YES if PG&E or official investigators publicly confirm that the fire at the 8th and Mission substation on December 20, 2025 was caused by an underlying equipment failure, maintenance issue, or other technical problem distinct from the fire itself. It resolves NO if the fire is determined to be the root cause of the outages, or if investigators conclude the fire and outages resulted from the same initiating event. Resolution will be based on official statements from PG&E, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), or the San Francisco Fire Department.

Background

A fire at the PG&E substation at 8th and Mission Streets was reported at 2:14 p.m. on December 20, 2025, causing more than 130,000 PG&E customers in San Francisco to lose power. However, while at least a portion of the blackouts that began in the afternoon were triggered by the fire, the reasons for other blackouts in portions of the Richmond, Sunset and other west side neighborhoods remained unexplained. PG&E is still investigating the cause of the fire.

Notably, the same substation experienced a fire on December 20, 2003, which resulted in a $6.5 million penalty from state regulators and left more than 120,000 customers in the dark. A similar fire hit the same substation in 1996, and regulators found that PG&E had failed to follow its own internal recommendations stemming from that initial fire.

Considerations

The question's phrasing suggests uncertainty about whether the fire itself was the root cause or merely a symptom of an underlying problem. Fire officials noted that the fire's connection to the outages remains unclear, with some outages starting as early as 9:00 a.m. Saturday—hours before the fire was reported. This timing raises the possibility that cascading failures or a separate technical issue triggered both the fire and the broader outage pattern.