PacifiCorp was grossly negligent in Oregon’s 2020 wildfires, a jury found. Now it’s asking lawmakers for protection.
BY JEFF MANNING
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Kathleen Becherer, 77, retired in 2014 to the Santiam River Canyon, where she hoped for a life filled with “bees, goats and grandkids.”
That dream was incinerated in September 2020. The Santiam Fire, which burned 400,000 acres (almost half the size of Rhode Island), reduced her riverfront home to ash and nearly killed…