To understand the brazen quality of the latest rate increase application from California's third-largest electric utility, it's necessary step back in time, to the scene when wildfires raged across some of the prettiest parts of San Diego County in 2007. Those fires would eventually kill 13 persons, even more than the notorious natural gas pipeline explosion that came about three years later in San Bruno, which ever since has plagued the state's largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric.