The Biden administration said Tuesday it was offering Pacific Gas & Electric a record $15-billion loan guarantee to help the utility upgrade its transmission lines, which have been blamed in causing wildfires, and make other improvements to meet fast-rising energy use.

The commitment, which still must be finalized, would help PG&E expand hydropower generation and battery storage, the utility said in a release. The money would also help PG&E extend its transmission system to connect with new clean energy facilities.

“Investments in a clean and resilient grid for Northern and Central California will have significant returns for our customers in safety, reliability and economic growth,” said Patti Poppe, the company’s chief executive.

The company said the loan would come with a lower interest rate than what it could otherwise obtain and save customers as much as $1 billion over the years.

“We would pass along savings from our lower cost of debt to our customers as we work to modernize the grid and stabilize customer bills,” said Lynsey Paulo, a PG&E spokesperson.

Electric rates at the utility have soared by 56% over the last three years, according to a new report by the Public Advocate’s Office at the state Public Utilities Commission, more than either Southern California Edison or San Diego Gas & Electric.

This year, PG&E hiked rates four times. The company’s rate requests must be approved by the utilities commission, whose members are appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and confirmed by the state Senate, which is controlled by a supermajority of Democrats.

Last year, the company recorded $2.2 billion in profits — an increase of almost 25% over the year before.

Paulo said the company was now trying to keep average annual residential gas and electric bill increases within 2% to 4% through 2026.

The announcement of the federal loan drew skeptics on Tuesday.

“This loan is less a solution for California’s energy future and more a bailout for PG&E,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit advocacy group. “Somebody must repay it, and it certainly won’t be the company’s shareholders or executives.”

The Biden administration has been hurrying to release more money from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.

The loan guarantee is the biggest commitment to date from the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office. The money would be provided to PG&E in installments over several years. Loan office officials must approve the projects it pays for.

Federal officials said the company must still satisfy certain technical, legal, environmental and financial conditions before the loan is funded.

In 2019, Pacific Gas & Electric announced a $13.5-billion settlement for several Northern California wildfires sparked by its equipment that killed dozens of people and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. Those fires included one that nearly destroyed the town of Paradise in 2018, the deadliest in state history.

The company had filed for bankruptcy earlier that year. It reorganized and emerged from bankruptcy in July 2020.

On a grassy hillside just east of downtown Los Angeles, a few dozen mourners gathered last week to pay respects to 1,865 people whose names they did not know — men, women and children whose ashes recently joined the remains of 100,000 others laid to rest here since 1896.

The departed interred at Los Angeles County Cemetery had one thing in common, and one thing separating them from those on the other side of the rusty chain link fence demarcating the county plot and neighboring Evergreen Cemetery: they had neither the means for a private burial, nor family to claim their bodies.

Each year in December, those whose remains have been unclaimed for three years are memorialized with an interfaith ceremony. On Thursday, members of the public looked on in respectful silence as representatives of L.A.’s many faiths acknowledged the dead the way they might have wanted: with a Buddhist chant, a smudging of sage, the Lord’s Prayer in Swahili, Hindi and Spanish.

The blessings said over the freshly turned earth hinted at the lives once lived. Many were unhoused. A small handful were never identified. Some were children.

Brian Donnelly drove from Hollywood to witness the ceremony. He suspects a number of the unhoused people he’s come to know from his neighborhood over the years are interred here, he said.

“I think it’s important,” he said of the ceremony, his voice catching. “You come into this world with somebody. You don’t deserve to go out alone.”

In recent years, those who track the way we live and die have noticed a disquieting change.

While there are more tools than ever to identify the unknown dead and track down surviving family members, the percentage of people whose next of kin cannot — or choose not — to claim their remains is increasing, a shift sociologists attribute to changing family dynamics, growing mobility and an epidemic of loneliness.

To go unclaimed “is kind of an exclamation point on a life that was marked by social isolation, especially in later years,” said Pamela Prickett, an associate professor of sociology at Pomona College. “We’re not fully grasping just how much our sense of what we owe each other has changed.”

Prickett is the author, with UCLA sociologist Stefan Timmermans, of “The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels.” In their research, Prickett and Timmermans found, less than 1.2% of those who died in L.A. county in the 1970s were unclaimed by next of kin. In 2013, the most recent year from which data is available, 2.75% of county decedents were not picked up.

That number has continued to rise, the researchers write, both in Los Angeles County and beyond. The percentage of decedents unclaimed in Maryland, one of few states that maintains such records, was 2.1% in 2000 and 4.5% in 2021, the book notes.

To be unclaimed does not in itself mean that a person was unloved in life or unmissed in death. Prickett sees it as the culmination of several significant shifts in the way we live, the net effect of which becomes apparent only once we’ve died.

When the county picks up a person who has died in a facility, residence or public area, and no will or person with power of attorney can be found, the Office of Decedent Affairs and the public administrator work to locate next of kin and determine if the deceased died with any assets. If the county can’t find any living relatives but the deceased had enough savings, the public administrator arranges for a private burial.

Longer lifespans increase the likelihood of a person outliving siblings, spouses and even adult children who might step forward to claim them. They also increase the chance that a person will outlive their financial resources.

“Because somebody died at that moment without money doesn’t mean that the years preceding that were ones in which they didn’t have money,” Prickett said. “It might just be that the nursing home costs zapped their savings.”

If the person died penniless but the notified next of kin does not pick up the body, the county arranges for cremation. It stores the cremated remains for three years, in case a relative comes forward to claim them. Very often, they don’t.

L.A. County charges roughly $400 to pick up cremated remains. Many next of kin lack the ready cash, or the wherewithal to navigate the legal process to waive the fee.

Genealogist Megan Smolenyak is the founder of Unclaimed Persons, a team of volunteer researchers who have assisted local jurisdictions, including L.A. County, in tracking down next of kin.

Some tell Smolenyak that the quality of their relationship with the deceased doesn’t justify the cost of picking up their ashes or arranging a funeral.

“Sometimes, even when there’s quite close living relatives, they just won’t accept the responsibility of being next of kin because they can’t afford it,” Smolenyak said. “It’s like, “I haven’t heard from them in 20 years, and I can’t just afford a funeral out of the blue.’

The COVID pandemic may have further weakened family connections. With restrictions on travel and hospital visitations, final reconciliations with family that may have happened in other years simply didn’t, said the Rev. Chris Ponnet, a Catholic priest and director of spiritual care at Los Angeles General Medical Center.

“It was just a lot of people, all alone,” he said.

Those whose ashes were buried this week died in 2021. The county has not yet released the names of those interred, which will eventually be publicly available in case long-lost kin come seeking them.

On one side of the chain link fence ringing the county cemetery, the brilliant red of tinsel and fresh poinsettias adorning Evergreen graves stood out against the gray stone and sky. On the other, the people of Los Angeles went about their business — some of them lonely, some of them unhoused, some unaware that they were passing the place they will one day come to rest.

What a difference a fraction of an inch can make.

Having one of the 33 bones in his spine out of alignment by less than half an inch apparently diminished Luigi Mangione’s quality of life to the point that his lower legs felt like they were on fire. At other times, the 26-year-old charged with murdering the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare seesawed between pain and numbness in his lower back and genital area.

Social media posts believed to be written by Mangione indicated he was diagnosed with spondylolisthesis, a back condition that emerged during childhood and became debilitating after an accident during a surfing lesson in 2022.

“My back and hips locked up after the accident,” wrote a Reddit user whose biographical details align with Mangione’s. The user, whose account has been deleted, also complained that “intermittent numbness has become constant.”

“I’m terrified of the implications,” the user wrote, according to CNN.

Mangione is accused of fatally shooting Brian Thompson outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel last week, and evading capture for five days. His attorney said the Ivy League graduate intended to plead not guilty to the murder charge.

Back pain isn’t the only health condition that plagued Mangione — the Reddit account included posts about brain fog and Lyme disease — but spondylolisthesis appears to have been the most taxing.

There are many reasons why a segment of the spine can move out of alignment.

Spondylolisthesis (pronounced spawn-duh-low-lis-THEE-sus) can begin before birth if the spine doesn’t develop properly in utero. Or it can occur suddenly if an accident or injury thrusts one of the vertebrae out of position.

A fracture in the part of the bone that links the vertebrae together can become so big that a segment of the spine can’t be held in place. A bone-weakening disease like osteoporosis or even a spinal tumor can disturb the vertebrae’s alignment as well.

Most often, spondylolisthesis is a consequence of aging. The older we get, the more the cushiony disks that separate the vertebrae thin out. When the bones aren’t held as tightly in place, it’s easier for one to wind up where it doesn’t belong.

Any part of the spine can be affected by spondylolisthesis, but it’s most common in the lower back. (The Reddit user who is believed to be Mangione indicated that his misaligned bone was at the bottom of his lumbar spine, just above the pelvis.)

Wherever it occurs, having a spinal bone out of place can affect the nerves around the spine. Back pain is a typical symptom, but the pain can spread all the way down the legs and to the feet if one of the sciatic nerves is involved. The discomfort can also manifest as a pins-and-needles tingling sensation.

In Mangione’s case, the symptoms seem to have kicked into high gear while surfing in Hawaii in 2022. The Reddit user said he “experienced sciatica for the first time” while on the water, according to Business Insider, though it’s not clear whether the painful condition caused his accident or resulted from it.

Things went from bad to worse a few weeks later, when he “slipped on a piece of paper,” he said. “My right glute locked and right leg shut down for a week. Couldn’t support any weight on it.”

He also experienced a “near-constant burning/twitching in both ankles/calves.”

Pain isn’t the only symptom of spondylolisthesis. With a part of the spine out of place, patients may have back stiffness, be unable to stand for more than a few minutes, or have trouble walking.

These problems can get worse if left untreated. Other potential complications include urinary or bowel incontinence, the Cleveland Clinic says.

Initial treatment usually includes rest to relieve stress on the spine and painkillers such as Advil, Motrin, Aleve or Tylenol to help with pain and reduce inflammation. If over-the-counter medications aren’t enough, doctors may prescribe corticosteroid medications or a cortisone injection.

Once the time for rest has passed, specific exercises can strengthen muscles in the abdomen and lower back to better support the spine. A brace or corset may also be needed, especially if the problem was caused by a fracture that needs to heal.

The only way to actually move the bone back into place is with surgery, and that may be necessary if serious problems persist.

The goal of the surgery depends on the cause of the patient’s spondylolisthesis, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

If a fractured bone is to blame, surgeons can shore it up by fusing it to another vertebrae using screws and rods. Mangione had spinal fusion surgery in 2023 after living with pain for a year and a half.

He shared a picture of a post-operative X-ray with one of his former roommates from his time in Hawaii. The image “looked heinous, with just giant screws going into his spine,” the ex-roommate, R. J Martin, told CNN.

On Reddit, the user believed to be Mangione reported that the surgery was a success. “Within 7 days of the fusion I was on zero pain meds,” he wrote, according to ABC News.

If a fracture isn’t the problem but a misaligned disk is compressing nearby nerves, surgeons may perform a laminectomy. That procedure removes part of the bone and nearby ligaments to create more space for the nerves.

Sometimes surgical patients have both treatments, the academy says.

Although Mangione seemed pleased with the results of his surgery, he was not happy that it took so long for him to receive it. The Reddit user said he had feared he would be “destined to chronic pain and a desk job for the rest of my life.”

He advised other Reddit users to exaggerate their symptoms — such as pretending they couldn’t lift the front of their foot or urinating in their clothes on purpose — in order to get surgery sooner.