PORTLAND, Ore. — A jury verdict that found an Oregon power company liable for devastating wildfires — and potentially billions of dollars in damages — is highlighting the legal and financial risks utilities take if they fail to take proper precautions in a hotter, drier climate.

Utilities, especially in the U.S. West, are increasingly finding themselves in a financial bind that’s partly of their own making, experts say. While updating, replacing and even burying thousands of miles of powerlines is a time-consuming and costly undertaking, the failure to start that work in earnest years ago has put them on the back foot as wildfires have grown more destructive — and lawsuits over electrical equipment sparking blazes have ballooned.

“How do they pay for that and at the same time try to do grid hardening at a pace that could prevent the need for constant shutting down of the power?” Josh Hacker, chief science officer at Jupiter Intelligence, a company that provides advice on managing climate change risks, said of lawsuit damages. “This is an enormous challenge. Now it’s biting them. And in the end it’s going to bite all of us, because they have to recover that expense.”

This month, a jury in Oregon found PacifiCorp liable for damages for negligently failing to cut power to its 600,000 customers during a windstorm over Labor Day weekend in 2020 despite warnings from top fire officials, and for its powerlines being responsible for multiple blazes.

PacifiCorp said it was disappointed with the jury’s decision and that it plans to appeal.

The fires were among the worst natural disasters in Oregon’s history. They killed nine people, burned more than 1,875 square miles and destroyed upward of 5,000 homes and other structures. While total damages remain to be determined, they are expected to reach into the billions.

Because utilities make money from customers, they often raise revenue for infrastructure upgrades by hiking rates. In California, for example, Pacific Gas and Electric has requested to increase its rates for residential customers this year by roughly 18%, partly to bury more than 3,000 miles of overhead power lines, according to a fact sheet from the state’s public utilities commission.

The commission, which regulates utility rates, said it expects to make a final decision between July and September.

PG&E’s planned upgrades come amid heightened scrutiny of the utility, which serves more than 16 million people over 70,000 square miles in Central and Northern California. Facing billions of dollars in damages stemming from multiple blazes, it filed for bankruptcy in 2019, shortly after its neglected equipment caused a fire that virtually razed the town of Paradise in the Sierra Nevada foothills in 2018. The Camp Fire was the deadliest and most destructive fire in California’s history.

PG&E’s bankruptcy settlement with wildfire victims was an eye-popping $13.5 billion. Only half of the money was paid to victims in cash, while the other half was paid out in PG&E stock, which has since declined in value.

PacifiCorp said it has invested hundreds of millions of dollars since the Labor Day 2020 fires in Oregon in upgrading its equipment and expanding its weather stations and weather modeling.