California’s Pacific Gas & Electric problem isn’t going away.

The giant utility has been in bankruptcy for months, and it is not clear who will end up controlling it. This uncertainty has extended into the wildfire season, exposing not just the shortcomings in PG&E’s fire-prevention efforts but also the threat that fire liabilities still pose to the company’s viability.

No surprise, then, that state officials are getting restless and looking for bolder ways forward.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared that his office would “love” to see Warren E. Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, make a bid for PG&E. And Sam Liccardo, mayor of San Jose, favors a sweeping plan that would put PG&E in its customers’ hands.

But any idea must go through the federal bankruptcy court where two camps of investors — one aligned with wildfire victims seeking damages from PG&E, and another with management — have submitted plans to reorganize the company. PG&E, facing an estimated $30 billion or more in liabilities, mainly from fires in 2017 and 2018, sought bankruptcy protection in January. Its stock soared in the following months. On Wall Street and beyond, there was hope that the reorganization would stabilize PG&E, in tandem with a new state fund intended to keep fire liabilities from overwhelming utilities.

But the company’s shares plunged in recent weeks and even its bond prices weakened, suggesting that investors feared that plans to fix PG&E had fallen short.

New fires have stirred up old concerns.

In theory, the multibillion-dollar state wildfire fund — being set up to help utilities bear the cost of this year’s fires and those in the future — should be an effective backstop. But there are snags. To gain access, PG&E must emerge from bankruptcy by the middle of next year and, even if it does that, it stands to recoup only 40 percent of eligible damage claims for fires that take place while it is in bankruptcy. (Once it is out of bankruptcy and has satisfied other conditions, it will qualify for full coverage from the fund, which would be financed by bonds and company contributions.) Because PG&E’s equipment is suspected of having caused some of the recent fires, the company may end up facing another large bill for damages.

The blackouts are a complicating factor.

PG&E has been turning off power across vast parts of its service area during high winds, because fallen power lines are a major cause of wildfires. The blackouts have drawn widespread criticism. But if PG&E, fearful of the backlash, limits the scope of its power cuts, there could be more fires.

“We’re coordinating with federal, state and local partners to minimize risks stemming from the shut-offs until the extreme weather event has subsided,” Jeff Smith, a PG&E spokesman, said by email. “For the time being, this is not a political issue. It’s a safety issue, and we’re committed to doing what is necessary to keep our customers safe.”

But investors, needed to supply capital, will remain sensitive to the political pressures on PG&E, said Michael Wara, director of the climate and energy policy program at Stanford University. They may fear that PG&E won’t shut off enough lines, he said, and that “the future will be one where you use up the wildfire fund and you’re back where you were, maybe even in the not-too-distant future.”

The latest fires could upend the plans on the table.

The competing plans for reorganizing PG&E — each put forward by groups dominated by hedge funds — envision putting new money into the company, much of it to pay off liabilities related to fires before the bankruptcy.

But the funds may end up rethinking their commitments. The plans include language allowing the investment offers to be changed or withdrawn if new fires attributed to PG&E have caused the destruction of 500 structures or more before the end of the year.

The investors backing PG&E’s management own large amounts of the company’s stock and, in theory, will have suffered the biggest losses as the market value of the company has plunged to $2.5 billion, from $12.4 billion six months ago. (The shares jumped on Tuesday after the bankruptcy judge ordered lawyers for the wildfire victims to enter into mediation with PG&E, and appointed a mediator, a move that may help move the proceedings along.)

It makes sense that the governor would woo Mr. Buffett.

Berkshire owns several large energy companies and can raise large amounts of capital quickly, which is why some have seen it as a prospective bidder for PG&E.

“We would love to see that interest materialize, and in a more proactive, public effort,” Mr. Newsom said in an interview with Bloomberg on Saturday. “That would be encouraging to see. They are one of the few that are in a position to make a significant run at this.”

Nathan Click, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom, said the governor made the remarks as part of his desire to see many different parties submit plans for what to do with PG&E. Berkshire didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Analysts are skeptical that Mr. Buffett would buy PG&E, however. While he has invested in companies under stress, they said, his objective has often been to get the recipient through a rough patch without exposing Berkshire to hard-to-estimate losses, as an investment in PG&E, with its wildfire risk, might. “In general, there is not a strong appetite to buy turnaround stories at Berkshire,” said Meyer Shields, an analyst who covers Berkshire for KBW.

There are other hurdles. Berkshire would need to get approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has stringent standards for market power. Mr. Buffett’s company has large holdings throughout the West, from utilities in Nevada, Utah and elsewhere, as well as gas pipelines, coal operations and power plants that sell directly to the energy markets.

And politicians are coming up with their own plans.

San Francisco has offered to pay $2.5 billion for PG&E’s grid in the city, a bid PG&E rejected. San Francisco officials had said owning the operations would improve local accountability. But critics of the move said such purchases could leave the remaining PG&E operations in less populated areas without the wherewithal to bear the costs of wildfires.

“If you start carving PG&E up, the entity left behind in the rural parts of the Bay Area will be an incredibly risky business and require a huge taxpayer subsidy,” said Jared Ellias, a professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law.

Under the proposal by Mr. Liccardo, the San Jose mayor, PG&E would not be broken up. A new company, in effect owned by PG&E’s customers, would buy PG&E out of bankruptcy and run it much like a cooperative, meaning it would not seek to maximize profits and it would not make payouts to stock investors. Also, architects of the plan say such an operation would not be subject to federal taxes. In theory, then, money would be freed up to invest in PG&E’s operations.

“Transforming PG&E into a customer-owned utility ensures the company’s primary focus will lie in the safety and reliability of its operations,” Mr. Liccardo said in an interview, “not in satisfying the short-term, financial needs of its shareholders or its executives.” The plan envisions the entity gaining access to the wildfire fund, but that might require legislative action.

Cooperatives in California get to set their own rates. As a result, critics of the plan say the entity would have more leeway to raise rates than PG&E, which must gain the approval of the California Public Utilities Commission to do so.

But Dan Richard, part of a team advising Mr. Liccardo on the plan, contends that similar entities in California have resisted abusing that authority. “There would be both political and market forces that would limit any prospect of runaway rate increases,” he said.

Lauren Hepler contributed reporting.