Utility company Southern California Edison has been hit with several lawsuits by devastated homeowners who lost everything in the Los Angeles fires.
The lawsuits claim SoCal Edison’s electrical equipment started one of the major wildfires raging in the Los Angeles area, according to court filings.
The $25 billion firm said it discovered a downed conductor at a tower close to where the Hurst Fire broke out on Tuesday evening following an intense Santa Ana windstorm.
However, Edison said it doesn’t know whether the damage happened before or after the fire, which has so far burned through almost 800 acres of land. A spokesperson said in a statement its electrical equipment was unlikely to have caused the Eaton fire.
The legal action launched in LA County Superior Court on Monday could be the first of hundreds – if not thousands – of claims arising from the wildfires which have engulfed huge swathes of Southern California in the past week.
Officials have repeatedly said they’re investigating the cause of the fires, but have not yet revealed any official theories.
The lawsuits were filed on behalf of homeowners, renters, business owners and others with properties destroyed by the Eaton Fire in the Pasadena and Altadena area.
At least 24 people have died since multiple fires began last Tuesday, with more than two dozen still missing.
Energy company Edison International is being sued over a possible link to one of the wildfires currently tearing through Los Angeles
The Eaton Fire in the foothills east of Los Angeles has scorched more than 14,000 acres, nearly the size of Manhattan. That fire is the second most destructive inferno in California history, according to one complaint.
The suits cited eyewitness accounts and images that appeared to show a fire at the base of a transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison (SCE) before powerful Santa Ana wind gusts quickly spread the flames.
Some of those witnesses shared videos of the incident on their social media accounts, of a fire at the base of a transmission tower allegedly taken shortly after the start of the Eaton Fire.
Altadena resident Marcus Errico had earlier told CNN he saw the very first flames of the Eaton fire at the base of a transmission tower.
‘I could see right across from us on the hillside in Eaton Canyon, there are a series of transformer towers with power lines stretching up into the mountains. And at the base of one, there was just a small ring of flames around the whole base.’ he said.
‘I can’t say definitively that it was the power lines that caused it, but I can say definitively that the first fire in Pasadena and Altadena – Eaton Canyon is right on the edge of Altadena and Pasadena – that’s where the fire began.
‘It was under that tower on Tuesday night. It was – it began as a small little blaze underneath and within 10 minutes, the whole hillside was engulfed in the fire.’
One lawsuit also referred to Brendan Thorn, who was interviewed by local ABC News. Thorn said in the interview that he lives near Eaton Canyon and saw ‘knee high’ fires around transmission towers shortly after the fire began.
A fire fighting helicopter drops water as the Palisades fire grows
Some of the lawsuits cite data from electrical monitoring company Whisker Lab indicating that the power grid in the area experienced multiple potentially spark-causing grid disruptions leading up to the blaze.
The lawsuits say Edison infrastructure in the area was still energized at the time of the fire. Last Wednesday, Southern California Edison said its distribution lines immediately to the west of Eaton Canyon were de-energized well before the reported start time of the fire.
Southern California Edison did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the lawsuits.
On Monday morning, its CEO said in a TV interview the company was continuing to investigate the fires and had not identified any electrical anomalies from its equipment around the time the Eaton Fire broke out.
‘It’s pretty typical you see those when you have a spark coming from equipment,’ Edison International CEO Pedro Pizarro said during a CNBC interview on Monday morning when asked about the company’s investigation into the Eaton Fire.
‘There could be some other mechanism here. Unfortunately we have not been able to get close to the lines yet,’ he said.
The $25 billion firm said it discovered a downed conductor at a tower. (Pictured: Edison International CEO Pedro J. Pizarro taking a tour of a fuel storage installation in California with the U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Rep. Mike Levin in 2022)
It comes as speculation swirls about what could have caused the worst cluster of wildfires ever seen in the United States and Los Angelinos who have lost everything are demanding answers
SCE, on Jan. 9 and 10, filed safety incident reports on the Eaton and Hurst fires, respectively.
SCE said it has received notices from insurance companies to preserve evidence related to the Eaton Fire, adding the fire could allegedly be attributable to its utility facilities, which prompted it to release its Jan. 9 report.
It also added that no fire agency had suggested its electric facilities were involved in the ignition of the fires.
However, a day later in the Hurst report, the company noted it had found a downed conductor in the area but did not know if the damage occurred before or after the start of the fire.