Southern California fire probe may look at utility
Southern California Edison, the electric utility that serves Ventura County and many of the Los Angeles suburbs, says state investigators may be looking into whether the company’s equipment helped start this month’s devastating wildfires.
Edison said last week that based on where the fires began, it is unlikely that the company’s power lines could have sparked them.
But in a news release Monday, the utility said state investigators are now looking at other possible ignition points for the fires — places where Edison’s equipment could have played a role.
“The investigations now include locations beyond those identified last week as the apparent origin of these fires,” the release said. “SCE believes the investigations now include the possible role of its facilities.”
Edison is the second major California utility company facing scrutiny in this year’s record-setting wildfire season.
Investigators with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, are already trying to determine whether power lines owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. helped start October’s Wine Country wildfires, which killed 44 people. The investigation may stretch into next year, but many North Bay homeowners, including former San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan, have filed suit against PG&E.
Cal Fire has not announced a cause of any of the blazes that have ravaged the state over the fall. But all of them, in both Northern
and Southern California, started during fierce windstorms. The state has a history of wildfires caused by strong gusts blowing trees into power lines, toppling poles or causing lines to sway and arc in the wind.
The California Public Utilities Commission, which oversees utility companies, also is looking into whether Southern California electric and telecommunications utilities had properly maintained their equipment in the fire zones, according the commission.
The regulatory agency opened a similar probe of the Wine Country fires in October, telling PG&E and telecommunications companies to preserve any equipment they found damaged by the flames. The commission will examine whether the utilities properly maintained their equipment — as in the Southern California fires — but will defer to Cal Fire on determining the exact cause of each fire.
California utility companies can be held financially liable for wildfire damage linked to their equipment even if they followed all applicable safety regulations, such as keeping tree branches at least 4 feet away from most rural electricity lines. Stock in Southern California Edison’s parent company, Edison International, closed Tuesday at $68.58, down 6 percent from $72.98 Monday.
The Thomas Fire, the largest of the Southern California blazes and now the fifth-largest in state history, remained just 20 percent contained Tuesday afternoon, more than a week after it began. It has burned more than 360 square miles, destroyed 680 homes and spread from Ventura County to Santa Barbara County.
After burning into downtown Ventura and surrounding the mountain enclave of Ojai, the fire on Tuesday neared seaside Montecito, whose residents include such celebrities as Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bridges, Drew Barrymore and Rob Lowe. Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated.
Edison has deployed more than 600 workers to respond to the fires, which over the course of the past week have knocked out power to more than 85,000 customers. Workers have replaced more than 300 utility poles damaged or destroyed by the flames.
With the Santa Ana winds still raking the area, Edison has also taken a step it previously shunned, preemptively shutting down power lines in an area deemed to face particularly high fire risk. The utility cut off electricity to the mountainous Idyllwild area of rural Riverside County on Thursday and Friday.