New video evidence has emerged in court that attorneys say confirms once and for all that an idle Southern California Edison transmission line reactivated and started the devastating Eaton fire.
The security camera footage from the Gerrish Swim and Tennis Club in Pasadena shows two bright flashes — electrical arcing — at the site of a long dormant transmission tower right before the fire ignited on Jan. 7, 2025, according to court documents filed by attorneys for insurance companies.
The arcing came at the same time as electrical faults recorded by SCE’s equipment some 5 miles away on the Eagle Rock-Gould transmission line. Just seconds later, local residents recorded on their cellphones the initial stages of the Eaton fire, burning at the base of the tower, known as “M16T1.”
The video and the SCE data offer proof that the 100-year-old line, which hadn’t been used since the early 1970s, became re-electrified and sparked the fire that killed 19 people and destroyed thousands of homes in Altadena and surrounding areas, attorneys say.
“This is not an amazing coincidence of timing,” states a motion filed by the insurance attorneys, asking the Los Angeles County Superior Court to rule without trial that SCE should be held liable for the insurance claims paid on the fire. A formal trial is scheduled for January 2027.
“Southern California Edison has spent the last 16 months attempting to forestall the inevitable legal consequences of razing a large swath of the communities of Altadena and Pasadena to the ground. That ends now,” said the motion for the insurers. “No genuine issue of material fact remains over whether SCE’s electrical infrastructure is the substantial cause of the Eaton Fire.”
Attorneys for the residents and business owners say the new footage will also help their case.
“All this confirms what we ascertained a year and half ago when we filed the lead case. It is irrefutable that SCE caused the fire. And their story … that they had not removed (the idle transmission line) because they may use it is ridiculous,” attorney Richard Bridgford said.
Insurance companies and other plaintiffs are suing SCE under the theory of “inverse condemnation,” the legal argument that allows utilities to be sued for fire damage regardless of whether the utility was negligent.
A state and county investigation is pending, but SCE officials have acknowledged that the dormant transmission line is a likely suspect and may have become active through a process known as “induction,” where electricity jumps from a live wire to a dead one.
However, SCE — which is doing its own investigation — has not conceded that its equipment triggered the blaze. Furthermore, Edison officials said Tuesday the new video is not the final word on the subject and shows the same thing as earlier footage taken from a different vantage point at an Arco station and released to the media more than a year ago.
“This is not how questions like this are resolved and Southern California Edison will respond more fully in our court filing,” SCE spokesperson Kathleen Dunleavy said.
She added that SCE was disappointed that attorneys for the insurance companies did not turn over the new video during discovery and is hopeful it was given to authorities.
While the dormant transmission line had been long out of use, there are many reasons to keep it from being dismantled, including growth in the region, Dunleavy said.
Without admitting liability, SCE has established a compensation program to pay survivors who forgo lawsuits. Nearly three-quarters of the claimants have accepted payment offers from Edison, according to the company.
“That is more than $200 million being paid now to community members, rather than wait for years in litigation,” SCE spokesperson David Eisenhauer said.
Damages from the Eaton fire could hit tens of billions of dollars. If SCE is found liable, most of the damages could be paid from a state fund established to protect SCE and two other privately owned utilities from going bankrupt from starting wildfires.