Crews next week will begin lowering Eaton Canyon transmission lines in preparation for removing the giant Southern California Edison towers that are evidence at the center of an investigation into how the Eaton fire started, attorneys said in court on Thursday, April 17.
The towers have become the heart of multiple investigations and legal claims against Rosemead-based SCE over equipment that is suspected to have sparked the catastrophic blaze, which destroyed nearly 7,000 homes in and around Altadena and killed 18 people.
The lawsuits have landed in L.A. Superior Court Judge Laura Seigle’s Downtown L.A. courtroom, where since March she has pressed SCE to work with the plaintiffs’ representatives to preserve, test and inspect evidence that they say could help them prove massive damage claims against the utility.
The sides have been working on a May 1 deadline to do all of that, so that SCE can begin work to restore power in areas of the fire.
On Thursday, attorneys from both sides told Seigle that they were on track, after weeks of tests, inspections, photos and substation inspections, in the foothills above Altadena.
“The outstanding issues are the removal and securement of the physical evidence in the canyon,” said Attorney Howard Maycon, a liaison counsel for “subrogation” plaintiffs — a group that includes insurance companies seeking reimbursement for damages arising from the fire.”
He said both sides had been working on a protocol for removing two towers from Eaton Canyon and securing them.
“It is complex,” he told the judge. “It is going to require helicopters lifting literally transmission towers out of Eaton Canyon and landing them in designated areas.”
In preparation for that, crews will begin lowering transmission lines on Monday, Maycon said.
But both sides agreed they were on track to meet the May 1 deadline.
The lawsuits, which in March were consolidated into one main case after more than 130 plaintiffs had initially come forward to sue, point to eyewitness accounts, photographs and videos depicting arcing from Edison power lines and flames burning at the bottom of transmission towers.
The suits contend that sparks from the lines or current from an exposed grounding wire made contact with the brush. They also criticize SCE for not de-energizing all the power lines in Eaton Canyon after the utility was warned days ahead that powerful winds were coming.
SCE has said it is conducting a “comprehensive review” of the data collected, in coordination with third-party experts, and “will move forward as quickly as possible in analyzing results.”
But as the testing ramped up, so has the scrutiny.
Last month, the New York Times reported that data suggested there were faults — or electrical malfunctions — on SCE transmission lines early on Jan. 7 before the fire started that night.
The data from Whisker Labs, a technology company in Maryland, suggests there were faults on Edison’s transmission lines at 4:28 a.m. and 4:36 a.m. on the day of the fire. Wind speeds at the time were sustained at 60 mph, with gusts as high as 79 mph — strong enough for engineers to consider cutting power.
Later in the day, Whisker identified two faults just minutes before the fire started, at about 6:11 p.m., on the transmission network near Eaton Canyon, where fire investigators have said the Eaton fire began.
Those faults matched flashes on the transmission lines recorded by a video camera at a nearby Arco gas station.
Southern California Edison, which supplies power to several communities near Eaton Canyon, including Altadena, did not cut power to the transmission lines despite the early morning faults. Nor did the utility cut power on the transmission lines after the second set of faults in the evening when winds reached 100 mph, according to the Times.
It also was reported that power lines near the suspected origin of the fire were flagged as fire hazards and overdue for maintenance, showing that company records filed with the state reveal that Edison was aware some of its towers near the suspected ignition point posed fire hazards.
The company said in a filing last month that it was evaluating whether the blaze was started by a reenergization of its unused Mesa-Sylmar line.
Pedro Pizarro, the CEO of Rosemead-based Edison International, the parent of SCE, has acknowledged the possibility that Edison’s equipment, in the context of climate change and high fire risk, ignited the monster fire.
He told investors in the utility’s fourth-quarter earnings call in February that even if investigators find that SCE’s Altadena transmission lines ignited the fire, “we are confident that SCE would make a good-faith showing that its conduct, with respect to its transmission facilities in the Eaton Canyon area, was consistent with the actions of a reasonable utility,” Pizarro said. “That is the standard by which a utility is judged.”
That showing is vital to the company.
It could mean billions of dollars in damages and liability for the company, which is trying to avoid bankruptcy over the matter through the state’s $21 billion wildfire insurance fund, created by AB 1054 to cover claims from blazes started by utility equipment, can hold up.
The bulk of Thursday’s roughly two-hour hearing, packed with attorneys, actually centered on other matters.
Seigle was initially leaning toward reassigning two class-action lawsuits, because she personally knows plaintiffs in those complaints, who are friends and neighbors. She was seeking to avoid “any kind of disqualification issue because my friends are covered by those class actions.”
Attorneys on the plaintiffs side however quickly argued against the reassignment, saying that it would be more efficient to have all the cases in one court.
It might be different if one of her friends was name as a plaintiff in a complaint.
In that case, reassignment would be necessary, they noted. But in a class-action where the plaintiffs are so-called “absent class members” — not actively involved in the litigation – it’s not as much of an issue, they argued. Seigle gave the sides until May to consider it.
They’ll also intend to work out issues including what communications from SCE come under attorney-client privilege.