Southern California Edison faces lawsuits over LA wildfires | Business and economic news
One lawsuit cites multiple witnesses who saw the fire at the base of a utility-owned transmission tower.
Southern California Edison, a unit of utility Edison International, has been hit with multiple lawsuits alleging its electrical equipment sparked one of the large fires raging in the Los Angeles area, according to court filings.
The lawsuits filed Monday appear to be the first of hundreds, if not thousands, to come from the wildfires that swept through parts of southern California in the United States last week.
The lawsuits were filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of homeowners, renters, business owners and others whose property was destroyed in the Eaton fire in the Pasadena area.
At least 24 people died in last Tuesday’s fire and more than 90,000 residents were forced to leave their homes. More than twenty people are missing, the authorities said.
The Eaton fire in the foothills east of Los Angeles has burned an estimated 5,712 hectares (14,117 acres), or 57 square kilometers (22 square miles) – nearly the size of Manhattan. According to one complaint, that fire is the second most destructive inferno in California history.
One of the lawsuits cites multiple witnesses who observed the fire at the base of a transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison.
Some of those witnesses shared videos of the incident on their social media accounts, including a post by Instagram user @jeffrey.ku of footage of the fire at the base of the power tower that he said was taken shortly after Eaton’s launch. fire.
It also referred to Brendan Thorn, who was interviewed by the local ABC News. Thorn said in an interview that he lives near Eaton Canyon and saw fires “knee-deep” around the transmission towers shortly after the fire started.
Southern California Edison did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the lawsuits.
On Monday morning, Edison International’s chief executive said in a TV interview that the company was continuing to investigate the fires and had not identified any electrical anomalies in its equipment at the time of the Eaton fire.
“It’s pretty typical that you see them when you have a spark coming from the equipment,” Pedro Pizarro said during an interview with CNBC 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.
Stock drop
Shares of Edison International fell nearly 12 percent to $57.24 on Monday. They have decreased by about 27 percent since the fires broke out last week.
SCE filed safety incident reports on the Eaton and Hurst fires on January 9 and 10.
Southern California Edison said it had received notices from insurance companies to preserve evidence related to the Eaton fire, adding that the fire was allegedly attributable to its utility facilities, prompting it to release its Jan. 9 report.
It also added that no fire agency had suggested that its electrical installations were involved in starting the fire.
However, in a Hurst report a day later, the company noted that they found a downed conductor in the area, but did not know if the damage occurred before or after the fire.
