QWhat caused the two most destructive fires in Los Angeles history? After a hellish week – and flames which are likely to flare up again with violent winds expected until Wednesday – ongoing official investigations have not yet named a culprit. But with damage that could exceed $100 billion and several thousand residents who have lost everything, lawyers are wasting no time: four lawsuits accuse the equipment of the electricity transmission company Southern California Edison of being at the origin of the Eaton fire, which left at least 17 dead and burned more than 50 km2 and destroyed more than 7,000 structures.
“We believe that the Eaton Fire was started due to SCE’s failure to de-energize its lines that cross Eaton Canyon,” wrote in a complaint attorney Richard Bridford, who represents a client who lost his home in Altadena, north of Los Angeles. In California, during high winds, power is often shut off preemptively to prevent fires.
Incriminating videos and testimonies
According to CalFire, the California forest protection and firefighting agency, the Eaton fire broke out on Tuesday January 7 around 6:18 p.m. in a canyon near the Mount Wilson Observatory, near Pasadena , northeast of Los Angeles.
ALSO READ End of the world road trip in Los Angeles, among the ruinsSeveral residents said Los Angeles Times having seen sparks and electric arcs at the high voltage line in the preceding minutes.
A video shared by a local resident, Jeffrey Ku, on Instagram shows flames, at 6:19 p.m., directly under an SCE pylon. In less than an hour, the fire, fanned by winds exceeding 140 km/h in gusts, descended along the dry hillside then reduced several neighborhoods of Altadena to ashes, trapping certain residents who had not evacuated at time.
SCE defends itself
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Kangaroo of the day
Answer
Monday morning, the boss of Edison International, the parent company of SCE, toured the TV sets. On MSNBC, while the group’s action plunged 14%, he assured that his company had “not detected any electrical anomaly” which, according to him, accompanied sparks on a line, while specifying that it had not yet have been able to access the area in question.
This is not the first time that the electricity network has been in the dock. In 2019, the giant PG&E, on the verge of bankruptcy, paid $13.5 billion to end lawsuits linked to the Camp fire (2018), which razed the small town of Paradise and caused the death of 85 people, and the Tubbs Fire (2017), which ravaged the Napa Valley. Investigators concluded that the company had not properly maintained its distribution network.
