Southern California Edison’s admission that its tools could have ignited the Hurst hearth within the San Fernando Valley on Jan. 7 is being seized on by attorneys suing the utility firm for an additional hearth in the identical space practically six years earlier.
Each the Saddleridge hearth in 2019 and the Hurst hearth this yr began beneath an Edison high-voltage transmission line in Sylmar. The attorneys say defective tools on the road ignited each blazes in the identical method.
“The proof will present that 5 separate fires ignited at 5 separate SCE transmission tower bases in the identical precise method as the hearth that began the Saddleridge hearth,” the attorneys wrote of the Hurst hearth in a June 9 submitting in Los Angeles Superior Court docket.
The attorneys mentioned the January wildfire is “additional proof” {that a} transmission pylon generally known as Tower 2-5 “is wrongly grounded.”
Edison informed the state Public Utilities Fee in February that “absent further proof, SCE believes its tools could also be related to the ignition of the Hurst Fireplace.” However the firm denies claims that its tools sparked the 2019 hearth, which tore by way of Sylmar, Porter Ranch and Granada Hills — all suburbs of Los Angeles — burning 8,799 acres.
“We are going to proceed to deal with information and proof — not on preposterous and sensational theories that solely serve to hurt the actual victims,” mentioned Edison spokesman David Eisenhauer. He declined additional touch upon the case.
The Saddleridge wildfire destroyed or broken greater than 100 houses and different buildings, based on Cal Fireplace, and brought on no less than one dying when resident Aiman El Sabbagh suffered a cardiac arrest.
Edison is being sued by insurance coverage firms, together with State Farm and USAA, to recoup the price of damages paid to their policyholders. Householders and different victims are additionally in search of damages. A jury trial for the consolidated circumstances is ready for Nov. 4.
Of their June 9 submitting, the plaintiffs’ attorneys additionally claimed Edison wasn’t clear with officers wanting into the reason for the 2019 hearth. One hearth official characterised the utility’s motion as “misleading,” the submitting mentioned.
Edison found a fault on its system at 8:57 p.m. — simply three minutes earlier than the blaze on the base of its transmission tower was reported to the Fireplace Division by Sylmar resident Robert Delgado, based on the court docket submitting.
However Edison didn’t inform the Los Angeles metropolis Fireplace Division in regards to the fault it recorded, the submitting mentioned. As a substitute the hearth division’s investigation workforce found the failure on Edison’s transmission traces by way of sprint cam footage recorded by a motorist driving on the 210 Freeway close by, the submitting mentioned.
When Timothy Halloran, a metropolis Fireplace Division investigator, went to the placement of the flash proven on the motorist’s digicam, he discovered “proof of a failure on SCE’s tools,” the submitting mentioned.
Halloran mentioned in a deposition that staff of the enterprise positioned the place the proof was discovered informed him that Edison staff “tried to buy” footage from the corporate’s safety digicam on the evening of the hearth, the submitting mentioned.
“The video footage exhibits a big flash emanating from the course of SCE Transmission Tower 5-2,” the submitting mentioned.
Halloran testified in his deposition that he believed Edison was attempting to be “misleading” for trying to buy the safety digicam footage and never reporting the system fault to the Fireplace Division, the attorneys mentioned.
Halloran didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Edison’s upkeep of its transmission traces is now being scrutinized because it faces dozens of lawsuits from victims of the devastating Eaton hearth, which additionally ignited on Jan. 7.
Movies confirmed that fireside, which killed 18 individuals and destroyed hundreds of houses, beginning beneath a transmission tower in Eaton Canyon. The investigation into the reason for the hearth is constant.
Victims of the 2019 hearth say they’ve develop into disheartened as Edison has repeatedly requested for delays within the court docket case.
“Many plaintiffs haven’t but been in a position to rebuild their houses” due to the delays, wrote Mara Burnett, a lawyer representing the household of the person who died.
Burnett famous that Aiman El Sabbagh was 54 when he suffered a deadly cardiac arrest throughout the incident. His youngsters, Tala and Adnan El Sabbagh, “really feel they have been robbed of issues they treasured and labored arduous for with no obvious recompense in sight.”
Each the Saddleridge and Hurst fires included the same chain of occasions the place a failure of apparatus on one tower resulted in two or extra fires igniting beneath completely different towers elsewhere on the road, based on attorneys for the plaintiffs.
Edison designed and constructed the towers that run by way of Sylmar in 1970. They maintain up two transmission traces: the Gould-Sylmar 220 kV circuit and the Eagle Rock-Sylmar 220 kV circuit.
Within the case of the Saddleridge hearth, investigators from the Los Angeles Fireplace Division and the California Public Utilities Fee discovered that at 8:57 pm on Oct. 10, 2019, a Y-shaped metal half holding up a transmission line failed, inflicting the road to fall on a metal arm.
The failure brought on an enormous electrical fault, attorneys for the plaintiffs say, that sparked fires at two transmission towers that have been greater than two miles away.
State and metropolis hearth investigators say the Saddleridge hearth started beneath a type of towers. They usually discovered uncommon burning on the footing of the opposite tower, based on a report by an investigator on the utilities fee.
The utilities fee investigator mentioned within the report that he discovered that Edison had violated 5 state laws by not correctly sustaining or designing its transmission tools.
This yr’s Hurst hearth ignited not far-off on Jan. 7 at 10:10 p.m. It additionally started beneath one in every of Edison’s transmission towers.
In line with Edison’s Feb. 6 report back to the utilities fee, the corporate discovered that its {hardware} failed, leading to tools falling to the bottom on the base of a tower.
The attorneys for the plaintiffs say that they now have extra proof of the hearth’s begin. They are saying that investigators discovered that the {hardware} failure set off an occasion — just like the 2019 hearth — that resulted in 5 fires at 5 separate transmission tower bases on the identical line.
A type of fires unfold in excessive winds to develop into the Hurst hearth. Officers ordered 44,000 individuals to evacuate. Air tankers and 300 firefighters contained the hearth earlier than it reached any houses.
