Southern California Edison equipment sparked a January 2025 wildfire that killed 19 people in the Los Angeles area, fire officials said.
The Eaton Fire was caused by electrical arcing events that took place on an out-of-service tow
er on a dry hillside, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said in a statement Tuesday. The blaze destroyed
or damaged more than 9,000 homes and businesses and burned 14,000 acres, the report said.
Edison International’s Southern California utility faces lawsuits from more than 32,000 plaintiffs alleging its equipment sparked the fatal blaze that leveled the Altadena suburb. The fire department report comes less than a week aft
er the company conceded the conflagration probably was triggered by its gear.
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Arcing is when electricity jumps across a gap between two conductors. In the case of the idle tower, arcing “ejected hot metal particles that fell to the rec
eptive fuel beds consisting of dry vegetation,” according to the report.
“We have received the L.A. County Fire report and are reviewing it,” Kathleen Dunleavy, an Edison
spokesperson, said in a statement. “We have taken our potential role in the start of this fire seriously from the beginning.”
Last week, Edison Chief Executive Officer Pedro Pizzaro told investors that “no other viable
alternatives have appeared” aside from the company’s equipment that would explain how the wildfire erupted.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office has an ongoing review of evidence from th
e fire. Edison shares were up 0.5% as of 2:21 p.m. in New York after earlier falling as much as 1%.
Top photo: A Southern California Edison crew installs a new overhead switch for circuit reliability on May 13, 2020 in Ventura, California. (Photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images). Bloomberg.