When the first flashes of fire and curls of smoke caught the attention of residents in the foothills of Eaton Canyon in Los Angeles County, residents recorded video of the same group of transmission towers high up on the hillside covered in chaparral, illuminated by flames.
California firefighters identified the start of the Eaton Fire on the evening of January 7 in that area, but more than a week later the exact source remains under investigation, fueling speculation on whether a high-voltage transmission tower caused the fire. deadly forest fire.
“I still see the fire investigators right now, crawling up there around the poles,” said Brendan Thorn, 28, who recalled witnessing flames at the base of the tower and stayed at his home in Pasadena while his family fled.
So far, at least three lawsuits filed on behalf of people living in the ravaged communities of Altadena and Pasadena, blames Southern California Edison, accusing it of failing to turn off all of its electrical equipment and failing to clear dense brush along the steep canyon subject to fires.
In interviews this week, the chief executive of Edison’s parent company in Southern California said that even though the power lines serving homes were taken offline about two hours before the start of the Eaton Fire, Eaton Canyon’s transmission lines had not been cut because these towers were stronger and could operate in stronger winds. Gusts in the area that evening approached 100 mph.
“While we’re doing our telemetry, our monitoring of the system, we’re not seeing any electrical anomalies,” said Pedro Pizarro, CEO of Edison International. said on CNBC of the company’s examination of the response of the transmission lines before and after the start of the fire. “It’s pretty typical that you see that when you have a spark coming from a piece of equipment.”
He added that “maybe there’s another mechanism here,” but that workers “haven’t been able to get near these towers.”
Power transmission lines during forest fires
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said it was in the early stages of an investigation into the origin of the canyon fire. The Eaton Fire — one of number of significant fires raging in the Los Angeles area, fanned by the Santa Ana winds and causing massive destruction, has burned more than 14,110 acres and is approximately 45% containedfirefighters said Wednesday. At least 16 people died.
While federal data shows that people talk the vast majority of wildfires – one of the primary sources of the ongoing Palisades Fire is potential human causes — it is not uncommon for utility transmission lines to be the cause.
The 2018 Camp Fire in the Northern California town of Paradise, which killed dozens of people, was caused by electrical transmission lines owned and operated by Pacific Gas & Electric, state investigators concluded.
The following year, a PG&E transmission line also sparked a fire known as Kincade Firethat prompted the largest evacuation in Sonoma County history, investigators said.
The utility reached an initial $13.5 billion settlement with Camp Fire victims and agreed to pay millions of dollars in a settlement aimed at avoiding criminal charges in connection with the fire by Kincade.
Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University, said the investigation into the Eaton fire will draw on what is known about the high-voltage transmission tower located in the area where video and photographic evidence appears to show the flames. reinforced.
“Edison probably climbed this tower and inspected it, but we don’t know yet if there was a problem,” Wara said. “How old was the power line?”
Stephanie Chase, head of research and communications at the Energy and Policy Institute, a utility watchdog organization, said investigators trying to determine whether a power line was the culprit would look at whether the line itself was under voltage, condition of the line and debris inside. the area, instead of looking for evidence that would indicate a human cause, such as an accelerant.
Transmission towers, which carry electricity long distances, are much taller than low-voltage distribution poles, used to power homes and businesses. They are more easily knocked out during weather events and are more likely to come into contact with tree branches and other vegetation.
Given their size, transmission towers can withstand the elements, Wara said, and the decision to de-energize them to potentially avoid a wildfire requires planning and consideration.
The four transmission lines located in the area where the Eaton Fire is believed to have started are part of the backbone of a larger distribution system.
“You can’t isolate this decision on this one line,” Wara said. “There were four lines in this corridor, and it’s part of a system of lines crossing the mountains from the Central Valley.”
Shutting down some transmission lines across the region would have a cascading effect on the entire system, potentially plunging millions of people into darkness and creating “a disaster in itself,” Wara added.
Rather, he said, a broader discussion about how best to upgrade transmission lines is warranted when many of them may be weathered and “tired in a way that you can’t not seen upon visible inspection.”
The California Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety, an agency dedicated to reducing utility-related wildfire risks, noted in a report in October that Southern California Edison will continue to evaluate its transmission lines for problems with splices, which are used to repair the lines; It is essential that the splices work properly, otherwise a line could fall out. The utility said tuesday it inspects splices using x-ray technology that “supplements visual inspections with a method capable of detecting conditions that the naked eye cannot detect.”
Last year, she said, it “spent more than $1.8 billion to mitigate wildfire risks, including inspecting and upgrading transportation and distribution infrastructure more frequently than state regulators require it.”
“34 minutes of terror”
For now, residents like Thorn need to think about what could have been done to prevent this wildfire, like shutting down power lines or properly clearing vegetation.
“We live with dangers, don’t we? » said Thorn.
His family’s home, built in the mid-1950s, survived, along with the other homes in his neighborhood, while two blocks away the homes were incinerated.
Less than a quarter mile away, another Pasadena resident, Pedro Rojas, 70, recorded video of a smaller fire casting an orange glow on the hillside.
Rojas, a retired journalist, said he was watching a basketball game on television on Jan. 7 when a neighbor knocked on his door to warn him of the flames. He walked to a window in his kitchen at 6:21 p.m. and captured the scene, about three minutes after the first reports began.
During a dispatch call, fire crews were informed: “We have an approximately 10 acre brush fire across the canyon, under high voltage power lines. »
Within 20 minutes, Rojas said, he and his wife had packed up their belongings as four fire trucks and two sheriff’s cars arrived at their cul-de-sac. He later learned that his house had survived.
“I never imagined that this kind of small fire that we saw in this tower was going to be so devastating,” Rojas said.
Jeffrey Ku, 50, of Altadena, said the Ring camera in his home, a few blocks from Rojas, began recording around 6:19 p.m. His wife, Cheryll, had returned home at that time and had already caught a glimpse of the fire while driving on the nearby highway.
He said what the camera captured was “34 minutes of terror.”
Around 6:28 p.m., transmission lines were engulfed in smoke and flames.
The couple packed up their two chihuahuas, Beckham and Bellamy, and evacuated safely even as dangerous winds rained down embers. Learning that their home was spared was a bright spot during a “hellish” experience, Jeffrey Ku said.
“The road to recovery will be long, and I know we will emerge stronger,” he added, “but it will not happen without the help of the people here and those who see us from far”.
