In the early evening of January 7, a neighborhood resident was backed up to the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California by what he described as a bright white light and then a small fire at the base of a power tower in Eaton Canyon. Another neighbor said his lights flickered for several minutes before he saw the fire under the tower.
So far, many clues to the origin of the deadly Eaton fire, which started in the area just after 6 p.m. and went on to kill 17 people, have pointed to Brushcy Hillside, where a tangle of power lines stretch up Eaton Canyon.
Still, Southern California Edison, the utility that runs the electricity infrastructure in most of the Los Angeles region, said it had no record of an electrical failure on its lines in the area and that three low-voltage lines in the area had been de-energized long before the fire.
While the official cause will likely take months for investigators to determine, a growing body of evidence is emerging that suggests the fire started in dry grass beneath a set of transmission towers carrying high-energy power lines. The lines were buffeted that evening by winds that reached 100 miles per hour at times.
New video, recorded by a surveillance camera at a gas station less than a kilometer south of the towers, appears to provide an important new clue: supporting what residents saw, it shows flashes of light at 6:11 p.m. in the vicinity of the three high-voltage electrical towers in Eaton Canyon and then flames moments later.
The location of the flashes, verified by the New York Times through photos and video captured from the same vantage point as the original surveillance footage, could help determine whether power lines played a role in igniting the deadliest of several fires still burning across the Los Angeles area.
High-voltage transmission lines still had power in the middle of the fire, although according to Edison’s instructions, engineers should consider reducing their power when winds exceed 68 to 90 miles per hour.
Edison officials said they had not seen the new video until the Times shared it with them and urged that it be made available to investigators immediately.
“It requires analysis,” said Kathleen Dunleavy, a spokeswoman for the tool. “This is an ongoing investigation and any information is vital. We are fully cooperating with the investigation and are committed to a thorough investigation. “
Neither the video nor any other evidence conclusively shows what started the fire. But a series of photos and videos from the scene, along with interviews with eyewitnesses, investigators, firefighters and outside experts, all point to a fire that started near the base of one of the utility towers and began to spread quickly.
The issue has huge implications for who – if anyone – will be held responsible for Blaze, which has damaged or destroyed more than 10,000 structures and could lead to financial losses currently estimated by Verisk, an analytics firm like $10 billion.
Pacific Gas & Electric, California’s largest utility, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019 after accumulating $30 billion in liabilities from years of wildfires. The deadliest, the 2018 Camp Fire, destroyed the town of Paradise and led PG&E to plead guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter.
The parent company of Southern California Edison has seen its shares fall more than 26 percent this year as questions grow about its potential liability. But California was enacted Controversial legislation In 2019, the government was promoted by Gov. Gavin Newsom, protected the state’s public utilities from fugitive fire liability and effectively bailed out PG&E in the wake of the Camp Fire.
In the days after the fire, Edison insisted that there was no evidence to support the idea that a failure of his equipment had caused the Eaton Fire.
“We don’t see any electrical anomaly until more than an hour after the fire is reported to have started,” Pedro Pizarro, president and CEO of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison, said in an interview this month. “And we don’t see any anomaly until an hour, over an hour” after the fire started.
Eyewitness reports of the fire around the transmission towers may have resulted from human activity beneath the lines, Edison officials said.
One video newly shared with The Times, recorded at 6:14 p.m. from a home on Kinclair Drive in the Kinneloa Mesa neighborhood near Eaton Canyon, shows the early stages of the fire directly under one of the power towers.
Max Belin, whose house overlooks the power towers, was a neighbor who saw a flash of light, followed by a small flame at the base of the tower. Brendan Thorn, another neighbor, said when he first saw the fire, it “completely consumed all four legs of the tower”.
In the hills above Altadena stand several sets of transmission towers, an unincorporated community northeast of Los Angeles that bore the brunt of the fire’s spread. The Times was able to verify the location of the trio of towers near the start of the fire by matching a video at 6:14 p.m. and another around the same time, with the vantage points of eyewitnesses from 10 nearby locations.
This group of towers had discoloration and metal debris underneath that was visible days later and unlike other towers time visited in the nearby burned areas.
Whisker Labs, a Maryland technology company with sensors that can detect unusual activity on electrical wires, detected electrical disturbances in the general area around 6 p.m.
Edison’s bill shifted. Initially, in the days after the fire started, Mr Pizarro said there were no electrical problems in the area in the 12 hours before the fire. But last week, the utility said that while there was no problem in the transmission lines running through Eaton Canyon, a fault was measured at 6:11 p.m. at a substation roughly five miles away.
As a precaution, Southern California Edison reduced power to three low-voltage circuits serving Kinneola Mesa before 4:00 p.m. on Jan. 7, more than two hours before the fire’s reported start time.
But the utility maintained power on towering high-voltage transmission lines, each carrying 220 kilovolts of electricity.
Problems during wind events often occur on very small distribution lines, which typically run on wooden poles and are less wind-resistant than the heavy metal towers that carry high-voltage transmission lines.
However, problems have also been known to occur on much stronger transmission lines. In past fires, transmission equipment has heated up when massive faults develop on those high-voltage lines and arc, said Robert McCullough of McCullough Research, a Portland, Ore.-based consulting firm. request of the Times.
During an arc, electricity jumps from one place to another and the lines can flash and spark dangerously. When this happens, the metal on the steel towers can reach temperatures of up to 1,500 degrees, melting the towers, structural bolts or aluminum wires. Molten metal falls to the ground and can start brush fires.
“An arc can start a fire, and obviously that will depend a lot on what’s under that pole at the time,” said Shawn ZimMermaker, deputy chief of law enforcement for the northern region of Cal Fire, the state fire agency. “It would be a cause that investigators would consider, but every potential cause will be looked at.” He emphasized that he did not participate in the investigation.
CAL Fire investigators were seen at the transmission towers on Jan. 14, a week after the fire, combing the area with metal detectors.
Southern California Edison’s decision to shut down power to Kinneola Mesa, a community of more than 1,000 residents that lost many homes in a 1993 wildfire, was based on a set of criteria that included weather forecasts and ground conditions, Edison officials said. Edison officials.
“We have strict criteria,” Mr Pizarro said. “What is the overall risk of the area, the potential for consequences?” And what are the surrounding conditions? Let’s say, you know, humidity in the air? What’s the moisture content or the fuel content, you know, around the sites? And importantly, what are the wind speeds now? “
Cutting power to a transmission line is a major step that is likely to lead to power disruptions over a wide area. So Mr. Pizarro said the threshold for cutting power to a transmission line is high and Edison never had a clue that it was needed. “We realize now that there may be something that we just don’t understand,” he said.
At least a dozen multi-plaintiff lawsuits have already been filed against Edison on behalf of people who lost either their homes or their lives, prematurely taking on a long legal battle.
Last week, a state judge ordered the utility to produce “data from the four low-voltage distribution circuits closest to the preliminary origin area in Eaton Canyon.”
Edison initially rejected efforts to preserve the data, writing in a letter to lawyers that he was “not aware of any information or evidence suggesting that” “the company’s electrical equipment in Altadena may have been related to the ignition of the Eaton fire.”
In any case, the investor-owned company is protected from the full extent of damages under the 2019 law. While the legislation required utilities to establish new fire prevention measures, it also created a $21 billion fund that utilities can draw on in the wake of wildfires , if damages exceed USD 1 billion.
Loretta Lynch, an attorney and former president of the California Public Utilities Commission and a longtime critic of the legislation, said the law ensures that California taxpayers and ratepayers cover some of the liability when fire damage is high, even if utilities are found to be are highly responsible.
“It’s a dream of utility,” she said.
Arijet Lajka and Devon Lum contributed reporting.
