Southern California Edison admitted that its equipment might have ignited the Hurst fire in the San Fernando Valley on January 7, and lawyers sued the utility in the same area about six years ago for occupying the Hurst fire for another fire.
Both the 2019 Saddleridge Fire and this year's Hurst Fire start with Sylmar's Edison high-voltage transmission lines. The attorney said the equipment on the line had a malfunction and ignited both fuels in the same way.
“The evidence will show that five major fires were lit on five independent SCE transmission tower pedestals, the same as those that launched the Sadieridge fire,” the attorney wrote in a June 9 Los Angeles Superior Court filing.
The lawyer said the January wildfire was “further evidence” that a transmission tower called Tower 2-5 “was not properly rooted.”
Edison told the state utilities commission in February that “there is no other evidence that SCE believes its equipment may be related to the ignition of the Hurst fire.” But the company denied claims that its equipment triggered a 2019 fire that ripped through Sylmar, Porter Ranch and Granada Hills (all suburbs of Los Angeles) and burned 8,799 acres.
“We will continue to focus on facts and evidence, rather than absurd and sensational theories that only harm the real victims,” said David Eisenhauer, an Edison spokesman, who declined to comment further on the case.
According to Cal Fire, the Saddleridge wildfire destroyed or damaged more than 100 homes and other buildings, causing at least one death when resident Aiman El Sabbagh suffered cardiac arrest.
Edison was sued by insurers including state farms and USAA to recover the cost of losses paid to its policy holders. Homeowners and other victims are also seeking damage. The jury trial of the merger case is scheduled for November 4.
In the June 9 filing, the plaintiff's lawyer also claimed that Edison was not transparent about officials studying the causes of the 2019 fire. The document said a fire official described the utility's actions as “deceptive.”
Court documents show Edison discovered a malfunction in his system at 8:57 p.m. – According to a court application, Silma resident Robert Delgado reported to the fire department three minutes before the fire at the bottom of his transmission tower.
But Edison did not tell the Los Angeles Fire Department about the errors recorded, the document said. Instead, the fire department’s investigation team discovered the failure of the Edison transmission line through a DASH CAM footage recorded by a driver driving on nearby Highway 210, the document said.
The document said that when the city fire department investigator Timothy Halloran entered the position of the flash displayed on the driver's camera, he found “evidence of the SCE equipment failure.”
The filing said Harrowland said in his testimony that employees of the business told him that Edison employees “try to buy” videos from the company’s security cameras on the night of the fire.
“The video recording shows a large flash from the direction of the SCE transmission tower 5-2,” the document said.
Lawyer said Harrowland testified in his testimony that he thought Edison was “deceptive” in trying to buy videos of security cameras rather than reporting system failures to the fire department.
Halloran did not respond to a request for comment.
Edison's maintenance of the transmission line is now under review as it faces dozens of lawsuits from victims of the devastating Eton fire, which was also ignited on January 7.
Video shows that starting from a gearbox tower in Eaton Canyon, the fire killed 18 people and destroyed thousands of homes. Investigation on the cause of the fire continues.
Victims of the 2019 fire said they were frustrated as Edison repeatedly asked for delays in court cases.
Mara Burnett wrote: “Many plaintiffs have not been able to rebuild the house yet”.
Burnett noted that Aiman El Sabbagh was only 54 years old when he suffered a fatal cardiac arrest during the incident. His children, Tala and Adnan El Sabbagh, “feel that they have been robbed of things they cherish and work hard, and there is no obvious compensation.”
Both the Sadlerridge and Hurst fires included a series of similar incidents, in which equipment failures on one tower resulted in two or more fires ignited under different towers elsewhere online.
Edison designed and built the tower through Silma in 1970. They hold two transmission lines: the Gould-Simar 220 kV circuit and the Eagle Rock-Simar 220 kV circuit.
For the Saddleridge Fire, investigators from the Los Angeles Fire Department and the California Public Utilities Commission found that at 8:57 pm on October 10, 2019, the Y-shaped steel component failed to hold the transmission line, causing the line to fall on the steel.
The plaintiff's lawyer said the failure caused a huge electrical failure, which sparked the fire in more than two transmission towers more than two miles away.
State and city fire investigators say the Sadlerridge fire began under one of the towers. According to a report by an investigator from the Utilities Commission, they found that another tower was burning abnormally on the basis of the fire.
In the report, the Utilities Commission investigator said he found Edison violated five state regulations for failing to properly maintain or design his transmission equipment.
This year's Hurst Fire was lit at 10:10 pm on January 7, and it also began in one of Edison's transmission towers.
According to Edison's February 6 report to the Utilities Commission, the company found that its hardware failed, causing the device to fall at the bottom of the tower.
The plaintiff's lawyers said they now have more evidence that the fire was opened. Investigators said the hardware failure triggered an incident similar to the 2019 fire that occurred in five separate transmission tower bases on the same line.
One of these fires spread in the wind and became the Hurst Fire. Officials ordered 44,000 people to evacuate. Tankers and 300 firefighters installed fires before they arrived at any home.
