Edison, Southern California’s approval of equipment that could have been fired in the Hurst fire in the San Fernando Valley on Jan. 7 was seized almost six years ago by lawyers suing utility companies for another fire in the same area.
Both the 2019 Saddleridge fire and this year’s Hearst fire began under Sylmer’s Edison high-voltage transmission line. The lawyer says the broken equipment on the line ignited both flames in the same way.
“Evidence shows that five separate fires were fired at five independent SCE transmitting tower bases in the same way as the fire that launched the Sadler Ridge fire,” the lawyer wrote about the Hearst Fire in a June 9 filing in Los Angeles Superior Court.
The lawyer said the January wildfire was “full evidence” that the transmission pylon, known as Tower 2-5, was “improperly grounded.”
“Without additional evidence, SCE believes that the equipment could be linked to the fire of the Hearst Fire,” Edison told the State Utilities Commission in February. However, the company claims it caused the 2019 fire that burned 8,799 acres in Sylmer, Porter Ranch, Granada Hills and all outskirts of Los Angeles.
“We will continue to focus on facts and evidence rather than stupid sensational theories that only serve to harm actual victims,” said David Eisenhauer, spokesman for Edison. He declined to comment further on the incident.
According to Cal Fire, Saddleridge Wildfire destroyed or damaged more than 100 homes and other structures, causing at least one death when resident Aiman El Sabbagh suffered cardiac arrest.
Edison has been sued by state farms and insurers, including the USAA, to collect the costs of damages paid to policyholders. Homeowners and other victims are also seeking damage. The ju trial for the consolidated lawsuit is set for November 4th.
In his June 9 application, the plaintiff’s lawyers argued that Edison was not transparent with officials considering the cause of the 2019 fire. The filing said one fire official viewed the utility’s actions as “deceptive.”
Edison discovered a system failure at 8:57pm. Just three minutes before the flames at the power tower’s base were reported to the fire station by Sylmer resident Robert Delgado, a fire station, according to a court filing.
But Edison did not talk about the negligence he recorded with the Los Angeles Fire Department, Filing said. Instead, the fire department’s investigation team discovered a failed Edison power line through dash cam footage recorded by a driver driving on nearby 210 highways, the filing said.
City Fire Department investigator Timothy Halloran submitted that he found “proof of SCE equipment failure” when he went to the location of the flash shown on the driver’s camera.
Halloran said an employee of the business, where the evidence was found, told him that Edison’s employee “trying to buy it” from the company’s security cameras on the night of the fire.
“The video footage shows a large flash emanating from the direction of the SCE transmission tower 5-2,” Filing said.
Halloran testified in his deposition that he believes Edison was “deceptive” because he tried to purchase security camera footage and did not report the system failure to the fire department, the lawyer said.
Halloran did not respond to requests for comment.
Maintaining Edison’s power lines is currently under scrutiny as it faces dozens of lawsuits from victims of the devastating Eaton fire that fired on January 7th.
The video showed fires that began under the Eton Canyon transmission tower, killing 18 people and destroying thousands of homes. The investigation into the cause of the fire continues.
The 2019 fire victims say they were disappointed after Edison repeatedly sought delays in the lawsuit.
“Many plaintiffs have yet to rebuild their homes,” wrote Mara Barnett, a lawyer representing the family of the man who died due to the delay.
Burnett pointed out that Eiman Elle Sabbagh was 54 years old when he suffered a fatal cardiac arrest during the incident. His children, Tara and Adnan El Sabba, feel that they have been taken away from what they cherished and worked so hard without any obvious compensation.”
Both the Saddleridge and Hurst fires included similar events in which equipment failures in one tower caused two or more fires under different towers elsewhere in the row.
Edison designed and built the tower running through Sylmer in 1970. They hold two transmission lines: the Gould Silmer 220 kV circuit and the Eagle Lock Silmer 220 kV circuit.
In the case of the Saddleridge fire service, investigators from the Los Angeles Fire Department and the California Utilities Commission found that on October 10, 2019, at 8:57pm, the Y-shaped steel section holding the transmission line failed, causing the line to fall on the steel arm.
The failure caused a massive electrical failure, the plaintiff’s lawyer says it caused a fire at two power towers more than two miles apart.
State and city fire investigators say the Saddleridge fire began in one of those towers. According to reports from investigators of the Utility Committee, they discovered abnormal burning on scaffolds in other towers.
Utility Commission investigators said in the report that Edison found that he violated five state regulations by failing to properly maintain or design the power transmission equipment.
This year’s Hearst Fire was not far away at 10:10pm on January 7th. It also started at one of Edison’s transmission towers.
Edison’s February 6 report to the Utility Committee found that its hardware had broken down, resulting in equipment falling into the ground at the base of the tower.
The plaintiff’s lawyers say they have more evidence of the beginning of the fire. They say investigators discovered that hardware failures caused the event similar to the 2019 fire.
One of those fires is spreading through strong winds to become a Hearst fire. Authorities ordered 44,000 people to be evacuated. An air tanker and 300 firefighters contained the fire before they reached the home.
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