On January 7th, the day Eton Fire set the San Gabriel Mountains on fire, Xiaoyong “Shaw” Zhao received a call from Altadena’s father around 12:30pm. .
It would be the last time Shaw spoke to his dad.
Shaw, who lives in Portland, Oregon, rushed to Altadena, but arrived there too late, taking the life of his 84-year-old father and leaving the scorched mountains of his home.
The retired Chinese immigrants (widows) have acquired one of 29 people killed in the devastating fires in Altadena and Pallisard, Pacific. His son, Shaw, filed a lawsuit against Southern California Edison last month, accusing other fire victims of negligence of breaching the utility of negligence, health and safety codes, and failing to maintain vegetation and equipment. I’ve joined.
“My dad was a flashy, intelligent, patient man,” Shaw said.
Long before the fire broke out, Shaw was planning a trip to visit Altadena’s father, Zhi Feng Zhao. The show had bought a plane ticket on January 8th. During the call the previous afternoon, Shaw told his father that he doesn’t need anything special and that he’s coming late.
On the same day, Shaw received a text from his father’s neighbor and warned him about the wildfire. He saw what the situation was online and saw that his father’s streets were not under evacuation orders or warnings.
Around 8pm, Shaw called his dad twice, but he didn’t pick him up. Zhao was not good at phone calls – he mostly used landlines and had a cell phone, but did not answer messages or make calls. His father was also deaf and was taking sleep aid medication to get him to sleep.
“I told myself, let him stay asleep,” Shaw said. “We’ll monitor the situation online.”
Around 5am, the show went back online to see that everything had changed. An evacuation order had been issued near my father around 3am.
The show moved flights into the early afternoon on January 8th. He landed in Burbank around 7pm and got into a Lyft car and shared the story with the driver. The Lyft driver offered to drive the show as close to his father’s street as possible, so he was able to find him.
They eventually arrived at the police barricade and were not allowed to drive to their father’s house on Tonia Avenue. The show then went to the Pasadena Convention Centre. The Pasadena Convention Centre served as a shelter for the displaced people. He stayed overnight, wandering from bed to bed, searching for his father.
“After that effort, I already knew that it wasn’t a good sign,” Shaw said. “I couldn’t find him and I hadn’t received a call from him.”
On January 9th, the same Lyft driver offered to return the show to his father’s neighborhood. They reached Fair Oaks Avenue and Woodbury Road, from which they walked about 90 minutes to their father’s house.
The whole neighborhood was being wiped out by flames. His father’s house was completely turned to ashes.
“All the houses on either side of the street were gone except for one,” Shaw said. “It was very tough, like a war zone.”
Shaw saw a coyote in his father’s front yard and his stomach fell. Lyft’s driver eventually found his father’s body near where the animal was. They immediately called for 911.
His father’s body was in the same position as he was sleeping, suggesting he had died in his bed, Shaw said.
“This was all preventable tragedy,” said Robert Yalch, the attorney representing the show. “None of this happened. There was a wildfire in Southern California history that killed people. It was because utility infrastructure was deerized or turned off during a strong wind event. As a result, they destroyed homes and communities.”
Kathleen Dunleavy, a spokesman for Southern California Edison, told The Times that the investigation was in its early stages.
“Our minds are directed at everyone affected by the southern California wildfires,” she said. “Edison in Southern California will continue to investigate the possible involvement of our equipment.
The utility acknowledged this week that information and data have been revealed, including videos from outsiders during the early stages of the fire, suggesting possible links to SCE equipment.
The SCE has not identified typical or obvious indications supporting this association, such as broken conductors, fresh arc marks in the reserve origin area, or evidence of faults in the energized lines running through that area. ”
This week, SCE also reported to state regulators that the equipment may have caused a Hearst fire that burned nearly 800 acres in Schirmer last month. SCE said it has not determined where Eaton Fire fires but is investigating all data and information.
The four power lines on Eton Canyon had a short increase in current at the time the fire broke out, the utility said in a separate filing.
Zhao grew up in rural China, and his parents died when he was four years old, Shaw says. Zhao studied at Peking University and eventually moved to Shanghai, where he met Shaw’s mother.
Zhao moved to California in the late 1980s and settled in Altadena. He encouraged the show to pursue computer science as a college major.
Shaw and his parents moved to their Altadena home in September 2005. The show moved to Oregon when he got a new job, and his parents remained in Los Angeles. His mother died during the COVID pandemic and forced his father to live there himself.
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