Southern California Edison increased the number of Eaton fire victims that are eligible to file claims for damages in its final compensation proposal, though some Altadena residents say the utility’s program still falls short.
After talking to residents about the plan it released in July, Edison said it decided to expand the area of homes that are eligible for compensation for smoke damage.
“Expanding the eligibility area is one of the most significant updates made as a result of feedback,” said Pedro Pizarro, the chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company. “The number of qualified properties nearly doubled for those with damage from smoke, soot or ash.”
The utility also increased the amount of compensation it is offering for some victims. For example, each child in a family that lost its home will be eligible to receive $75,000 for pain and suffering, up from $50,000 in the initial plan.
To receive payments under the utility’s Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program, families must agree to drop any lawsuits they filed against the utility for the Jan. 7 fire.
The program also is open to businesses that lost revenues and renters who lost property. And it covers those who suffered physical injuries or had family members who died.
Edison is launching the victim compensation program even though government fire investigators have not released their report on the cause of the fire. The inferno swept through Altadena, destroying 9,400 homes and other structures and killing 19 people.
Videos captured the fire igniting under a century-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon that Edison had not used since 1971, and Pizarro has said a leading theory is that the line somehow re-energized and ignited the blaze. Edison said in a federal securities filing this week that “absent additional evidence, SCE believes that it is likely that its equipment could be found to have been associated with the ignition.”
In documents detailing its final compensation plan, the utility included the example of a family of four with a 1,500-square-foot home that was destroyed. The family would receive $900,000 to rebuild, $360,000 for personal property, $140,000 for loss of use and $380,000 for pain and suffering. It also would receive a $200,000 “direct claim premium” for agreeing to settle outside of court.
That total of $1,980,000 is then reduced by the family’s $1 million of insurance coverage, according to the company’s example.
On Thursday, state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena) sent a letter to Edison saying she was concerned about how the utility was requiring victims to waive their future legal rights in order to get compensation. And she called on Edison to provide immediate housing assistance to fire victims.
“Having acknowledged its potential role in starting the Eaton Fire, Edison must do everything within its power to prioritize the needs of survivors and make this commitment a core part of its corporate duty,” she wrote to Pizarro. “This means ensuring fire victims can recover and rebuild their lives with the support they are owed.”
Edison expects to be reimbursed for most or all of the payments it makes to victims by a $21-billion state wildfire fund that Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers created in 2019 to shield utilities from bankruptcy. Administrators of the wildfire fund told members of the state Catastrophe Response Council this week that they expect Eaton fire claims “to be in the tens of billions of dollars.”
In September, Newsom signed a bill that will bolster the money available by another $18 billion for future wildfires. Under that bill, Edison is allowed to raise electric rates for any Eaton fire costs that exceed the original $21-billion fund.
Some Eaton fire survivors told the council, which oversees the wildfire fund, that Edison’s program fails to fully cover damages suffered by victims. Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, recently sent the council a report detailing where her group found shortfalls. For example, Chen said, Edison is deducting a homeowner’s full insurance coverage from the compensation amounts even if the insurer has reimbursed the family for only part of that amount.
“Nine months after Edison’s negligence shattered our lives, the toll is clear,” the group’s report states. “Many have drained retirement savings, maxed out credit cards, or watched marriages and health deteriorate under the strain. “
“You destroyed our homes, lives and community,” the report says of Edison. “Fix what you broke. “
Chen’s group joined with Perez in calling for Edison to provide emergency housing assistance for victims.
Edison said its program is designed “to help the community recover and rebuild faster.” The utility said a report by RAND, the non-profit research group it hired to assess the compensation plan, determined the payment amounts “used modern statistical methods and in our judgment were thoughtfully done and well executed.”
Edison said victims can start filing for claims now and that it expects to get back to them with an offer within 90 days.
Standing behind a lectern emblazoned with the words “Cutting Utility Bills,” Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law last month a package of energy bills that he said “reduces the burden on ratepayers.”
Tucked into one of those bills: a paragraph that could allow Southern California Edison to shift billions of dollars of Eaton fire damage costs to its customers.
Among other things, the bill allows Edison to start charging customers for any Eaton fire costs exceeding the state’s $21-billion wildfire fund.
“I was shocked to see that,” said April Maurath Sommer, executive director of the Wild Tree Foundation, which tracks state government actions on utility-sparked fires. “It’s effectively a bailout.”
Other amendments in the 231-page bill known as SB 254 helped not just Edison, but all three of the state’s biggest for-profit utilities, further limiting the costs that they and their shareholders would face if the companies’ equipment ignited a catastrophic wildfire.
Previous legislation championed by Newsom, a 2019 bill known as AB 1054, already had sharply limited the utilities’ liabilities for wildfires they cause.
Staff in the governor’s office declined a request for an interview. In a statement, Daniel Villasenor, a spokesman for Newsom, called SB 254 “smart public policy, not a giveaway.”
Newsom’s staff noted that the state Public Utilities Commission would later review Eaton fire costs, determining if they were “just and reasonable.” If some costs billed to customers were rejected in that review, Edison shareholders would have to reimburse them for those amounts, the governor’s office said.
According to the legislation, that review of costs isn’t required until all Eaton claims are settled, leaving the possibility that customers would have to cover even costs found to be unreasonable for years.
“That will be expensive news to a lot of people,” said Michael Boccadoro, executive director of the Agricultural Energy Consumers Assn. “It is unfortunately what happens when major policies are done in the final hours of the Legislature with little transparency.”
Damages for the Eaton fire have been estimated to be as high as $45 billion — which could greatly exceed the $21-billion fund.
Homes in Altadena lay in ruins after the Eaton fire.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Sheri Scott, an actuary at Milliman, told state officials in July that insured losses alone range from $13.7 billion to $22.8 billion. That estimate doesn’t include payments to families who were uninsured or underinsured, or compensation for pain and suffering.
The bill allows Edison to issue bonds secured by new payments from its electric customers for Eaton fire costs that can’t be covered by the $21-billion fund.
Kathleen Dunleavy, an Edison spokeswoman, said the company supported the bill’s language because the bonds secured by customer payments provide a lower cost of borrowing than if the company used traditional financing. “Every dollar counts for our customers,” Dunleavy said.
“There are a lot of variables here,” Dunleavy added. “The investigation is ongoing and there is not an estimate of the total cost of the Eaton fire.”
Newsom’s office noted that under the amendments the utilities won’t get to earn a profit on $6 billion of wildfire prevention expenditures. Customers will still have to pay for the costs, but they won’t be charged extra for shareholders’ profit.
Since early this year, Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric had been lobbying Newsom and state legislative leaders, urging them to bolster the $21-billion fund because of concerns it could be exhausted by the Eaton fire’s extraordinary cost.
Videos captured the Jan. 7 inferno igniting under a century-old transmission line that Edison had not used for 50 years. The wildfire swept through Altadena, destroying 9,400 homes and other structures and killing at least 19 people.
Edison now faces hundreds of lawsuits filed by victims. The suits accuse Edison of negligence, claiming it failed to safely maintain its equipment and left in place the unused transmission line, which lawyers say Edison knew posed a fire risk.
“We’ll respond to the allegations in the litigation,” Dunleavy said, adding that the company inspects and maintains idle lines in the same way as its energized lines.
Even though the government’s investigation into the cause has not been released, Edison announced in July that it was starting a program to directly pay victims for damages.
The company has also begun settling with insurance companies that paid out claims for properties they insured in Altadena that were destroyed or damaged.
Limiting Edison’s liability for Eaton fire
The utility is expecting to be reimbursed for most or all of the settlements and the costs of the fire by the $21-billion wildfire fund that Newsom and lawmakers created through the 2019 legislation, according to a July update Edison gave to its investors.
The first $1 billion of damages is covered by an insurance policy paid by its customers.
After state officials warned that the Eaton fire could deplete the state fund, Newsom said in July he was working on a plan to create an additional fund of $18 billion.
Two days before the Legislature was scheduled to recess for the year, three lawmakers added complex language to SB 254 to create what Newsom called the new $18-billion wildfire “continuation account.” Before the bill was amended, consumer groups had been supporting it because it aimed to save electric customers money.
The late amendments required the Legislature to extend its session by a day to meet a state constitutional rule that says proposed legislation must be public for 72 hours before a final vote.
“It’s impossible to believe that legislators could have understood all of this in 72 hours,” Maurath Sommer said. She noted that Newsom’s 2019 law, AB 1054, was introduced and quickly passed in a similar manner. “And it is clear now how poorly that effort fared in achieving the claimed objective of protecting public safety.”
Boccadoro said he believed the amendments were added to a bill favored by consumer groups to give it “some political cover.”
Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Irvine), one of bill’s authors, said she believed utilities needed protection from wildfire liabilities because of a legal doctrine in California known as inverse condemnation, which makes them responsible for damages even if they weren’t negligent in starting it.
“This is the best possible deal for ratepayers as we navigate the truly devastating impacts of the climate crisis,” Petrie-Norris said of the legislation. The other two authors — state Sens. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park) and Aisha Wahab (D-Hayward) — did not respond to requests for interviews.
After the bill passed, both Edison and PG&E praised its provisions in presentations for investors.
Edison called the bill “a key action” that demonstrated lawmakers’ support of its “financial stability.”
The amendments added to the protections that utilities gained in 2019 through Newsom’s AB 1054. At that time, PG&E was in bankruptcy proceedings. It had filed for protection after its transmission line was found to have ignited the 2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed most of the town of Paradise.
PG&E explained in a September presentation that before Newsom and lawmakers changed the law in 2019, utilities that wanted to pass fire damage costs to customers “bore the burden of proving” that their conduct related to the blaze was reasonable and prudent.
Newsom’s 2019 law changed that standard, PG&E said, so that the utility’s conduct was automatically deemed reasonable if state regulators had granted the company what the law called a safety certificate.
Since 2019, the state has regularly issued the companies these certificates — even when regulators find maintenance and safety problems.
Edison received a safety certificate less than a month before the Eaton fire, even though it had thousands of open work orders, including some on the transmission lines in the canyon where the fire started.
To get a certificate, the utilities must submit a plan to state regulators for preventing their equipment from sparking fires. They also must tie executive pay to the company’s safety performance, with bonuses expected to take a hit when more fires are sparked or people are killed.
Even though Edison failed at key safety measures last year, The Times found that cash bonuses for four of its top five executives rose. The company said that was because of their performance on responsibilities beyond safety.
With a safety certificate in hand, Edison told investors in July that the maximum it would pay for the Eaton fire under the law’s limit was $3.9 billion, a fraction of the expected costs. The utility said the wildfire fund would reimburse it for all the costs, unless an outside party can raise “serious doubt” that it had not acted reasonably before the fire.
The SB 254 amendments also clarified key language in the 2019 law — clarifications that Edison told investors in September were “constructive for potential Eaton fire losses.”
That language allows utilities that cause repeated major wildfires within a period of three years to reduce what they must pay back to the fund for a second fire if they are found to have acted imprudently.
“This certainly does not seem to encourage utilities to stop causing fires,” Maurath Sommer said of the provision.
Edison’s Dunleavy dismissed concern about the provision. “Safety remains our top priority,” she said.
Campaign contributions to Newsom
The three utilities have long been generous political donors to both Democrats and Republicans in California, including to Newsom and current legislative leaders in Sacramento.
Edison, for example, gave $100,000 to Newsom’s campaign last year to pass the mental health initiative known as Proposition 1.
This summer Edison gave $190,000 to the state Democratic Party, which is helping Newsom campaign for Proposition 50, which would redraw congressional districts.
Newsom’s staff didn’t respond to questions about the contributions.
Dunleavy said that the company’s political donations are not charged to customers. She said Edison gives contributions to politicians who share its commitment to “safely serve our customers.”
Newsom said in 2019 that the bill capping utilities’ fire liabilities would “move our state toward a safer, affordable and reliable energy future.”
He and lawmakers said the law would make the public safer by requiring the utilities to do more to prevent fires, including aggressive tree trimming and the installation of more insulated wires.
Even though the utilities have raised electric rates to charge customers for billions of dollars of fire prevention work, their electrical equipment continues to spark blazes.
According to Cal Fire statistics, if the Eaton fire is confirmed to have been ignited by Edison’s transmission line, at least seven of the state’s 20 most destructive wildfires would have been caused by the three utilities’ power lines. Two of those utility-sparked fires happened after the 2019 law passed.
Edison’s lines ignited 178 fires last year — 45% more compared with 2019. The company attributed last year’s increase to weather conditions that created more dry vegetation.
The governor’s staff said they disagreed with claims that the legislation reduced utilities’ accountability. They pointed to a measure in the 2019 law that requires a utility to reimburse the wildfire fund for all damages from a fire if its actions are found to constitute “conscious or willful disregard of the rights and safety of others.”
Advocates for utility customers have repeatedly said they believe that standard is too high to keep California utilities from causing more fires.
“Instances of utility mismanagement could easily fall short of the ‘conscious or willful disregard’ standard yet nonetheless cause a series of catastrophic wildfire events,” wrote the commission’s Public Advocates Office in a filing soon after the 2019 law passed.
Federal prosecutors sued Southern California Edison, saying its equipment ignited the 2019 Saddle Ridge fire, which burned nearly 9,000 acres and damaged or destroyed more than 100 homes in the San Fernando Valley.
The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Tuesday claims that Edison was negligent in designing, constructing and maintaining its high-voltage transmission line that runs through Sylmar. Equipment on the line is now suspected of causing both the 2019 fire as well as the Hurst fire on Jan. 7.
Edison has acknowledged that its equipment may have ignited the Jan. 7 fire, but it has been arguing for years in a separate lawsuit brought by Saddle Ridge fire victims that its equipment did not start the 2019 fire.
Lawyers for the victims say they have evidence showing the transmission line is not properly grounded, leading to two wildfires in six years. Edison’s lawyers call those claims an “exotic ignition theory” that is wrong.
In the new lawsuit, the federal government is seeking to recover costs for the damage the 2019 fire caused to 800 acres of national forest, including for the destruction of wildlife and habitats. The lawsuit also requests reimbursement for the federal government’s costs of fighting the fire.
“The ignition of the Saddleridge Fire by SCE’s power and transmission lines and equipment is prima facie evidence of SCE’s negligence,” states the complaint, which was filed by acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli.
“The United States has made a demand on SCE for payment of the costs and damages incurred by the United States to suppress the Saddleridge Fire and to undertake emergency rehabilitation efforts,” the complaint said. “SCE has not paid any part of the sum.”
David Eisenhauer, an Edison spokesman, said the company was reviewing the federal government’s lawsuit and “will respond through the legal process.”
“Our hearts are with the people and communities that were affected,” he said.
The 2019 wildfire tore through parts of Sylmar, Granada Hills and Porter Ranch, killing at least one person.
The fire ignited under a transmission tower just three minutes after a steel part known as a y-clevis broke on another tower more than two miles away, according to two government investigations into the fire. The equipment failure on that tower caused a fault and surge in power.
In the ongoing lawsuit by victims of the 2019 fire, the plaintiffs argue that the power surge traveled along the transmission lines, causing some of the towers miles away to become so hot that they ignited the dry vegetation underneath one of them. Government investigators also found evidence of burning at the base of a second tower nearby, according to their reports.
The lawyers for the victims say the same problem — that some towers are not properly grounded — caused the Hurst fire on the night of Jan. 7.
“The evidence will show that five separate fires ignited at five separate SCE transmission tower bases in the same exact manner as the fire that started the Saddle Ridge fire,” the lawyers wrote in a court filing this summer.
In that filing, the lawyers included parts of a deposition they took of an L.A. Fire Department captain who said he believed that Edison was “deceptive” for not informing the department that its equipment failed just minutes before the 2019 blaze ignited, and for having an employee offer to buy key surveillance video from that night from a business next to one of its towers.
Edison has denied its employee offered to buy the video. A spokeswoman said the utility did not tell the fire department that its equipment failed because it happened at a tower miles away from where the fire ignited.
Roberto Delgado and his wife, Ninoschka Perez, can see the towers from their Sylmar home. They told The Times they saw a fire on Jan. 7 under the same tower where investigators say the 2019 fire started.
The family had to quickly flee in the case of each fire.
“We were traumatized,” Delgado said. “If I could move my family away from here I would.”
The Jan. 7 fire burned through 799 acres and required thousands of people to evacuate. Firefighters extinguished the blaze before it destroyed any homes.
Southern California Edison hasn’t accepted responsibility for igniting the Eaton fire, but it is now offering each victim who lost their home hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to a draft of its planned compensation program.
The owner of a 1,500-square-foot home destroyed in the wildfire, given as an example in the company’s draft, would receive $900,000 to rebuild. In addition, the utility is offering that owner an additional $200,000 for agreeing to settle their claim directly with Edison.
The family of each destroyed home would also get compensation for pain and suffering — $100,000 for each adult and $50,000 for each child, according to the draft.
Edison announced in late July that it was creating a program to directly compensate Eaton fire victims to help avoid lengthy litigation. The Jan. 7 fire destroyed more than 9,400 homes and other structures in Altadena and killed at least 19 people.
Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company, said in a press release Wednesday that the compensation program for victims was “designed to help them focus on their recovery.”
The company said that it would hold four community meetings to get public comments on the proposed compensation plan, the first scheduled for Thursday at 7 p.m.
“While the investigation continues, inviting input on draft details is the next step in helping the community rebuild faster and stronger,” Pizarro said.
Edison said it had hired consultants Kenneth Feinberg and Camille Biros, who both worked on the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, to help create the program.
“The proposed fund is designed as an alternative to conventional litigation in the courtroom,” said Biros. “The terms and conditions are completely transparent and voluntary. No claimants or their lawyers are required to participate until and unless they are satisfied with the compensation offer.”
Private lawyers representing Eaton fire victims have urged caution. They say similar programs created by utilities to compensate victims of other wildfires resulted in lower payouts than families received through lawsuit settlements.
In court, Edison already faces dozens of lawsuits filed by Eaton fire victims. Settling those lawsuits is expected to take years. Attorneys bringing the cases on behalf of victims would get 30% or more of the eventual settlement amounts.
Edison’s draft protocol lists proposed payments for people who were injured, renters who lost their belongings and businesses that lost property or revenues when they were forced to close.
Among the payments to the families of those who died would be $1.5 million for pain and suffering and other noneconomic damages, according to the draft. Each surviving spouse and other dependent would receive an additional $500,000.
In addition, the family who lost a loved one would receive a direct claim premium — a bonus for settling directly with Edison — of $5 million, according to the plan.
Edison said the direct claim premiums — which include $200,000 for families who lost their home, $10,000 to those whose homes were damaged, as well as other amounts for other victims — were only available through its program and would not be offered in litigation.
The utility said victims don’t need an attorney to apply for the compensation. But it is also offering to add 10% to the damage amounts, excluding the direct claim premiums, to cover legal fees of those who have a lawyer.
Victims will get their compensation offers within nine months of applying, Edison said. The company said it was also offering victims a “fast pay” option where they could receive their financial settlement offer within 90 days.
“Speed in processing claims is essential,” Feinberg said.
Edison has said that the government’s investigation into the fire could take as long as 18 months. Pizarro said in April that a leading theory was that a century-old transmission line that had not been in service since the 1970s somehow became reenergized and sparked the fire.
If Edison’s equipment is found to have caused the blaze, the company would be reimbursed for the cost of amounts it pays to victims by a $21 billion state fund. The fund was created by lawmakers in 2019 to shield utilities from bankruptcy if their equipment ignites a catastrophic fire.
The public must register to attend the meetings at ce.com/directclaimsupdates. The final meeting is at 7 p.m. on Monday.
The California Public Utilities Commission is expected to allow Southern California Edison to hike customer bills by nearly 10% next month, and there may be more increases to come.
Edison’s plan would boost the average residential bill by $17 a month or about $200 a year, the commission said. The monthly bill for a customer using 500 kilowatts would jump from $171 to $188 on Oct. 1.
The five commissioners are scheduled to vote Thursday on the PUC administrative law judge’s proposal. It’s just one of multiple rate hikes Edison has asked the commission to approve in the coming year.
Scores of angry customers have written to the commission since Edison proposed the hike, asking the panel to deny it.
Some customers have pointed out that even as Edison has charged more for tree trimming and equipment upgrades meant to make its system safer and more reliable, its electric lines continue to spark fires.
The company now faces dozens of lawsuits from victims of the Jan. 7 Eaton fire, which killed at least 19 people and destroyed thousands of homes in Altadena. Video captured the fire igniting under an Edison transmission tower. The investigation into the fire’s cause is continuing.
“Please, do not let SCE pass their damages on to their customers,” Sara Green, a Crestline resident, wrote to the commission. “Let them cut executive salaries and forgo dividends, rather than pass this on unilaterally to every customer.”
Other customers have complained about increasing outages, including the preventative blackouts the company uses to try to stop its equipment from sparking fires in hot, windy weather.
William Pilling, a resident of Rovana, a small unincorporated community near Bishop, told the commission last month that he and his neighbors were experiencing “highly frequent service interruptions.”
“This is the very definition of unreliable service,” Pilling wrote. ”We are now being asked to pay more per unit for a lower quality good.”
David Eisenhauer, an Edison spokesman, said in an interview that the company was sensitive to concerns about rising rates. “We know that rate changes are challenging for customers,” he said.
“The cost of action is high, but the cost of inaction is higher,” Eisenhauer said. The increases, he said, were needed to support “a reliable and resilient electric grid that is ready to enable the clean energy transition.”
The proposed 10% hike is the result of what the commission calls a general rate case, where the agency allows utilities to propose how much they need to spend to operate and maintain the electrical grid for the next four years.
After months of hearings and debate, an administrative law judge recommended that the commission allow Edison to spend $9.8 billion on those costs this year — 13.7% more than the amount authorized for last year, according to the release. The proposal is less than the nearly $10.5 billion that Edison had initially requested.
Under the plan, Edison will get additional increases for inflation — and customers will see corresponding hikes — for each year through 2028, the commission said.
Edison says it has increased its spending aimed at preventing wildfires, including by undergrounding lines, installing new insulated wires and increasing equipment inspections in areas with high fire risk. The company has also increased the trimming of trees and other vegetation growing near its equipment.
Eisenhauer said that since 2019 wildfire-related investments have helped drive up rates.
He added that demand for electricity is “growing faster than it has in decades” leading to higher costs. In addition, he said, “threats to grid safety and reliability are becoming more frequent and more costly.”
Since 2014, Edison’s rates have risen by 80% — more than twice the rate of inflation, the commission’s public advocates office said in a May report.
More than 860,000 Edison customers — or 19% of the total — are behind in paying their electric bills, the report said. The average unpaid balance was $957.
The proposed 10% hike is one of several increases Edison has asked the commission to approve, or that state officials have already greenlighted.
In November, customers who use little electricity, like those living in small apartments or those owning solar panels, will see higher bills when the company begins adding a $24 monthly fixed charge, according to a recent Edison release.
In return, the price per kilowatt hour will fall, leading to possible savings for those using more power. For example, a residential customer using 1,000 kilowatts per month — double the average — will see their bill decline to $355 from $380, according to the release.
The commission designed the new monthly charge, which applies to customers of the state’s three largest for-profit electric companies, so that revenue increases from the new fees match the loss from the lower price per kilowatt hour.
The new fee was created under a bill pushed through the state Legislature in 2022 by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The utilities asked for the change in how electricity was billed to encourage Californians to switch to electric-powered vehicles and home appliances.
Edison also expects to raise rates for the damages from two catastrophic wildfires that investigators found the utility’s equipment sparked.
It has asked the commission for a nearly 2% increase to cover $5.4 billion in damages from the 2018 Woolsey fire, which killed three people and destroyed more than 1,600 homes and other structures in Malibu and nearby communities.
Earlier this year, the commission agreed Edison could increase rates by less than 1% to collect $1.6 billion from customers for damages from the 2017 Thomas fire. The blaze burned more than 280,000 acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties and left barren hillsides that helped set off mudslides in Montecito that killed 23 people. The commission must still sign off on final approval of the hike.
Eisenhauer said that under state law utilities are allowed to shift fire damages to customers if they have operated their system prudently and reasonably. He said the two fires were “largely driven by unprecedented and extreme weather events and other factors outside SCE’s control.”
In another proposal, Edison has asked the commission to raise customer bills by 2.1% to increase profits going to its investors, according to its customer notice. The plan would increase its cost of capital — the rate that helps determine how much profit it earns when it builds electric lines and other infrastructure.
The utility asked for the increase in investor profits after its stock price plummeted in January when lawyers claimed its transmission line had ignited the Eaton fire. The company told the commission that because of California’s high risk of wildfire, it needed to earn higher profits to encourage investors to continue holding its stock and to bolster its credit rating.
Despite Edison’s rapidly rising spending on insulated wires, tree trimming and other fire prevention work, its equipment sparked 178 fires last year — up from 90 in 2023.
Company executives said most of those ignitions were small fires that did not spread. The number of fires each year, they said, depends on the weather. Last year, heavy rain and then hot weather, they said, left more dried vegetation.
Edison has said its increased fire prevention work will decrease the number of times that it must shut off power to communities in hot, windy weather to stop lines from sparking fires.
Yet the company said at an Aug. 19 meeting that it expects the number of days of preventative power shutoffs to increase by 20% to 40% this year and that the number of customers subject to them could be twice as high.
Eisenhauer explained that the number of preventative shutoffs was expected to rise because the utility recently lowered the wind speed thresholds that trigger them. The company also added 47,000 more customers to areas believed to have high fire risk, which are subject to the preventative shutoffs, he said.
At the August meeting, Edison executives touted the success of the company’s fire prevention work.
In a presentation, Timothy O’Toole, an Edison board member and head of its safety and operations committee, noted the devastation the January fires caused in and around Los Angeles.
“Nonetheless, we remain very proud and confident in the progress we’ve made,” he said.
O’Toole said the utility’s fire prevention work had “created ever greater protection for our communities and our customers.”
Later in the meeting, Caroline Thomas Jacobs, director of the state Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety, questioned O’Toole’s repeated praise of the company’s work to prevent fires.
“Your tone sounded defensive and justifying the progress that’s made as opposed to acknowledging the humility of what an event like the January fires I would think would bring,” she said to O’Toole.
The public can comment on the proposed hike at the meeting on Thursday or in the docket for the case.
Federal prosecutors on Thursday sued Southern California Edison over its alleged role in the deadly Eaton fire, a blaze that killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,000 homes and other structures in Altadena and the surrounding area.
In a civil complaint, prosecutors allege that the Eaton fire was ignited by “faulty power infrastructure or by sparks from faulty power infrastructure owned, maintained, and operated” by Edison.
The results of the official investigation of the fire by the Los Angeles County Fire Department and California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection have not yet been announced. The government’s lawsuit notes that the investigation into the fire remains ongoing.
The government also sued Edison on Thursday for its alleged role in the Fairview fire, which burned near Hemet in 2022. Prosecutors are seeking tens of millions of dollars in damages from Edison, alleging the company’s negligence caused both fires.
Together, the fires burned tens of thousands of acres of National Forest System lands, killed 21 people and destroyed thousands of buildings, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
Acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli said “there’s no reason to wait” for the results of the investigation into the Eaton fire. During a Thursday morning news conference, Essayli cited evidence and “Edison’s own statements … that there’s no other apparent cause for the fire.”
“We believe that the evidence is clear that Edison is at fault,” he said. “The reason not to wait is because fire season is coming up again. We want Edison to change the way it does business. It does not maintain its infrastructure in a way to prevent fires. We do not want another fire igniting.”
Essayli stressed that the intention is for the utility company and “not the ratepayers” to bear the burden of the costs.
“Innocent hardworking Californians who pay their electricity bills should not have to pay for Edison’s negligence by incurring higher utility rates,” he said.
Jeff Monford, a spokesman for Southern California Edison, told The Times that the company is reviewing the lawsuits “and will respond through the appropriate channels.” It is “committed to wildfire mitigation through grid hardening, situational awareness and enhanced operational practices.”
In addition, he said, “our thoughts are with the community affected by the Fairview fire. We continue our work to reduce the likelihood of our equipment starting a wildfire.”
Although the cause of the Eaton fire is still under investigation, Monford said, it “was heartbreaking for so many of us who live and work in the Los Angeles area.”
In April, Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company, said that “a leading hypothesis” of Eaton fire investigators was that a century-old transmission line, last used during the Vietnam War, somehow became reenergized and sparked the fire.
The government’s lawsuit cites a July Edison filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, in which the utility company stated it was “not aware of evidence pointing to another possible source of ignition” for the Eaton fire.
In March, the California Public Utilities Commission fined Edison $2.2 million for the Fairview fire, which killed two people and destroyed 36 homes and other structures in Hemet.
The commission said the utility violated state regulations by failing to cooperate with investigators and not safely maintaining its electrical equipment.
State investigators concluded that the 2022 Fairview fire was ignited when Edison’s equipment came in contact with a cable owned by Frontier Communications.
The government is seeking more than $40 million in damages tied to the Eaton fire. For the Fairview fire, the government is seeking to recover about $37 million in damages incurred by the Forest Service, including approximately $20 million in fire-suppression costs, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A.
“The lawsuits filed today allege a troubling pattern of negligence resulting in death, destruction, and tens of millions of federal taxpayer dollars spent to clean up one utility company’s mistakes,” Essayli said in a written statement Thursday.
“We hope that today’s filings are the first step in causing the beginnings of a culture change at Southern California Edison, one that will make it a responsible, conscientious company that helps — not harms — our community.”
Edison is facing dozens of lawsuits from people who lost their homes or businesses in the Jan. 7 Eaton fire. A study by UCLA estimated that losses from the fire could be $24 billion to $45 billion.
State officials say damage claims from the Eaton fire could wipe out a $21-billion fund California created to shield utilities from the cost of blazes sparked by their electrical lines.
Roberto Delgado and his wife were praying the rosary on the night of Jan. 7 when they heard two loud booms that shook their Sylmar home. Then came a flash of light so bright that in the dead of night they could briefly see out their window the rocks and gullies of the San Gabriel foothills behind their house.
Seconds later, Delgado said in an interview, the couple saw flames under two electric transmission towers owned by Southern California Edison — even more shocking because they had seen a fire ignite under one of those towers just six years before.
“We were traumatized,” he said. “It was almost the exact same thing.” In both fires, the family was forced to race to their car and flee with few belongings as the flames rushed through the brush toward their home, which survived both blazes.
Edison’s maintenance of its power lines is now under scrutiny in the wake of January’s devastating Eaton fire, which destroyed a wide swath of Altadena and killed 19 people. Video captured by eyewitnesses shows the Eaton fire igniting under Edison transmission towers.
A lawsuit making its way through Los Angeles County Superior Court is raising new questions about Edison’s role in the 2019 Saddle Ridge fire in Sylmar and whether the company was transparent about the cause of the blaze. The fire killed at least one person and destroyed or damaged more than 100 homes and other structures. Firefighters were able to contain the more recent Sylmar fire, called Hurst, before any homes were destroyed.
The lawyers contend that both fires were caused by the same problem: an improperly grounded transmission line running through the foothills of Sylmar that Edison failed to fix, which the company denies.
In a court filing, the lawyers included a deposition they took of an L.A. Fire Department captain who said he believed that Edison was “deceptive” for not informing the department that its equipment failed just minutes before the 2019 blaze ignited, and for having an employee offer to buy key surveillance video from that night from a business next to one of its towers.
Edison has flatly disputed the lawyers’ assertions, calling their claims about the 2019 fire an “exotic ignition theory” based on “an unproven narrative.”
Kathleen Dunleavy, a spokeswoman for Edison, said that the utility had complied with the requests of investigators looking into the two fires and that “there is no connection” between the incidents.
Dunleavy said Edison did not tell the fire department about the failure of its equipment in 2019 because it happened at a tower miles away from where the fire ignited. And she said it is common for any investigator to seek to obtain video that could aid in an investigation. “SCE’s investigator did not offer to buy surveillance video,” she said.
“We follow the law. Period,” she said.
Dunleavy said the company has completed tests that show the transmission line is safe. She declined to share the results and pointed to testimony by Edison’s expert in the case — Don Russell, a Texas A&M professor of electrical engineering — who said the line was properly grounded.
As for the Jan. 7 Hurst fire, the utility told regulators in a February letter that it believes its equipment “may be associated with the ignition” of the blaze. The letter said the company found two conductors on the ground under a Sylmar tower. The repairs, the letter said, included replacing equipment at several towers and more than three miles of cable.
Delgado and Perez say that on the night of the fire they heard two loud booms and a flash of light so bright they could briefly see out their window the rocks and gullies of the San Gabriel foothills.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Undergrounding of towers questioned
In dispute is whether the failure of steel equipment at the top of an Edison transmission tower on the night of Oct. 10, 2019, caused a massive power surge across the system, resulting in multiple towers becoming electrified and intensely hot.
The tower, where the steel part known as a y-clevis broke, sits just off the 210 freeway in Sylmar on land shared with a nursery. The Edison tower behind Delgado’s home where investigators say the 2019 fire ignited is more than two miles away from the nursery.
The attorneys said in court filing that Edison made a “cost-saving choice” when building the transmission line in 1970 to not include “any purposeful grounding devices” that would enable power surges to dissipate down the tower and into the earth. Instead, the company used “only insufficient concrete footings,” the lawyers said in their filing.
Mark Felling, an electrical engineer and paid expert in the case, testified that he found that the size of the cement footings under the towers along the line varied by a factor of 10. The size of the footings, he said,affects whether the tower is properly grounded.
Felling said he believed that a sudden power surge could cause some towers to become “electrified and potentially very hazardous.”
Edison has disputed that theory and said in court that the electrical surge caused by the failure of equipment at the tower by the nursery safely dispersed. The utility said it was scientifically impossible that the electrical surge caused a fire 2½ miles away.
“The undisputed material facts cannot support plaintiff’s theory that SCE caused the Saddleridge fire,” the company wrote in a motion this month, which asked the judge to dismiss the case. A hearing on the motion is scheduled for Oct. 6.
Edison’s motion included a copy of the L.A. Fire Department’s investigation, which included new details of how the company responded to fire investigators days after the 2019 fire.
Delgado said his rosary and prayers were important to surviving the fires.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Failure to report power surge
L.A. Fire investigator Robert Price arrived at the dirt road leading up to the hillside transmission line where the fire had ignited the night before to see the yellow crime scene tape lying on the ground and an Edison truck driving out, Price said in his report.
Price also wrote that Edison’s equipment recorded a fault that resulted in a surge of electricity about three minutes before Delgado reported the fire to 911 at 9 p.m. But the company did not tell the Fire Department about the fault, Price wrote.
Instead, L.A. Fire Capt. Timothy Halloran learned from a news report that Sylmar resident Jack Carpenter had recorded a large flash of light on his dashboard camera at 8:57 that night as he was traveling west on the 210 freeway.
Halloran traced the flash to a transmission tower built on land used by Ornelas Wood Recovery Nursery. Halloran interviewed employees at the nursery, who told him that an Edison employee had offered to buy the surveillance footage from the nursery’s camera, according to a deposition Halloran later provided to lawyers representing the victims.
A nursery employee also had taken photos of the broken steel equipment he found at the foot of the tower, according to Price’s report. The employee told Halloran that an Edison crew came the day after the fire and cleaned up the shattered pieces.
Halloran said in the deposition, according to a June court filing, that the company’s failure to report the fault and its offer to buy the nursery’s surveillance video made him believe that the company’s actions were “deceptive.”
Price said in his report that he also saw Edison crews cleaning the towers along the line three days after the fire’s start. An Edison employee told him that the utility cleans the towers once a year but had decided to clean them that day “because they were dirty from the smoke and fire,” Price wrote.
The cleaning did not prevent fire investigators from finding burn marks at the bottom of a second tower not far from where Delgado and his wife live, which Price said may be related to the “catastrophic failure” of equipment at the tower by the nursery.
In his final conclusion on the fire, Price wrote that it was “outside my expertise” to determine whether the failure of equipment at the tower above the nursery “could cause high voltage to travel back through the conductors … and cause a fire, possibly through the tower’s grounding system” more than two miles away.
“Therefore the cause will be undetermined,” Price wrote.
Dunleavy said that Edison had notified the California Public Utilities Commission about the fire before it began cleaning up the broken pieces of equipment found under the tower at the nursery. That cleanup and the company’s repairs, Dunleavy said, were needed to “ensure safety and reliability” of the line.
She added that it was common practice for utilities to wash down equipment after a fire before the system was reenergized.
According to an L.A. Fire investigator, Edison’s equipment recorded a fault that resulted in a surge of electricity about three minutes before Delgado reported the fire to 911 at 9 p.m.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
State utility investigators find violations
Also investigating the 2019 fire in the days after its start was Eric Ujiiye at the Public Utilities Commission.
The commission’s safety staff investigates fires that may have been caused by electric lines to determine whether the utility violated safety regulations.
Ujiiye said in his report that he found that Edison violated five regulations, including failing to safely maintain its equipment at the tower by the nursery.
Even though Price’s investigation for the L.A. Fire Department stated that the cause is undetermined, Ujiiye said in his report that he believed that the failure of equipment at the tower by the nursery “could have led to a fire ignition” at the pylon more than two miles away.
The commission’s staff asked Edison to perform tests to show that the towers on the line were properly grounded. According to a written response from Edison, the utility objected to the request as “vague and ambiguous.” But the company agreed to do the tests, which would be observed by the commission inspectors.
Terrie Prosper, a spokeswoman for the commission, said that the agency’s staff was planning to meet with Edison at the transmission line to witness the tests. However, COVID-19 pandemic restrictions delayed that meeting and the requested undergrounding tests. She said that commission staff later learned that Edison had performed similar tests soon after the fire. Those test results “sufficed,” Prosper said, and the company “was not made to re-do the tests.”
Prosper said the commission did not fine or otherwise penalize Edison for the five violations because the LAFD report said the cause was undetermined. She said company had corrected the violations.
April Maurath Sommer, executive director of the Wild Tree Foundation, which has challenged Edison’s requests to have utility customers pay for fire damages, questioned the commission’s handling of the 2019 fire.
“You would think that the Public Utilities Commission would use fines to address really egregious behavior in the hope it would deter future behavior that causes catastrophic fires,” she said.
Maurath Sommer noted that Edison has been repeatedly found to have failed to cooperate with investigators looking into the cause of devastating fires. For example, commission investigators said in a report that the utility refused to provide photos and other details of what its employees found at the site where the Woolsey fire ignited in 2018. The Edison crew was the first to arrive at the scene of the fire that destroyed hundreds of homes in Malibu. Edison argued that the evidence was protected by attorney-client privilege.
Edison’s Dunleavy said the allegation by commission investigators was later resolved. “We take our obligation to cooperate with the CPUC seriously,” she said.
Prosper of the commission said, “Public safety is, and will remain, our top priority,”
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1.Fire fighters kept an eye on the wild fire burning behind Olive View Medical Center.(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)2.A firefighting plane drops red Phos-Chek, a fire retardant, to protect Olive View Medical Center from wind driven Saddle Ridge wild fire in October 2019.(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)3.Interstate 5 and California State Rute 14 were closed to traffic through Newhall Pass due to the Saddle Ridge fire.(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)4.Firefighters cleared brush and mopped up a hillside along California State Highway 14 due to fire in 2019.(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
Another fire in Sylmar
At about 10:30 on the night of Jan. 7, Katherine Twohy heard a loud crack and saw a bright flash. Edison’s transmission towers in Sylmar skirt around the edge of the Oakridge Mobile Home Park, where Twohy, a retired psychologist, lives.
“I was just coming in my back door and there was just this incredible flashing of white lights,” Twohy said. “Incredibly blue-white lights.”
She walked to her living room window where she can see two Edison towers, which are separated by more than a hundred yards. Twohy said she could see flames at the base of each one.
“The fires had made little circles around the base,” she said.
Twohy said she saw flames under the same towers the night the Saddle Ridge fire ignited in 2019.
“I thought, ‘Oh my god, it’s just like last time,’” Twohy said.
In court, lawyers representing victims of the 2019 fire have seized on Edison’s admission that its equipment may have sparked the Jan. 7 fire.
“The evidence will show that five separate fires ignited at five separate SCE transmission tower bases in the same exact manner” as the 2019 fire, they wrote in a June court filing.
Delgado’s home sits next to the dirt road leading up to the towers. The Jan. 7 fire melted his backyard fence but did little more damage. In the days after the fire, he found that some of the same Edison employees he spoke to in 2019 as a witness reappeared.
“I saw the exact same people from Edison show up,” he said. “I told them your towers almost killed my family again.”
Times staff writer Kevin Rector contributed to this report.
Southern California Edison’s plans to compensate Eaton fire victims for damage were met with skepticism Thursday from lawyers representing Altadena residents, but drew tentative support from others who say the initiative could help shore up the state’s $21-billion wildfire fund.
The utility announced its Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program this week, saying it would be used to quickly pay victims, including those who were insured, while avoiding lengthy litigation.
The announcement comes as state officials consider ways to shore up the state’s fund to compensate wildfire victims, amid fears that it could be fully exhausted by Eaton fire claims. Fees that attorneys receive as part of victim settlements could further strain the fund.
State Sen. Henry Stern (D-Calabasas) said Edison’s new program may have some merit as potentially “a more efficient way” than lawsuits to make sure victims are fairly compensated.
He pointed out that lawyers were “coming across the country to represent” Eaton fire victims. “Are they really getting their money’s worth when they pay 30% to these lawyers?” Stern asked.
Mark Toney, executive director of the Utility Reform Network, said Edison’s program had the potential to reduce costs that otherwise must be covered by the wildfire fund, which was established in part by a surcharge on the bills paid by customers of Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric.
“If Edison is determined to be the cause of the fire, anything they can settle early reduces the costs that otherwise would be paid later,” Toney said.
The utility has released few details of how the program would work, leaving victims who are already coping with uncertainty with more questions. And lawyers who had been seeking to represent victims in lawsuits against Edison were quick to urge caution.
“Without admitting fault or providing transparency, Edison is asking victims to potentially waive their rights,” said Kiley Grombacher, one of dozens of lawyers involved in litigation against Edison for the Jan. 7 wildfire that killed 19 and destroyed 9,000 homes in Altadena.
According to Edison, the program would be open to those who lost homes or businesses as well as renters who lost property. It would also cover those who were harmed by smoke, suffered physical injuries or had family members who died.
“People can file a claim even if they are involved in active litigation,” said Kathleen Dunleavy, an Edison spokeswoman.
Dunleavy said the company would be releasing more information soon, including on eligibility requirements.
At a Thursday meeting in Sacramento of the Catastrophe Response Council, which oversees the wildfire fund, officials said they were creating criteria that Edison must follow in designing the program, including having measures to prevent fraud and clear eligibility standards.
Sheri Scott, an actuary from Milliman, told the council that the firm estimated that losses from the Eaton fire ranged from $13.7 billion to $22.8 billion.
“We heard from our guest today that we might run out of money very quickly,” said Paul Rosenstiel, a member of the council appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
He urged state lawmakers to consider changing the law that created the fund so that less money was at risk of flowing to third parties who aren’t fire victims.
PG&E created a program to directly pay victims of the 2021 Dixie fire, which burned more than 960,000 acres in Northern California. It created a similar program to compensate victims of the 2022 Mosquito fire, which burned nearly 77,000 acres in Placer and El Dorado counties.
PG&E said it offered Mosquito fire victims who lost their homes $500 per square foot and $9,200 per acre for those whose lots did not exceed 5 acres. To aid in rebuilding efforts, victims who decided to reconstruct their homes were eligible for an additional $50,000.
Lynsey Paulo, a PG&E spokeswoman, said in an email that the company paid nearly $50 million to victims of the Dixie fire through its program. That money went to 135 households, she said.
“PG&E’s program was designed to provide claimants with resources to rebuild as quickly as possible and help communities recover,” she said.
Richard Bridgford, a lawyer who represented Dixie fire victims, said that PG&E’s offer was lower than victims won through lawsuits, and that only a fraction of those eligible for the PG&E program decided to participate, he said.
”Victims have uniformly done better when represented by counsel,” said Bridgford, who now represents victims of the Eaton fire.
Edison’s announcement of its program came as fire agencies continue to investigate the cause of the Eaton fire. Edison said in April that a leading theory is that a dormant transmission line, last used in 1971, somehow was reenergized and sparked the blaze. The company says the new compensation program “is not an admission of legal liability.”
“Even though the details of how the Eaton Fire started are still being evaluated, SCE will offer an expedited process to pay and resolve claims fairly and promptly,” Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company, said in a news release. “This allows the community to focus more on recovery instead of lengthy, expensive litigation.”
The utility said it had hired consultants Kenneth R. Feinberg and Camille S. Biros, who had worked on the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, to help design the program.
If Edison is found responsible for the fire, the $21-billion state wildfire fund would reimburse the company for all or most of the amounts paid to victims through the new program or through lawsuits and insurance claims.
Half of the fund’s $21 billion came from charges to electric bills of customers of Edison, PG&E and SDG&E. The other half was contributed by shareholders of those three companies, which are the only utilities that can seek reimbursements from the fund.
Seeking to avoid lengthy litigation, Southern California Edison said Wednesday it will offer to compensate Eaton fire victims directly for damages suffered, even though it has yet to formally concede that its equipment ignited the blaze on Jan. 7.
Edison said it planned to launch a Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program this fall that would be open to those who lost homes, businesses or rental properties in the fire that killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 homes and other structures in Altadena. It would also cover those who were harmed by smoke, suffered physical injuries or had family members who died.
“Even though the details of how the Eaton Fire started are still being evaluated, SCE will offer an expedited process to pay and resolve claims fairly and promptly,” Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company, said in a press release. “This allows the community to focus more on recovery instead of lengthy, expensive litigation.”
The utility said it had hired consultants Kenneth R. Feinberg and Camille S. Biros, who had worked on the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, to help design the program.
Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against Edison in the wake of the Jan. 7 fire that videos captured igniting under a transmission line in Eaton Canyon. The cause is still under investigation, but Pizarro has said a leading theory is that an idle Edison transmission line, last used in 1971, somehow became re-energized and started the blaze.
An attorney who represents fire victims expressed skepticism of the plan, saying it could lead to reduced compensation for fire victims.
“In the past, the utilities have proposed these programs as a means for shorting and underpaying victims,” said attorney Richard Bridgford said. “Victims have uniformly done better when represented by counsel.”
Edison said the program would be designed to quickly compensate victims, including those who were insured. People can apply with or without an attorney, it said. The program is expected to run through 2026.
“The architecture and timing of the SCE direct claims program will be instrumental in efficiently managing funding resources, mitigating interest costs and minimizing inflationary pressures so funds can address actual claims and fairly compensate community members for their losses,” Pizarro said.
If Edison is found responsible for the fire, the state’s $21 billion wildfire fund is expected to reimburse the company for all or most of the payments it makes to victims. Brigford said he believed the wildfire fund would be enough to cover the Eaton fire claims.
“They are trying to make people panic so they don’t get adequate representation,” he said.
Others are concerned that the state wildfire fund is inadequate. Officials at the Earthquake Authority, which administers the wildfire fund, said in documents released in advance of a Thursday meeting that they fear the costs of the Eaton fire could exhaust the fund.
State officials plan to discuss what can be done to lengthen the life of the fund at the meeting.
Edison said more information on eligibility and other details of the compensation plan would be released in the coming weeks.
For fans, parents and sportswriters,Edison’s seven-on-seven passing tournament, known as the Battle at the Beach, on Saturday is a key moment in the summer passing season, leading to the start of official football practice at the end of the month.
It’s not about wins and losses on Saturday but seeing which teams and players have made progress in the offseason and getting a first look at transfer students to see how they might fit in. It’s also a sensitive time for coaches trying to keep players happy so they don’t transfer to another school just as the season is about to begin.
The opportunity to see top skill-position players performing for their teams before pads come on next month is always the attraction of the well-run Edison tournament. The 9 a.m. games offer perhaps the best matchups of the day: Edison vs. Santa Margarita, Cathedral vs. St. John Bosco and Servite vs. Mission Viejo. One of those teams almost certainly will be crowned champion by the end of the day.
Edison coach Jeff Grady understands players are fresh and focused at the start of a long day, so that’s the time you learn the most about a team.
4 more days away from our annual Battle at the Beach Tournament as the Pool Play and Bracket Schedules are officially set
— Edison Football ⚡️ (@EdisonChargerFB) July 9, 2025
Mission Viejo, having beaten Mater Dei to win its own tournament last month, gets the favorite’s role behind quarterback Luke Fahey, an Ohio State commit. Santa Margarita will receive lots of attention in its first appearance since Heisman Trophy winner Carson Palmer was named head coach. There will be lots of focus on quarterbacks, from St. John Bosco’s Koa Malau’ulu to Palos Verdes’ Ryan Rakowski.
Coaches invited to this event know their players are expected to act classy with no fights. The officials use the event to get into shape for the season ahead and try out new officials. Players get to high-five their friends after intense competitions knowing they’re still friends, win or lose.
No one wins an 11-man championship based on seven-on-seven success (linemen are important), but there are so many good receivers and defensive backs in this tournament that it‘s always entertaining to watch and check out if any new players are ready to make an impact.
Southern California Edison’s admission that its equipment may have ignited the Hurst fire in the San Fernando Valley on Jan. 7 is being seized on by lawyers suing the utility company for another fire in the same area nearly six years earlier.
Both the Saddleridge fire in 2019 and the Hurst fire this year started beneath an Edison high-voltage transmission line in Sylmar. The lawyers say faulty equipment on the line ignited both blazes in the same way.
“The evidence will show that five separate fires ignited at five separate SCE transmission tower bases in the same exact manner as the fire that started the Saddleridge fire,” the lawyers wrote of the Hurst fire in a June 9 filing in Los Angeles Superior Court.
The lawyers said the January wildfire is “further evidence” that a transmission pylon known as Tower 2-5 “is improperly grounded.”
Edison told the state Public Utilities Commission in February that “absent additional evidence, SCE believes its equipment may be associated with the ignition of the Hurst Fire.” But the company denies claims that its equipment sparked the 2019 fire, which tore through Sylmar, Porter Ranch and Granada Hills — all suburbs of Los Angeles — burning 8,799 acres.
“We will continue to focus on facts and evidence — not on preposterous and sensational theories that only serve to harm the real victims,” said Edison spokesman David Eisenhauer. He declined further comment on the case.
The Saddleridge wildfire destroyed or damaged more than 100 homes and other structures, according to Cal Fire, and caused at least one death when resident Aiman El Sabbagh suffered a cardiac arrest.
Edison is being sued by insurance companies, including State Farm and USAA, to recoup the cost of damages paid to their policyholders. Homeowners and other victims are also seeking damages. A jury trial for the consolidated cases is set for Nov. 4.
In their June 9 filing, the plaintiffs’ lawyers also claimed Edison wasn’t transparent with officials looking into the cause of the 2019 fire. One fire official characterized the utility’s action as “deceptive,” the filing said.
Edison discovered a fault on its system at 8:57 p.m. — just three minutes before the blaze at the base of its transmission tower was reported to the Fire Department by Sylmar resident Robert Delgado, according to the court filing.
But Edison didn’t tell the Los Angeles city Fire Department about the fault it recorded, the filing said. Instead the fire department’s investigation team discovered the failure on Edison’s transmission lines through dash cam footage recorded by a motorist driving on the 210 Freeway nearby, the filing said.
When Timothy Halloran, a city Fire Department investigator, went to the location of the flash shown on the motorist’s camera, he found “evidence of a failure on SCE’s equipment,” the filing said.
Halloran said in a deposition that employees of the business located where the evidence was found told him that Edison employees “attempted to purchase” footage from the company’s security camera on the night of the fire, the filing said.
“The video footage shows a large flash emanating from the direction of SCE Transmission Tower 5-2,” the filing said.
Halloran testified in his deposition that he believed Edison was trying to be “deceptive” for attempting to purchase the security camera footage and not reporting the system fault to the Fire Department, the lawyers said.
Halloran didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Edison’s maintenance of its transmission lines is now being scrutinized as it faces dozens of lawsuits from victims of the devastating Eaton fire, which also ignited on Jan. 7.
Videos showed that fire, which killed 18 people and destroyed thousands of homes, starting under a transmission tower in Eaton Canyon. The investigation into the cause of the fire is continuing.
Victims of the 2019 fire say they’ve become disheartened as Edison has repeatedly asked for delays in the court case.
“Many plaintiffs have not yet been able to rebuild their homes” because of the delays, wrote Mara Burnett, a lawyer representing the family of the man who died.
Burnett noted that Aiman El Sabbagh was 54 when he suffered a fatal cardiac arrest during the incident. His children, Tala and Adnan El Sabbagh, “feel they were robbed of things they treasured and worked hard for with no apparent recompense in sight.”
Both the Saddleridge and Hurst fires included a similar chain of events where a failure of equipment on one tower resulted in two or more fires igniting under different towers elsewhere on the line, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs.
Edison designed and constructed the towers that run through Sylmar in 1970. They hold up two transmission lines: the Gould-Sylmar 220 kV circuit and the Eagle Rock-Sylmar 220 kV circuit.
In the case of the Saddleridge fire, investigators from the Los Angeles Fire Department and the California Public Utilities Commission found that at 8:57 pm on Oct. 10, 2019, a Y-shaped steel part holding up a transmission line failed, causing the line to fall on a steel arm.
The failure caused a massive electrical fault, lawyers for the plaintiffs say, that sparked fires at two transmission towers that were more than two miles away.
State and city fire investigators say the Saddleridge fire began under one of those towers. And they found unusual burning at the footing of the other tower, according to a report by an investigator at the utilities commission.
The utilities commission investigator said in the report that he found that Edison had violated five state regulations by not properly maintaining or designing its transmission equipment.
This year’s Hurst fire ignited not far away on Jan. 7 at 10:10 p.m. It also began under one of Edison’s transmission towers.
According to Edison’s Feb. 6 report to the utilities commission, the company found that its hardware failed, resulting in equipment falling to the ground at the base of a tower.
The lawyers for the plaintiffs say that they now have more evidence of the fire’s start. They say that investigators found that the hardware failure set off an event — similar to the 2019 fire — that resulted in five fires at five separate transmission tower bases on the same line.
One of those fires spread in high winds to become the Hurst fire. Officials ordered 44,000 people to evacuate. Air tankers and 300 firefighters contained the fire before it reached any homes.
In a high-stakes gamble, Wall Street hedge funds are offering to buy claims that insurers may have against Southern California Edison if the utility is found liable for causing the devastating Eaton fire in Altadena.
The solicitations are legal, but have alarmed California state officials — who loathe the idea of investors profiting from a disaster that claimed 18 lives and destroyed more than 9,400 homes and other structures.
“I think everyone in this room looks at a catastrophe, like what happened in Southern California, and our natural instincts are to say, ‘What can we do to help?’” Tom Welsh, the chief executive of the California Earthquake Authority, which manages the state’s wildfire fund, said at a recent public meeting. “There are other actors in the environment who look at that situation in Southern California and ask instead, “What can I do to profit?’”
The investors are aiming to buy so-called subrogation claims from insurance companies. These are claims that insurers would file against Edison seeking reimbursement for the money they paid to their policyholders for fire damages if it’s determined the utility’s equipment triggered the wildfire that began Jan. 7.
For the insurers, selling the claims — even at a steep discount — allows them to get at least some reimbursement for the money they’ve paid out. For the hedge funds buying the claims, it’s a gamble that could pay big if Edison is found liable and they can cash in those claims for much more than they paid.
More than $17 billion in insurance claims for the Eaton and Palisades fires has been paid out so far, according to the California Department of Insurance.
State officials say California has a stake in the trading of fire-related subrogation claims, which was previously reported by Bloomberg, because of the potential effect on the state’s wildfire fund.
That fund, which currently has about $21 billion, would be used to cover most of the costs of damage claims should Edison be found liable for starting the Eaton blaze. While the cause is still under investigation, a leading theory is that a decommissioned transmission line in Eaton Canyon was reenergized and sparked the blaze, Edison has said.
The wildfire fund is managed by a state board called the Catastrophe Response Council. At its last meeting in May, Welsh told the board that solicitations from New York brokers and investment firms began landing in his email inbox in March.
Ronald Ryder at Oppenheimer & Co., a New York investment firm, told Welsh in an email on April 15 that his company was currently trading the subrogation claims. Ryder wrote that there had already been 10 transactions worth more than $1 billion in recovery rights for the Eaton fire as well as the Palisades fire in Pacific Palisades, where the city of Los Angeles faces potential liability.
In another email, Ryder told Welsh that investors were bidding 47 cents on the dollar for the claims related to the Eaton fire. For the Palisades fire, the bidding was 5 cents on the dollar, Ryder wrote.
Welsh warned the council that “speculative investors” might hold onto the Eaton claims and “really try to get outsized profits by demanding settlements from Edison of 75, 80, 85 cents on the dollar.”
If that were to happen, the wildfire fund could pay out “hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars” more than if the claims were settled directly by the insurers, he said.
“That would really, very negatively impact the durability of the wildfire fund,” Welsh said.
Oppenheimer declined to comment, and Ryder didn’t respond to messages.
Under a 2019 state law, the state wildfire fund would be expected to reimburse Edison for most of the insurers’ payments to policyholders if its electrical equipment is found to have started the Eaton fire. The Palisades fire, which occurred in territory serviced by the L.A. Department of Water and Power, isn’t covered by the state fund.
California lawmakers created the wildfire fund in 2019 to protect the state’s three biggest for-profit utilities — Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric — from bankruptcy if their equipment sparks catastrophic wildfires.
The possibility of large settlements paid out by the wildfire fund has led to dozens of lawsuits against Edison, even before the cause of the fire has been determined.
If found responsible for the fire, Edison would negotiate settlements with the insurers, as well as with homeowners and others who have filed lawsuits, saying they’ve been harmed. The utility would then ask the state wildfire fund to cover those amounts.
If the insurers have sold their claims, however, the investors who bought them would reap the returns. Attorneys who handle the complex transactions would also get a cut and “generally take a very high percentage off the top,” Paul Rosenstiel, a catastrophe council member, said at last month’s meeting.
Already, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state leaders are worried that the $21-billion wildfire fund could be depleted by damage claims from the Eaton fire.
Welsh recounted how a hedge fund had profited in 2019 by buying insurers’ subrogation claims against PG&E after its transmission line was found to have started the 2018 Camp fire that killed 85 people and destroyed much of the town of Paradise. Bloomberg reported at the time that hedge fund Baupost Group made a profit of hundreds of millions of dollars by buying the claims at 35 cents on the dollar and later getting a settlement valued at much more.
To stop hedge funds from profiting on the claims, Welsh said, the earthquake authority is now considering changing its claim administration procedures to make the settlements less lucrative for those investors.
One possible change being discussed, according to authority staff, would require a utility that ignited a wildfire to prioritize settling the claims of victims and insurers who have not sold their subrogation rights before those claims owned by hedge funds.
More than 30 million Californians across the state could see their electric bills go up to pay for the devastating Eaton fire, as officials scramble to shore up a state wildfire fund that could be wiped out by damage claims.
One early estimate places fire losses from the Eaton fire at $24 billion to $45 billion. If Southern California Edison equipment is found to have sparked the blaze on Jan. 7, as dozens of lawsuits allege, the damage claims could quickly exhaust the state’s $21-billion wildfire fund.
“Everyone is concerned about this,” said Michael Wara, director of Stanford’s climate and energy policy program, who was involved in the fund’s creation. “If we need to put more money into the fund, where will it come from?”
The wildfire fund was created to shield the state’s three big utilities from bankruptcy in the event one was found liable for massive fire damages.
At a meeting last month, members of the state Catastrophe Response Council, which oversees the fund, were told that Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders were being urged to extend a monthly surcharge on electric bills beyond its planned expiration in 2035. The fee, called the non-bypassable charge, adds roughly $3 a month to the average residential bill.
“They are asking the people of California to put more money into the fund,” said council member Paul Rosenstiel, a former investment banker and Newsom advisor, according to a transcript of the meeting. “Some of them are asking for an extension of the non-bypassable charge.”
The fee is paid by customers of the state’s three big for-profit utilities — Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric.
Rosenstiel didn’t respond to a request for comment. At the meeting, he didn’t say who was lobbying the governor and lawmakers to extend the surcharge to ratepayers.
California utility executives have told their investors they have been talking to Newsom and legislative leaders about shoring up the fund. PG&E executives have said that they have asked that no new money come from utilities or their shareholders, which would likely leave electric customers to pay more.
“We continue to advocate that we don’t think there is a good case that investors should contribute to the fund,” Patti Poppe, PG&E’s chief executive, told Wall Street analysts in an April conference call.
A Siller Skycrane removes Southern California Edison’s tower 208 from a hillside in Altadena in May. The idle transmission tower, suspected of sparking the Eaton fire, will be examined at a lab.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of SoCal Edison’s parent company Edison International, was asked in a recent call with Wall Street analysts about the prospects for legislation that would bolster the wildfire fund.
“Clearly the governor’s office is engaged, as are our legislative leaders,” he said, adding that he was “certainly very encouraged by the level of diligence and engagement that I’m seeing.”
Asked to elaborate, Kathleen Dunleavy, a SoCal Edison spokeswoman, said the utility was not seeking a specific solution to questions of the fund’s durability.
“Our focus is to convey the importance of a strong wildfire fund,” she said. “We are not being prescriptive in how to achieve that.”
This year, the electric bill surcharge is expected to add $923 million to the fund, according to California Public Utility Commission records. If the fee was extended an additional 10 years, it would require customers of the three utilities to pay an additional $9 billion into the fund.
That doesn’t sit well with consumer advocates, who point out customers are already on the hook to contribute half of the $21-billion fund, while also paying higher bills to cover costs such as undergrounding and insulated electric wires.
Those measures are intended to make the electric system safer. Yet despite spending billions of dollars last year on wildfire mitigation, the number of fires sparked by its equipment jumped from 90 in 2023 to 178 last year.
Altadena homes lie in ruins after the Eaton fire.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
“We think ratepayers have more than done enough,” said Mark Toney, the executive director of The Utility Reform Network, also known as TURN, a consumer group in San Francisco. “My position is that ratepayers should not pay another penny.”
Rosenstiel said at the May meeting that Newsom and legislative leaders were also being asked for the state’s general fund, which pays for schools, healthcare, prisons and other government operations, to contribute to the fund that protects utilities from wildfire claims.
The governor’s office declined to answer questions and said Newsom’s schedule didn’t allow time for an interview.
Newsom has a seat on the Catastrophe Response Council. He was a no-show at the group’s most recent meeting, sending a designee in his place.
Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Irvine), the chair of the Assembly’s Utilities and Energy Committee, acknowledged that lawmakers are concerned about the fund but said that they are still considering remedies.
“All options are on the table and are being considered and evaluated,” she said. “I have certainly not arrived at a solution yet.”
The cause of the Eaton fire, which killed 18 people and destroyed more than 9,000 homes, businesses and other structures in Altadena, remains under investigation.
Edison CEO Pizarro has said a leading theory is that an unused, decades-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon was reenergized and sparked the blaze. Video captured flames erupting under an Edison transmission tower on the night of the fire.
If Edison’s equipment is found to have started the inferno, the state’s wildfire fund is expected to cover most of the cost of damages over $1 billion, under a 2019 law that was passed after PG&E went bankrupt from its liability for the deadly 2018 Camp fire.
The first $1 billion in damages from the Eaton fire would be covered by insurance that electric customers paid for.
The total cost of the fire in Altadena won’t be known until dozens of lawsuits make their way through the courts, which could take years.
A February study by UCLA economists Zhiyun Li and William Yu estimated that the fire caused $24 billion to $45 billion in property damages and capital losses, or the cost to replace what was destroyed.
Officials at the California Earthquake Authority, which manages the wildfire fund, told members of the Catastrophe Response Council in a May memorandum that the authority had “undertaken a significant project to evaluate alternatives for extending the durability of the Wildfire Fund in the face of potential large losses.”
To determine how to strengthen the fund, authority officials said they had rehired consultants who worked with Newsom’s office in 2019 to create the fund. The four firms will be paid $4.5 million, which the fund will cover, they said.
Among the consultants is Guggenheim Securities, the investment banking arm of Guggenheim Partners. Another subsidiary of Guggenheim Partners owns stock in the state’s three big utilities.
A recommendation to tap utility customers to replenish the fund, instead of the utility companies themselves, would likely have a big impact on company share prices.
“They [Guggenheim] certainly have a vested interest in the financial success of the utilities,” Toney said.
A spokesman for Guggenheim Securities said the stocks owned by the sister company didn’t pose a conflict, saying it “maintains a robust conflict management program, including strict information barriers between its investment banking department and the rest of Guggenheim Partners.”
Wara at Stanford said if Edison is found responsible for the Eaton fire, the wildfire fund would cover what insurers paid to victims and also pay for property damage not covered by insurance.
For example, families who lost their homes but received insurance payouts lower than the value of their property could seek the balance from Edison, he said. The utility would then seek to recover those sums from the wildfire fund.
The other deadly Los Angeles County inferno that ignited on Jan. 7, the Palisades fire, is not covered by the wildfire fund because Pacific Palisades is served by the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, a municipal utility. The fund only covers blazes ignited by equipment owned by the state’s three biggest investor-owned utilities.
“They have their insurance and that’s it,” Wara said of Palisades fire victims.
At its meeting last month, the state Catastrophe Response Council was informed that insurance claims from the Eaton fire have totaled roughly $15 billion so far.
Adding to the damage bill is the potential cost of lawsuits. The possibility that the fund will pay out large amounts for Eaton fire damages has led to dozens of lawsuits being filed against Edison, even before the official cause has been determined.
Families of Altadena residents who died have filed wrongful-death suits. Edison is also facing lawsuits from L.A. County and other local governments for damages, including to public infrastructure such as water systems. Residents living outside the fire’s borders have filed suit, saying they were harmed by lead and other toxins in the smoke.
If a court found Edison negligent in maintaining its equipment, Wara said, victims could ask for compensation for pain and suffering, which would escalate the cost.
“Then the wildfire fund is out of money,” Wara said.
Pizarro has said that Edison is “committed to a thorough and transparent investigation.”
“Our hearts go out to everyone who has suffered losses,” he said.
The 2019 law that created the wildfire fund, known as AB 1054, greatly limited what Edison would have to pay for any of the claims. The company has told its investors that its maximum liability would be $3.9 billion.
The three utilities are asking legislators to ensure that state law continues to protect them and their shareholders, even if the $21-billion fund runs out of money.
Since the January fires, Edison, PG&E and Sempra, the parent company of San Diego Gas & Electric, have each spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby in Sacramento, according to required regulatory reports they filed for the first three months of the year.
A PG&E lobbyist reported taking Assemblywoman Petrie-Norris to a $267 dinner at Paragary’s, a bistro in Sacramento, on Feb. 3.
Petrie-Norris said the dinner was with Carla Peterman, a former state public utilities commissioner who is now a top PG&E executive. Petrie-Norris said they talked about a planned March hearing on electricity affordability and didn’t discuss the wildfire fund.
The next month, a PG&E lobbyist took Dee Dee Myers and Rohimah Moly, two of Newsom’s top staff members, to the upscale Prelude Kitchen & Bar, which is a short walk from the state Capitol.
Willie Rudman, a spokesman for the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, said the wildfire fund wasn’t discussed at the meal. Instead it “was a general meet and greet,” Rudman said, where the governor’s staff and PG&E executives “discussed opportunities for future collaboration.”
PG&E declined to answer questions. Lynsey Paulo, a PG&E spokesperson, said in a statement that the utility’s lobbying expenses were paid with shareholder funds and not money from customers.
“Like many individuals and businesses, PG&E participates in the political process on behalf of our customers and company,” Paulo said.
Edison International officers and directors misled the company’s investors about the effectiveness of its efforts to reduce the risk of wildfire in the months and years before the devastating Eaton fire, a shareholder lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, points to repeated statements that the utility made in federal regulatory reports that said it had reduced the risk of a catastrophic wildfire by more than 85% since 2018 by increasing equipment inspections, tree trimming and other work aimed at stopping fires.
The complaint also raises doubts about news releases and other statements that Edison made soon after the start of Eaton fire, which killed 18 people and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses in Altadena.
“We take all legal matters seriously,” said Jeff Monford, a spokesman for Edison. “We will review this lawsuit and respond through the appropriate legal channels.”
The lawsuit claims that Edison’s early statements on the Eaton fire — in which it detailed why it believed its equipment was not involved in the fire’s start — were wrong.
“Edison obfuscated the truth by making false and misleading statements concerning its role in the fire,” the lawsuit claims.
More recently, Pedro Pizarro, the chief executive of Edison International, said the leading theory for the fire’s start was the reenergization of an unused, decades-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon.
The investigation by state and local fire investigators into the official cause of the deadly fire is continuing.
The lawsuit was filed as a derivative action in which shareholders sue a company’s officers and directors on behalf of the company, claiming they had breached their fiduciary duties. It seeks financial damages from Pizarro, Chief Financial Officer Maria Rigatti and members of the company’s board of directors. Money recovered would go to the company.
It also directs Edison “to take all necessary actions” to reform its corporate governance procedures, comply with all laws and protect the company and its investors “from a recurrence of the damaging events.”
The lawsuit was brought by Charlotte Bark, a shareholder of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison.
“Prior to the outbreak of the Eaton Fire, the Company had a long history of not prioritizing the safety of those who lived in the areas it serviced, and paying fines as a result,” the lawsuit states. Since 2000, it says, Edison has paid financial penalties of $1.3 billion for violating utility safety regulations.
The complaint points to an October regulatory report that was the focus of a Times report. In the article, state regulators criticized some of Edison’s wildfire mitigation efforts, including for falling behind in inspecting transmission lines in areas at high risk of fires.
The lawsuit lists the major destructive wildfires that investigators said were sparked by Edison’s equipment in recent years, including the Bobcat and Silverado fires in 2020, as well as the Coastal and Fairview fires in 2022.
“The recurring wildfire incidents connected to the Company display that the Board has repeatedly failed to mitigate a risk that materially threatens Edison,” the complaint states.
The lawsuit accuses Pizarro, Rigatti and the company’s board of directors of “gross mismanagement” and claims that the defendants “unjustly enriched” themselves.
“Because the Individual Defendants failed to carry out their respective duties, the compensation they received was excessive and undeserved,” the suit states.
It asks the court for an order that would require the officers and directors to pay restitution, including returning the compensation they received that was tied to how well the company performed.
The state law that shielded Southern California Edison and other utilities from liability for wildfires sparked by their equipment came with a catch: Top utility executives would be forced to take a pay cut if their company’s safety record declined.
Edison’s safety record did decline last year. The number of fires sparked by its equipment soared to 178, from 90 the year before and 39% above the five-year average.
Serious injuries suffered by employees jumped by 56% over the average. Five contractors working on its electric system died.
As a result of that performance, the utility’s parent company, Edison International, cut executive bonuses awarded for the 2024 year, it told California regulators in an April 1 report.
For Edison International employees, planned executive cash bonuses were cut by 5%, and executives at Southern California Edison saw their bonuses shrink by 3%, said Sergey Trakhtenberg, a compensation specialist for the company.
But cash bonuses for four of Edison’s top five executives actually rose last year, by as much as 17%, according to a separate March report by Edison to federal regulators. Their long-term bonuses of stock and options, which are far more valuable and not tied to safety, also rose.
Of the top five executives, only Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, saw his cash bonus decline. He received a cash bonus of 128% of his salary rather than the planned 135% because of the safety failures, the company said, for total compensation including salary of $13.8 million.
The cash bonuses increased for the other top four executives despite the safety-related deductions because of how they performed on other responsibilities, said Trakhtenberg, Edison’s director of total rewards. He said bonuses would have been higher were it not for safety-related reductions.
“Compensation is structured to promote safety,” Trakhtenberg said, calling it “the main focus of the company.”
Consumer advocates say the fact that bonuses increased in spite of the decline in safety highlights a flaw in AB 1054, the 2019 law that reduced the liability of for-profit utility companies like Edison for damaging wildfires ignited by their equipment.
AB 1054 created a wildfire fund to pay for fire damages in an effort to ensure that utilities wouldn’t be rendered insolvent by having to bear billions of dollars in damage costs.
In return, the legislation said executive bonus plans for utilities should be “structured to promote safety as a priority and to ensure public safety and utility financial stability.”
“All these supposed accountability measures that were put into the bill are turning out to be toothless,” said Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, a consumer advocacy group in San Francisco.
“If executives aren’t feeling a significant reduction in salary when there is a significant increase in wildfire safety incidents,” Toney said, “then the incentive is gone.”
One of the executives who received an increased cash bonus was Adam Umanoff, Edison’s general counsel.
Umanoff was expected to get 85% of his $706,000 salary, or $600,000, as a cash bonus as his target at the year’s beginning. The deduction for safety failures reduced that bonus, Trakhtenberg said. But Umanoff’s performance on other goals “was significantly above target” and thus increased his cash bonus to 101% of his salary,
So despite the safety failures, Umanoff received a cash bonus of $717,000, or 19% higher than he was expected to receive.
“If you can just make it up somewhere else,” Toney said, “the incentive is gone.”
The utility recently told its investors that AB 1054 will protect it from potential liabilities of billions of dollars if its equipment is found to have sparked the Eaton fire on Jan. 7, resulting in 18 deaths and the destruction of thousands of homes and commercial buildings.
The cause of the blaze, which videos captured igniting under one of Edison’s transmission towers, is still under investigation. Pizarro has said the reenergization of an idle transmission line is now a leading theory of what sparked the deadly fire.
The 2019 legislation was passed in a matter of weeks to bolster the financial health of the state’s for-profit electric companies after the Camp fire in Butte County, which was caused by a Pacific Gas & Electric transmission line.
The wildfire destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people, and the damages helped push PG&E into bankruptcy.
At the bill-signing ceremony, Gov. Gavin Newsom touted its language that said utilities could not access the money in a new state wildfire fund and cap their liabilities from a blaze caused by their equipment unless they tied executive compensation to their safety performance.
In April, Edison filed its mandatory annual safety performance metrics report with the Public Utilities Commission as it seeks approval to raise customer electric rates by more than 10% this year.
In the report, Edison said that because its safety record worsened in 2024 on certain key metrics, its executives took “a total deduction of 18 points” on a 100-point scale used in determining bonuses.
“Safety and compliance are foundational to SCE, and events such as employee fatalities or serious injuries to the public can result in meaningful deduction or full elimination” of executive incentive compensation, the company wrote.
Edison didn’t explain in the report what an 18-point deduction meant to executives in actual dollar terms, another point of frustration with consumer advocates trying to determine if executive compensation plans genuinely comply with AB 1054.
“Without seeing dollar figures, it is impossible to ascertain whether a utility’s incentive compensation plan is reasonable,” the Public Advocates Office at the state Public Utilities Commission wrote in a 2022 letter to wildfire safety regulators.
To try to determine how much the missed safety goals actually impacted the compensation of Edison executives last year, The Times looked at a separate federal securities report Edison filed for investors known as the proxy statement.
In that March report, Edison detailed how the majority of its compensation to executives is based on its profit and stock price appreciation, and not safety.
Safety helps determine about 50% of the cash bonuses paid to executives each year, the report said. But more valuable are the long-term incentive bonuses, which are paid in shares of stock and stock options and are based on earnings.
The Utility Reform Network, which is also known as TURN, pointed to those stock bonuses in a 2021 letter to regulators where it questioned whether Edison and the state’s other two big for-profit utilities were actually tying executive compensation to safety.
“Good financial performance does not necessarily mean that the utility prioritizes safety,” TURN staff wrote in the letter.
Trakhtenberg disagreed, saying the company’s “long-term incentives are focused on promoting financial stability.” A key part of that is the company’s ability “over the long term to safely deliver reliable, affordable power,” he said.
Trakhtenberg noted that the state Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety had approved the company’s executive compensation plan in October, saying it met the requirements of AB 1054, as well as every year since the agency was established in July 2021.
The Times asked the energy safety office if it audited the utilities’ compensation reports or tried to determine how much money Edison executives lost because of the safety failures.
Sandy Cooney, a spokesman for the agency, said that the office had “no statutory authority … to audit executive compensation structures.” He referred the reporter to Edison for information on how much executive compensation had actually declined in dollar amounts because of the missed safety goals.
A committee of Edison board members determines what goals will be tied to safety, Trakhtenberg said, and whether those goals have been met.
Even though five contractors died last year while working on Edison’s electrical system, the committee didn’t include contractor safety as a goal, according to the company’s documents.
And the committee said the company met its goal in protecting the public even though three people died from its equipment and there was a 27% increase in deaths and serious injuries among the public compared to the five-year average.
Trakhtenberg said most of the serious injuries happened to people committing theft or vandalism, which is why the committee said the goal had been met.
Edison has told regulators that if its equipment starts a catastrophic wildfire, the committee could decide to eliminate executives’ cash bonuses.
But the company’s documents show that it hasn’t eliminated or even reduced bonuses for the 2022 Fairview fire in Riverside County, which killed two people, destroyed 22 homes and burned 28,000 acres.
In 2023, investigators blamed Edison’s equipment for igniting the fire, saying one of its conductors came in contact with a telecommunications cable, creating sparks that fell into vegetation.
Trakhtenberg said the board’s compensation committee reviewed the circumstances of the fire that year and found that the company had acted “prudently” in maintaining its equipment. The committee decided not to reduce executive bonuses for the fire, he said.
In March, the Public Utilities Commission fined Edison $2.2 million for the fire, saying it had violated four safety regulations, including by failing to cooperate with investigators.
Trakhtenberg said the compensation committee would reconsider its decision not to penalize executives for the deadly fire at its next meeting.
TURN has repeatedly asked regulators not to approve Edison’s compensation plans, detailing how its committee has “undue discretion” in setting goals and then determining whether they have been met.
But the energy safety office has approved the plans anyway. Toney said he believes the responsibility for reviewing the compensation plans and utilities’ wildfire safety should be transferred back to the Public Utilities Commission, which had done the work until 2021.
The energy safety office has rules that make the review process less transparent than it is at the commission, he said.
“The whole process, we feel is rigged heavily in favor of utilities,” he said.
