As Los Angeles grapples with the aftermath of the devastating fires that killed dozens and laid waste to entire neighborhoods, the potential causes of the disasters are beginning to come into focus.
The siege of wildfires, sparked amid powerful Santa Ana winds earlier this month, created chaos around the city for weeks. They scorched around 60 sq miles (155 sq km) of the city, destroying the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods, and killed at least 29 people. Preliminary estimates of the economic losses have exceeded $250bn. Firefighters have only recently managed to near containment of the fires, and residents begin returning to what remains of their communities, looking for answers.
In the case of the Palisades fire, which scorched thousands of homes along the coast, authorities are exploring the possibility that a small blaze firefighters believed they put days earlier may have reignited due to the hurricane-force winds that rattled the region, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The 1991 Oakland Hills fire that killed 25 people was sparked after a grass fire that firefighters thought they had contained reignited and quickly spread. That was also the case in Maui, where a 2023 wildfire erupted from the remnants of a brushfire sparked by downed power lines that crews had spent extensive time extinguishing. More than 100 people died.
Meanwhile, the team investigating the Eaton fire is looking at Southern California Edison and have asked the utility to preserve its equipment around the possible origin site.
Residents reported seeing a fire around an electrical tower in Eaton Canyon. The utility initially said it found no faults on its lines, but told regulators this week that lines several miles away from the ignition point experienced a brief increase in electrical current around the time the conflagration began.
For California, a state that has seen numerous catastrophic and deadly firestorms in the last decade, such causes are familiar.
The state’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire, the Camp fire, killed 85 people and leveled the town of Paradise. It began when a century-old piece of power equipment owned by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and decades overdue for replacement, failed and sent sparks into tinder-dry brush. The utility pleaded guilty to dozens of counts of involuntary manslaughter and settled with local governments for $560m and survivors of the Camp fire and other deadly blazes for $13.5bn.
Cal Fire investigators have identified PG&E equipment as the cause for wildfires across the state from the 2020 Zogg fire, which killed four people in the far north Shasta county, to the 2021 Dixie fire – California’s largest ever single wildfire. Both sparked after trees fell on company power lines. PG&E accepted investigators’ conclusion in regard to the Dixie fire, although it said it had “acted as a prudent operator”. It agreed to pay $45m to fire prevention and rebuilding efforts in the area impacted by the Zogg fire and a $5m civil penalty. The company has said it has taken significant steps to prevent wildfires, including placing equipment underground in high risk areas and installing an extensive collection of cameras and weather stations.
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Southern California Edison, the utility in southern California, has also been connected to numerous wildfires. Investigators found that faulty equipment was behind the 2017 Thomas fire and the 2018 Woolsey Fire that killed three people and caused $6bn in damage. Federal investigators believe negligence on the part of the utility led to a 2017 fire and that the company withheld information – allegations the firm has denied.
State regulators on Friday approved a request from Edison to allow it to raise rates in order to cover the damages it paid to victims in the Thomas fire, which would pass the cost along to its customers. The utility has asked for a separate rate hike to cover costs from the Woolsey fire.
Edison is already facing lawsuits from the Eaton fire, including one from the NAACP and the mother of a victim. The utility has maintained there is still no evidence that its equipment was the cause.
