Investigators climb Edison transmission towers in probe of alleged Eaton fire ignition site

Southern California Edison Co. inspectors for the first time climbed giant transmission towers in Eaton Canyon on Thursday looking for evidence that could confirm whether the utility’s equipment ignited the most catastrophic wildfire in Los Angeles County history.

The tower climbers from the Rosemead-based company collected forensic evidence that ultimately could determine its liability for the Eaton fire, which destroyed thousands of structures and killed 17 people. More than 130 plaintiffs have filed lawsuits blaming SCE equipment for igniting the mammoth blaze on Jan. 7.

Mikal Watts, one of the attorneys suing SCE, said Thursday: “The tower inspections confirmed what we already knew — the Eaton fire was the predictable result of decades of neglect by Edison on abandoned equipment that should never have been there in the first place.”

One of the transmission towers in question was decommissioned more than 50 years ago and is alleged to have somehow become reenergized, potentially sparking the fire.

Thursday’s examinations were the culmination of a week of inspections, nudged on by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge who on Monday pressed the utility to more efficiently share information from the inspections with the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Experts for the plaintiffs are expected to get photos and videos from the tower-climb on Friday morning.

So far, the process — involving up-close and drone photography, and soil resistivity testing (to assess connection conductivity and resistance to ground) — appeared to be going smoothly, despite concerns earlier in the week over the timeline of the preservation of evidence, officials said Thursday.

“The tower climbing and drone surveys are an important next step in the forensic investigation to determine the mechanics of how this deadly fire was ignited,” said Alexander Robertson, another one of the attorneys suing SCE. “We’re putting all the puzzle pieces together.”

Plaintiffs’ attorneys have asked Edison to cut out sections of metal from the top of a tower where plaintiffs believe there is arcing damage, so it can be analyzed in a lab by metallurgical engineers.

SCE spokesman David Eisenhauer said the results of the investigation won’t be available for weeks, but the utility is committed to being thorough and transparent.

“Everything is going according to plan,” Eisenhauer said Thursday. “The tower climbing is giving us the opportunity to get very close to the equipment and inspect in person by trained professionals.”

The inspections represent the first time since the Eaton fire ignited on Jan. 7 that SCE and investigators for the victims started taking a close-up look at the  equipment that more than 130 lawsuits allege sparked the deadly blaze.

The inspections include scaling three transmission towers and testing power lines under investigation for possible links to the fire’s origin, said Edison spokesperson Kathleen Dunleavy.

Until this week, the towers have been inspected only by drones.

Plaintiffs’ experts this week began sorting through 6,000 photographs taken by drone on Monday.

Besides Edison investigators, electrical engineers representing the plaintiffs in the litigation — including Los Angeles County and the cities of Pasadena and Sierra Madre — were collaborating in the inspection.

The lawsuits, which on Monday were consolidated into one main case, point to eyewitness accounts, photographs and videos depicting arcing from Edison power lines and flames burning at the bottom of transmission towers.

The suits contend that sparks from the lines or current from an exposed grounding wire made contact with the brush. They also criticize SCE for not deenergizing all the power lines in Eaton Canyon after the utility was warned days ahead that powerful winds were coming.

In an update Monday, officials said that following the conclusion of this phase of testing, SCE will conduct a “comprehensive review” of the data collected, in coordination with third-party experts, and “will move forward as quickly as possible in analyzing results.”

But as the testing ramped up, so has the scrutiny.

This week, the New York Times reported that new data suggested there were faults — or electrical malfunctions — on SCE transmission lines early on Jan. 7 before the fire started that night.

The data from Whisker Labs, a technology company in Maryland, suggests there were faults on Edison’s transmission lines at 4:28 a.m. and 4:36 a.m. on the day of the fire. Wind speeds at the time were sustained at 60 mph, with gusts as high as 79 mph — strong enough for engineers to consider cutting power.

Later in the day, Whisker identified two faults just minutes before the fire started, at about 6:11 p.m., on the transmission network near Eaton Canyon, where fire investigators have said the Eaton fire began.

Those faults matched flashes on the transmission lines recorded by a video camera at a nearby Arco gas station.

Southern California Edison, which supplies power to several communities near Eaton Canyon, including Altadena, did not cut power to the transmission lines despite the early morning faults. Nor did the utility cut power on the transmission lines after the second set of faults in the evening when winds reached 100 mph, according to the Times.

Whisker Labs operates sensors in homes to help predict and prevent residential fires.

It also was reported this week that power lines near the suspected origin of the fire were flagged as fire hazards and overdue for maintenance, showing that company records filed with the state reveal that Edison was aware some of its towers near the suspected ignition point posed fire hazards.

The company said in a filing last month that it was evaluating whether the blaze was started by a reenergization of its unused Mesa-Sylmar line.

Pedro Pizarro, whose Edison International owns SCE, told investors in the utility’s fourth-quarter earnings call last month that even if investigators find that SCE’s Altadena transmission lines ignited the fire, “we are confident that SCE would make a good-faith showing that its conduct, with respect to its transmission facilities in the Eaton Canyon area, was consistent with the actions of a reasonable utility,” Pizarro said. “That is the standard by which a utility is judged.”

Those concerns, Pizarro said, have raised investor concerns about whether the state’s $21 billion wildfire insurance fund, created by AB 1054 to cover claims from blazes started by utility equipment, can hold up.

He said the company is confident that the state’s policymakers will strengthen the fund and make changes to shore up the financial health of utilities covered by the fund.

City News Service and the New York Times contributed to this article.