Evidence confirms that Edison's idle line started the fire at Eaton, attorneys said

New surveillance footage and other evidence from Southern California Edison confirm that a 100-year-old, passive transmission line the company failed to remove caused last year's wildfire, insurance attorneys said in court.

Video obtained from a surveillance camera at the Gerrish Swim & Tennis Club in Pasadena shows two bright flashes occurring in the tower holding the idle line at 6:11 p.m. on Jan. 7, 2025.

The light coincided with the time Edison recorded two faults, three seconds apart, on another transmission line over five miles long, the lawyers said in the filing, citing new information provided by the utility.

Soon after the mistakes, nearby residents recorded videos of the fire raging at the base of the tower, known as M16T1.

“Southern California Edison has spent the past sixteen months trying to stave off the inevitable legal consequences of devastating the communities of Altadena and Pasadena,” the attorneys wrote in the filing.

“The Eaton Fire would not have happened if SCE had simply dismantled and removed Structure M16T1,” the attorneys added.

The attorneys who filed the May 18 motion represent property insurance companies that have paid out tens of millions of dollars to residents who lost their homes. Their motion asks the judge to rule in favor of the insurers that would make Edison liable for damages under adverse condemnation, a legal doctrine in the state constitution.

Courts have ruled that this doctrine requires private utilities like Edison to pay for the property they destroy, even if they are not found to be negligent.

Kathleen Dunleavy, a spokeswoman for Edison, said the company did not learn about the existence of the video of the swimming club until the lawyers took it to court with their requests.

“It is very disappointing and inappropriate that this video was not made when it was available,” he said. “We hope the video has been forwarded to the appropriate authorities.”

Dunleavy said the company believes the lawyers' proposal is “factually and legally incorrect.”

“We will respond fully in our court filings,” he said.

Attorneys for the insurer did not respond to requests for comment.

In a February 2025 letter to state regulators, Edison said it discovered one fault on a line more than five miles from Altadena at about 6:11 p.m. the night the fire started. It said the fault caused a slight power surge on the four lines that send it live to Eaton Canyon.

The company said in this letter that it is looking at whether the intense electricity would have caused the electricity to jump to the inactive line that is connected to the live wires through a system called induction.

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, later said that leading theory The ignition of the fire was that the idle line was momentarily energized by the installation, which started the fire.

At the same time, the company has not admitted responsibility for the fire, saying repeatedly that its own private investigation into the cause, as well as separate investigations by Los Angeles County and state fire officials, are ongoing.

According to court filings, evidence obtained by attorneys shows that the company stopped using the transmission line in 1971 and called it “defunct.”

“An Out-of-Service Declaration will only be used when a line … or piece of equipment is expected to remain out of service indefinitely,” Edison said in an internal document known as a system performance report, according to the filing.

Edison management he told The Times last year that they leave it in place because they believe it may be needed in the future.

“We have these idle lines still available because there is a good chance that we will use them in the future,” said Shinjini Menon, Edison's senior vice president of system planning and engineering, at the time.

Dunleavy said Friday that the decommissioned lines are being kept in place for a variety of reasons, including maintaining Edison's right of way to build them and funding future needs for more electricity as the state aims to meet its clean energy goals.

Last year, The Times reported that state regulators, knowing old power lines pose a danger, proposed legislation in 2001 that would have forced Edison and other utilities to remove defunct lines unless they could prove they would be used in the future.

Under pressure from Edison and other companies, the rule was weakened to allow utilities to keep unused lines until management decided they were “abandoned forever.”

In their May 18 filing, the attorneys said Edison executives knew about the import hazard for more than a century. They cited a 1923 contract between Edison and the Pacific Electric Railway Co. which stated that “electrical leakage or induction from or between” conductors was an inherent hazard of operating multiple electrical circuits in close proximity.

“That's why SCE is setting idle lines and testing them,” Dunleavy said of the risk.

Copies of Edison's error records from that night, its operations report and thousands of other documents, including filings, exist. closed to the public under a protective order that Edison and the victims' lawyers asked a judge to agree to last year.

LA County District Attorney to investigate whether Edison should be criminally prosecuted for its actions in the fire, said the company to the investor applying this year.

The fire killed at least 19 people and left thousands of families homeless.

The hearing of the lawyers' request is scheduled for Aug. 11 in LA County Superior Court.

Edison has gone which is given to compensate the victims This fire gives up their right to sue the service.

The company said last week it had received more than 3,500 applications from about 10,000 people. It said it extended nearly 1,900 offers to those people, totaling more than $650 million.

Many the victims refused the offersaying that they are not fully recovering from their losses due to the devastating fire.

Edison told his investors expect to pay little or nothing due to fire due to the 2019 state law. The company expects to be reimbursed for its payments to victims by A $21 billion fund created by law known as
Assembly Bill 1054.

The law protects utilities from fire damage caused by their equipment as long as they follow certain requirements, including submitting a plan to state regulators to reduce the risk of their equipment causing fires. Regulators review the program and track whether resources are making progress in reducing fire risk.

As of 2019, Edison has spent billions of dollars on making its lines safer, including by undergrounding them and installing insulated cables. Those costs continue to drive up a customer's electric bill.

Over the past 10 years, Edison's rates have increased 101%, according to an April report by the public advocate's office at the California Public Utilities Commission.

Despite spending, Edison's electric lines more fires broke out in 2024 than in 2019. The company blamed increased climate change for the dry vegetation.