Nearly two weeks after the Eaton fire broke out near Altadena, Southern California Edison technicians monitored as the utility’s four active lines in the Eaton Canyon and Eagle Rock-Gould line were re-energized. Watching from a distance, they saw a “small flash of white light upon each re-energization,” the utility said in a report to the California Public Utility Commission Thursday, Feb. 6.
Those flashes on Jan. 19 were the only ones technicians saw that day, citing no other safety concerns, the report says. But the utility logged them down among other irregularities SCE has been reviewing as it probes the electrical system after the deadly fire, Pedro Pizarro, president and CEO of Edison International, told the New York Times.
The following day, Edison used drones to do thermal scans of the towers and connection points, but didn’t find any hot spots, the report says. SCE then powered down the lines ahead of another upcoming wind event.
SCE said it was also investigating whether an inactive transmission line could have become energized through induction after it found signs of damage from arcing. Pizarro told the New York Times it was unclear whether that damage occurred before or after the fire.
SCE was also investigating human activity near the area of origin, the report says.
Despite more than two dozen lawsuits claiming Edison’s equipment was to blame for the start of the Eaton fire – which killed 17 people and damaged or destroyed more than 10,000 structures – SCE maintains there is no evidence its equipment was responsible for the fire.
“SCE has not seen the kinds of things that are typical when electrical equipment starts a fire, like broken conductors, or fresh arc marks in the preliminary origin area, or evidence of faults on the energized lines running through the area,” Pedro Pizarro, president and CEO of Edison International, said in a video-recorded statement Thursday.
The utility said videos and other evidence, including one from an ARCO gas station that appeared to show arcing a minute or two before flames are seen below, suggest a possible link to SCE’s equipment, “which the company takes seriously.”
“While we do not yet know what caused the Eaton wildfire, SCE is exploring every possibility in its investigation, including the possibility that the utility’s equipment was involved,” Pizarro said. “We have been fully engaged since the start of the fires in supporting the broader emergency response, containment, recovery and investigation efforts.”
SCE said it first became aware of the ARCO gas station video from a New York Times story published Jan. 26, which appears to show “two flashes of light” in the Eaton Canyon area on the evening of Jan. 7. SCE received a copy of the video on Jan. 30 and has provided the video to a county investigator, who had not yet received it, Thursday’s report to the CPUC says.
A preliminary analysis of electrical data for four energized lines that run through Eaton Canyon showed no faults in the 12 hours prior to the time the Eaton fire started, the report says, but a fault was detected about 6:11 p.m. on the Eagle Rock-Gould line, which connects the Gould substation in La Canada Flintridge to the Eagle Rock substation.
Those substations are miles away from the fire’s origin, the report says, but an SCE analysis showed that because its system is networked, the fault on that line caused a “momentary and expected increase in current on SCE’s transmission system,” which included the four energized lines near Eaton Canyon. That increase was within design limits and operating criteria for those circuits, the SCE report said.
Pizarro told the New York Times that it seemed a mystery that a problem so far from the origin would play a role in igniting the fire.
“The company continues to examine available information, including grid data, maintenance records and photos and videos to determine potential causes of ignition,” Pizarro said in the recorded statement. “Investigations of this scale and complexity take time, and they require specific expertise, but we will not leave any stone unturned.”
The Los Angeles County Fire Department is investigating the cause of the Eaton fire, while the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives probes the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people and damaged or destroyed more than 7,000 structures in the Pacific Palisades and Malibu.
Both investigations were ongoing.