By Laila Kearney
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A law firm representing victims of the Eaton Fire in Los Angeles has submitted photos with a legal filing on Wednesday that appear to show exposed wire at the base of a Southern California Edison tower that the firm alleges may have contributed to the deadly blaze.
The Eaton Fire was among the biggest of multiple wildfires that erupted on Jan. 7 and spread quickly in powerful Santa Ana Winds across the Los Angeles area. The wildfires are potentially the most costly disaster in U.S. history.
Photographs and video show sparks or flames near the utility’s transmission equipment have already been submitted in court cases against SCE, but the new images may be the first to show burnt and exposed, or unburied, wire.
During potential arcing at the transmission towers, the exposed wires leading up to the bottom of the infrastructure may have heated to the point of igniting nearby vegetation, said plaintiff’s attorney Alexander Robertson.
The arcing could have sent a shower of sparks and molten metal down to the ground, triggering a fire, the law firm said.
“The exposed grounding wire is charred on the photos and likely acted like a wick on a candle to ignite the brush at the base of the tower,” attorney Robertson said.
“We don’t yet know if this was the sole or contributing ignition source, but the physical evidence suggests it was at least a contributing cause,” said Robertson.
The fire’s cause is still under investigation, including by official government agencies and Southern California Edison.
An SCE spokesperson criticized law firms for sharing details, such as potential evidence, with the media “when they should be sharing the information with authorities.”
“Our investigation into all possible involvement of SCE’s equipment continues,” Southern California Edison spokesperson Kathleen Dunleavy said.
Robertson and experts with his firm captured the images of SCE’s equipment by hiking to SCE towers along the ridge of foothills near Altadena and deploying drones earlier this month.
Earlier in the week, SCE said a preliminary review of its data for transmission lines that run through towers, including the one scrutinized by Robertson, showed no indication of faults on the lines until more than an hour after the reported start time of the blaze.
Electrical faults can sometimes lead to arcing, which is essentially a spark that jumps between two conductors.
The Robertson and Associates’ images were captured near the ARCO station where surveillance footage showed two short arcs at the top of an SCE tower.
That surveillance video was reported earlier in the week by the New York Times and other news outlets and has since been cited in legal filings.
SCE said in a statement on Monday that it was reviewing the footage.
(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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