January 5th, 2025
On Sunday, January 5th, 2025, the National Weather Service issued warnings of “Extreme Fire Conditions, with Widespread Damaging Winds,” giving notice to SCE, to take all necessary actions to prevent their infrastructure from sparking a wildfire.
Since the firestorms in San Diego in the 2010s and 2017 in Northern California, utilities across California, including SCE, and the Western United States have implemented a variety of actions to try to eliminate risks of their equipment starting an uncontrollable wildfire that can kill people and devastate communities including shutting off power in areas where high winds might damage utility infrastructure and spark a fire. Proactively shutting off power to an area is called a Public Safety Power Shutoff or PSPS. Unfortunately, it appears SCE did not implement a complete a PSPS in the area where the Eaton Fire ignited. The result of this is that power was flowing through the SCE’s equipment at the time of the forecasted wind event in the area where the Eaton Fire started. Our research demonstrates that their equipment failed in the winds and sparked the Eaton Fire. We now all understand what happened after the fire started – pure property devastation and loss of life.
January 7th, 2025
Our initial research indicates that Southern California Edison’s (SCE) equipment ignited the Eaton Fire on January 7th, 2025.