Edison Sues LA County Over Fire Deaths for Delayed Alerts

(Bloomberg) -- Edison International sued Los Angeles County and other public agencies for allegedly failing to ensure timely evacuation alerts that the company says could have saved most of the 19 people who died in a massive wildfire last year.

If the lawsuits the company filed jointly Friday with its Southern California Edison unit succeed, they would spread blame for the death toll in last January’s Eaton wildfire, one of the most destructive in the state’s history. The utility already faces suits by hundreds of homeowners and businesses and billions of dollars in potential damages.

How the lawsuits play out over the Eaton Fire — and a separate fire that decimated the coastal Pacific Palisades area — loom large as the second-largest US metropolis seeks to recover from the twin disasters. Together, the Eaton and Palisades fires killed more than 30 people, charred almost 40,000 acres and destroyed more than 16,000 structures. 

Insured losses from the January 2025 blazes totaled $40 billion – making them the world’s priciest catastrophe last year, according to insurer Swiss Re AG. The conflagrations also rank among the “costliest individual wildfire events” in the insurance-industry’s history, according to insurer Gallagher Re.

Residents and business owners have argued in lawsuits that Edison is responsible for catastrophic property destruction by leaving some power lines turned on during a windstorm prior to ignition of the Eaton Fire in the brush-covered foothills near Pasadena. Edison Chief Executive Officer Pedro Pizarro has acknowledged the company’s equipment will likely be found to have triggered the blaze.

An ongoing investigation of the Eaton Fire is being conducted by the Los Angeles County Fire Department and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Edison said in the main case it filed Friday that while numerous lawsuits blame the company for sparking the fire, “many factors and causes contributed to the severity of the fire and the resulting damage caused by it, including actions and failures” by about a dozen government entities — some of which previously sued Edison.

The defendants named by Edison include LA County’s fire, sheriff’s and emergency preparedness departments that allegedly fumbled the evacuation warnings; the local water companies that allegedly failed to supply enough water for firefighting; and county fire officials who allegedly failed to maintain overgrown vegetation that fed the fire.

Edison also took aim at officials who allegedly failed to provide enough paratransit services for elderly residents; the local natural gas supplier, Southern California Gas Company, that allegedly didn’t shut off flammable gas lines; and the contractor hired by the county to provide emergency communications.

That contractor, San Diego-based Genasys Inc., already has been sued by families of people killed in the Eaton Fire, accused of “digital redlining” for not sending timely warnings to residents of a moderate-income, historically African American neighborhood in Altadena where 18 fatalities occurred during the wind-whipped blaze that started on Jan. 7. Genasys, a software maker that provides mobile-phone alert technology, denied wrongdoing in that case.

Chris Gilbride, a spokesperson for SoCalGas, said the company is reviewing the lawsuit and will respond in court.

“Since January 7, 2025, SoCalGas has worked diligently, in close coordination with local and state officials, to assess the impacts of the fires on SoCalGas’ infrastructure, make necessary repairs, and safely restore service to thousands of customers,” he said in a statement.

The LA County agencies declined to comment. Genasys didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Among the specific allegations in Friday’s suits:

• The first evacuation notices that went out to the western Altadena neighborhood arrived more than nine hours after the start of the Eaton Fire.
• SoCalGas took four days to commence natural gas shutoffs after the start of the Eaton Fire, in contrast to the Palisades Fire, where the company started shutoffs within one day.
• The water systems servicing the areas impacted by the Eaton Fire failed as the fire spread, leaving firefighters and residents with no water to fight the fire.
• The county had not designated Altadena as a “Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone,” where the abundance of brush and vegetation allowed the fire to spread rapidly.

The wealthier enclave of Pacific Palisades is served by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. That utility is fighting a mountain of litigation over claims that it didn’t have enough water on hand for firefighters to douse wind-whipped flames before the Palisades Fire consumed neighborhoods filled with multimillion-dollar homes. 

In July, Edison launched a private compensation program for victims of the Eaton Fire. Almost 2,000 victims have filed claims through the program as of this month, according to a company spokesman. The goal is to provide quicker payouts to victims, but the program has been criticized by plaintiffs’ lawyers as an attempt to get victims to accept less compensation for their losses.

For victims who’ve filed lawsuits, an initial trial is set for January 2027 in Los Angeles Superior Court. In addition to claims by property owners, Edison also faces suits by Los Angeles County, some local cities and the federal government over hundreds of millions of dollars in costs to respond to the blaze and repair damaged infrastructure and property. 

The cases are likely to implicate California’s $21 billion wildfire insurance fund — set up by state policymakers to ensure California’s utilities stay solvent. The fund was created in the wake of wildfires over a 10-year period that forced PG&E Corp., the state’s largest utility, to file for bankruptcy protection in 2019 to deal with a tidal wave of fire suits. 

(Updates with LA County agencies declining to comment.)

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