Report: Cal Fire finds sagging Edison line sparked massive Fairview Fire near Hemet

A Cal Fire investigation into the Fairview Fire in Riverside County that scorched nearly 30,000 acres in 2022 has determined the blaze was started by a flurry of sparks caused by a Southern California Edison powerline, the Washington Post reported.

The newspaper reported that it had obtained an unreleased report from the agency stating that a sagging SCE electrical line near Fairview Avenue in Hemet touched a communication line below, producing the sparks that ignited nearby vegetation and led to the fire. The communication line belonged to Frontier Communications, the Post reported.

The Post also cited language in the report stating that SCE’s power lines had remain energized on the day the fire began despite windy and heavy conditions that were primed to produce fire. The state authorizes the owners of electric lines to temporarily power them off when conditions are creating a heightened risk of wildfires.

Edison had reported activity involving line to the state

On the day the fire began, SCE filed a report with the state’s utilities commission stating that circuit activity involving the company’s equipment occurred “close in time to the report of the fire.”

A second letter sent from SCE to the commission sent the next month stated that it was investigating an area of interest involving a “location near a pole line associated with overhead utility facilities owned by SCE and Frontier Communications (Frontier).” That letter also states that SCE removed the equipment and provided it to Cal Fire to investigate.

However, the letter said that the cause of the circuit activity that had been observed on the day the fire started had “not been determined and may not be definitively understood until additional information is available, including information which can only be obtained through examination and testing of the material retained by Cal Fire investigators.”

After the initial report was filed by SCE, a lawyer who has represented several people who lost their homes or other property in fires in lawsuits against electric companies, told The Desert Sun that in every other SCE-caused wildfire, SCE filed a similar report with the utility commission citing “circuit activity.”

That lawyer, Alexander Robertson IV, eventually filed a lawsuit against SCE on behalf of several families who lost property to the fire alleging that SCE’s equipment had caused the fire and the company owed them damages.

Robertson told The Washington Post that he was glad Cal Fire had confirmed that the fire was caused by an "electrical arcing event due to line-slap involving Edison’s powerlines," just as he had alleged.

He explained to The Desert Sun Friday that line-slap is a term used in the utility industry to refer to an event when an energized power line gets pushed into another powerline or communications cable (in this case the latter) by the wind.

When powerlines are not tensioned correctly, the wind can cause the powerlines to swing and touch each other causing the powerlines to me;t and molten metal to fall to the ground, producing sparks, he added.

“My clients all lost their homes and livestock and have been waiting for more than a year for Edison to pay them for their losses so they can rebuild,” he said. “We are hoping that with the release of Cal Fire’s report, Edison will now do the right thing and make our clients’ whole.”

The fire, which took nearly three weeks to contain, destroyed nearly 40 structures and led to the deaths of a father and daughter, who died while their car was engulfed in flames as they were trying to escape.

SCE has paid huge settlements but says it is reducing its fire risk

In recent years, SCE has agreed to pay billions of dollars to settle claims with the state, individual cities and insurance companies that several fires throughout Southern California were started by its equipment

SCE spokesperson Jeff Monford told The Desert Sun Friday that the company's hearts were with the community and the people who suffered losses during the Fairview Fire.

"We cooperated with Cal Fire during its review of the fire and are examining their latest report," he said.

After initial publication of this story, The Desert Sun did confirm that SCE had called it back prior to publication.

Cal Fire did not respond to a request for comment on The Washington Post's story from The Desert Sun.

While the Fairview Fire is just the latest that SCE’s equipment has been implicated in, the company claims it has reduced the risk of catastrophic wildfires associated with its equipment by 75-80% since 2018.

A fire mitigation fact sheet on its website lists several steps it says it took to do that, which include installing 4,400 miles of electrical wire that is covered with a protective coating that reduces fire risk and ramping up work to underground power lines in the most at-risk areas.

The company has also requested permission from the state to institute rate increases that it says will raise the average bill by $17 a month – and $5 a year after that through 2028 — to fund improvements, including the addition of 1,250 miles of additional coated wire, aimed at both reducing wildfire risk and improving grid performance more generally.

On Thursday, the Associated Press reported that the state utility commission had voted to allow the state’s largest utility provider, Pacific Electric and Gas, to raise rates by an average of $32 a month so that it can bury 1,230 miles of powerline.

That company, which provides power to about 16 million customers in the northern half of the state, had requested to raise rates by an average of $38 a month so that it could bury 2,100 miles of lines. The commission has not voted on SCE’s rate increase.

Paul Albani-Burgio covers breaking news and the city of Palm Springs. Follow him on Twitter at @albaniburgiop and email him at paul.albani-burgio@desertsun.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Report: Cal Fire finds sagging Edison line sparked Fairview Fire near Hemet