SoCal Edison fined $2.2 million for deadly Fairview Fire in Hemet

CBS News

26-03-2025

The California Public Utilities Commission has fined Southern California Edison $2.2 million for
2022's deadly Fairview Fire
that ravaged more than 28,000 acres and destroyed nearly three dozen buildings in Hemet.
The fines stem from four violations that CPUC officials found. They say that SCE was failed to maintain proper clearance around their electrical equipment and that they were "consistently late" and offered delayed responses to their investigation into the cause of the fire, which delayed CPUC's Safety and Enforcement Division's ability to look into the fire "within a reasonable timeframe," according to the citation.
The first violation came due to a series of missed deadlines for a set of questions asked by CPUC investigators.
This delayed CPUC's Safety and Enforcement Division's ability to look into the fire "within a reasonable timeframe," said the citation.
CPUC officials say that they asked 55 questions in December of 2022, with a response due by Jan. 26, 2023.
"SCE failed to respond ... on the due date and did not seek an extension from SED. Instead, SCE informed SED that it had decided to extend the deadline to respond," the complaint says. They claim that SCE officials instead offered a "piecemeal basis" of responses on three dates — Jan. 20, 2023, Feb. 10, 2023 and Feb. 24, 2023.
Even so, SCE also missed those deadlines, the CPUC said, only responding to five of the 55 questions they were presented with by Feb. 24. They did not fully complete all responses until May 17, 2023 after a subsequent series of due dates that were not met. They later claimed that the responses were delayed due to an employee working the investigation who suffered a family emergency.
"However, SED's position is that SCE's mismanagement of its internal resources created the delay and hindered SED's investigation," the complaint said.
Investigators also say that SCE treated their deadline "as unilaterally negotiable and with a lack of seriousness" as they failed to turn over the requested documents and data in a timely manner, leading to the second violation.
While viewing evidence, SED investigators saw "scorch marks on both the phase 1B conductor and the Frontier Communications messenger cable, consistent with electrical arc damage," CPUC investigators said. This led to the third violation as they concluded that SEC's conductor struck Frontier's messenger cable.
"In addition, CAL FIRE determined the cause of the fire was the East electrical line (SCE's phase 1B conductor) at the Incident Span contacting the Frontier Communications messenger cable," the complaint stated. "CAL FIRE determined that the contact created an arc and caused sparks to fall and ignite the vegetation below."
The fourth violation relates to General Order 95, Rule 37, which mandates that conductors operating up to 22,500 volts "must maintain a minimum above ground vertical clearance of 17 feet in areas that can only be traversed by pedestrians."
A LiDAR scan revealed that one of SCE's conductors only had 12 feet vertical clearance on Sept. 8, two days after the fire broke out.
SoCal Edison is currently at the center of multiple lawsuits regarding the ignition of the Eaton Fire, which broke out in Altadena in January. They have often been embroiled in cases relating to devastating wildfires in the past, including the
Bobcat Fire
,
Woolsey Fire
and
Thomas Fire
.