As officials try to determine the cause of a wildfire that burned an estimated 7,000 structures in and around Altadena, investigators keep returning to one place: an electrical transmission tower in Eaton Canyon.
The once-lush hillside has been charred by flames spread by intense winds from the open space into the heart of suburban communities.
Photos and videos showed what appeared to be the first flames of the deadly Eaton fire around an electrical transmission tower.
(Courtesy of Jennifer Errico)
Investigators were coming and going up the mountain, an area off-limits to media, utilities and fire departments.
“Nobody is allowed up there besides investigators,” said Wayne Howerton, an investigator for the California Department of Fire and Forestry Protection. “It’s currently an investigation into the start of the Eaton fire.”
Photos and videos taken by residents captured what appeared to be the first flames of the deadly Eaton fire, burning at the base of an electrical transmission tower.
(Courtesy of Jennifer Errico)
Early photos and videos taken by residents captured what appeared to be the first flames of the deadly Eaton fire, burning at the base of a Southern California Edison electrical transmission tower before racing down the canyon toward homes. Howerton confirmed to The Times that the area had become a focus of their probe, but it is unclear what investigators have discovered. It is also unclear what other potential sources and locations are being probed.
Southern California Edison officials have so far said they do not believe their electrical equipment was responsible.
Video and images from four residents and obtained by the The Times appeared to show that, before the fire exploded — scorching more than 14,100 acres, damaging and destroying more than 7,000 structures and killing five people — the first flames of the Eaton fire burned behind Pasadena homes, at the base of a nearby electrical tower.
Marcus Errico was pulling into his driveway just after 6 p.m. Tuesday when, he said, he noticed a red glow above his house on Canyon View Lane.
“At first it didn’t click,” he said. “Then I realized it was a fire, and there was at this point, just a small ring of flames around the base of one of the [electrical] towers.”
Winds were whipping at about 70 mph, the Palisades fire was already tearing at the other side of the county, and Errico knew his family would have only a few minutes before the flames sliced down the canyon toward their home.
“I just tore through the front door,” he said, calling to his wife to grab their daughter, their dog. “‘We need to go! There’s a fire on the hill.’”
Errico and his wife went down their cul-de-sac, knocking on neighbors’ doors and urging them to run out while they called 911.
His wife, Jennifer, stopped for just a few seconds, capturing the flames on her cellphone before they ran down the hill.
Errico said he’d been contacted by investigators about what he witnessed, and what his wife recorded, at the start of the fire.
Jane and David Stover were among the neighbors Jennifer alerted to the fire, banging on their door just as the couple was finishing dinner.
The two looked out and saw the flames at the base of the tower, now starting to bleed toward them.
On Saturday, the couple was at their home as a group of five investigators milled around the same electrical tower.
“The fire started right below that tower,” Jane Dover said, pointing toward the investigators.
“It was like a little ball, and it just went off,” David Stover said. “It just exploded.”
Embers were raining down on their cars as neighbors fled.
Early photos and videos taken by residents capture what appeared to be the first flames of the deadly Eaton fire, burning at the base of the same electrical transmission tower before racing down the canyon toward homes. (Courtesy of Pedro Rojas)
Pedro Rojas also said he captured the first flames on video on his cellphone, just before he and his family fled.
“There was only flames right at the base of the power [tower],” he said. “And it just exploded.”
Rossana Valverde was sitting with her husband having dinner and watching television when their internet went out, she said. Then Marcus Errico banged on their door, yelling they needed to leave.
“We were clueless, and when we opened the door, we were stunned,” she said. “It hadn’t exploded yet, it was still on the [tower].”
By the time they got into their car, the fire was already racing out of control.
“It had already gone down to the ground,” she said. “Everything was ignited.”
A few blocks away, other residents said they saw similar events unfolding.
Matthew Logelin, who lives at the base of Eaton Canyon in Pasadena, heard a loud bang at about 6:11 p.m. Tuesday as he was preparing dinner for his children.
He ran outside to see whether one of the big pine trees in their backyard, which backs up to Eaton Canyon, had fallen in the high winds. Seeing no major damage, he went back into the house, looked through the kitchen window and saw that a fire had ignited on the ridge beneath a massive metal power line.
He called 911 at 6:13 p.m. when the blaze “was the tiniest fire — it looked like a camp fire at that point,” he said.
“It’s clear that’s where the fire started,” he said. “It was right under the power lines.”
Southern California Edison on Thursday notified the California Public Utilities Commission it had received a number of notices from attorneys representing insurance companies, to preserve evidence regarding the Eaton fire.
The company states in the notice that preliminary analysis of electrical circuit information for transmission lines in the area showed no interruptions or anomalies until more than an hour after the Eaton fire started.
“To date, no fire agency has suggested that SCE’s electrical facilities were involved in the ignition,” the report states.
It will likely take weeks or months to determine what sparked the devastating blaze. Some of California’s worst firestorms have been sparked by electrical equipment, including the 2018 inferno that destroyed 16,000 structures and killed more than 80 people in and around Paradise.
Southern California Edison said in a news release the day after the fire started that their “distribution lines immediately to the west of Eaton Canyon were de-energized well before the reported start time of the fire.”
Distribution lines refer to electrical poles, often wooden, that directly serve neighborhoods and residents. The larger transmission tower is where the fire appears to have ignited.
On Sunday, the utility company said transmission lines were energized.
“Southern California Edison conducted preliminary analysis of the electrical circuit information for the four energized transmission lines in the Eaton Canyon area. That analysis shows no interruptions or operational slash electrical anomalies in the 12 hours prior to the fires reported start time, until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire,” said Jeff Monford, a spokesman for Southern California Edison, in a statement to The Times.
The photos provided by residents could prove key in the investigation, but they seem to clash with Southern California Edison’s claims, one expert said.
“The fact is, Edison says there wasn’t any evidence of a problem on those lines, but there are pictures and video of fire starting under that tower and Cal Fire is there now,” said Michael Wara, the director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University.
“We need to get more facts about what Edison knows about the performance of those lines in the canyon. We also need to know if there is any physical evidence at the site of whether the transmission line was the cause,” he said.
He stressed that it was still possible that the fire had a another cause.
Although the price tag of a fire caused by the utility could run Southern California Edison a billion dollars, most of the damage would be covered by the state’s Wildfire Fund, established in 2019, worth $21 billion. The fund protects utilities from going bankrupt when fires break out and would pay for insured and uninsured losses caused by utilities, Wara said.
Still, if it was utility-caused, the Eaton fire could eat up half the $21 billion fund, which would affect the market’s perception of the Wildfire Fund and could negatively affect Southern California Edison’s credit score, according to Wara.
On Sunday, the law firm Edelson PC sent a notice to Edison, asking them to preserve evidence and equipment involving the Eaton fire.
The firm has also obtained videos and images from residents showing the fire appears to have started at the base of the tower, and preserving evidence will be important to determine what caused it, and who is responsible for it.
“This could be the most devastating disaster in U.S. history,” said Ali Moghaddas, an attorney with Edelson PC of all the fires burning in the region. “I’ve seen estimates that the damage could be in excess of $100 billion dollars.”
Times staff writer Laura Nelson contributed to this report.
