The Los Angeles County district attorney is investigating whether Southern California Edison should be criminally prosecuted for its actions in last year’s devastating Eaton wildfire, which killed 19 people and left thousands of families homeless, the company said Wednesday.
Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Wall Street analysts during an afternoon conference call that the company was cooperating with the district attorney’s office. He said he didn’t know the magnitude of the investigation.
The company said in its annual 10-K report, which was released Wednesday, that it “could be subject to material fines, penalties, or restitution” if the investigation “determined that it failed to comply with applicable laws and regulations.”
“SCE is not aware of any basis for felony liability with regards to the Eaton Fire,” the report said. “Any fines and penalties incurred in connection with the Eaton Fire will not be recoverable from insurance, from the Wildfire Fund, or through electric rates.”
The district attorney’s office declined to comment.
The investigation into the fire, which destroyed a wide swath of Altadena, has not yet been released. Pizarro has said that a leading theory of the fire’s cause is that a century-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon, which had not carried power for 50 years, somehow reenergized and sparked the fire.
Edison executives have said they didn’t remove the line because they believed it would be used in the future.
Company executives knew idle transmission lines could spark wildfires. In 2019, investigators traced the Kincade fire in Sonoma County, which destroyed 374 homes and other structures, to a transmission line owned by Pacific Gas & Electric that was no longer in service.
The Times reported in December how Edison fell behind in maintenance of its transmission system before the fire.
Despite the dangerous Santa Ana wind conditions on Jan. 7, 2025, Edison decided not to shut down the transmission lines running through Eaton Canyon. Pizarro has said the winds that night didn’t meet the company’s threshold at the time for turning off the lines.
Pizarro told investors on the call Wednesday that he continued to believe that the company had acted as a “reasonable utility operator” before the deadly fire.
Under state law, if a utility is determined to have acted reasonably it can be reimbursed for all or most of the damages of the fire by a state wildfire fund.
Edison is now facing hundreds of lawsuits by victims of the Eaton fire. The lawsuits claim the company was negligent in failing to safely maintain its equipment and for not shutting down the Eaton Canyon transmission lines that night.
Edison denies that it acted negligently.
To reduce the burden of that litigation, the company is offering compensation to victims who give up their right to sue.
If the county district attorney’s office decided to pursue criminal charges, it would not be the first time a California utility was prosecuted for starting a deadly wildfire.
In 2020, PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and one felony count of unlawfully starting a fire in a case stemming from the 2018 Camp fire. The inferno destroyed most of the town of Paradise in Northern California and killed 85 people.
State prosecutors investigated the possibility of filing criminal charges against Edison for the 2018 Woolsey fire, which killed three and destroyed more than 1,600 homes and other structures in L.A. and Ventura counties.
In 2021, the office of California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced that prosecutors had not found enough evidence to charge Edison criminally for that 2018 fire.