{"id":259223,"date":"2026-04-09T11:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T11:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/259223\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T11:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T11:41:09","slug":"fire-survivors-call-for-audits-of-edisons-wildfire-prevention-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/259223\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire survivors call for audits of Edison\u2019s wildfire prevention spending"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Survivors of the devastating Eaton fire called on state lawmakers on Wednesday to pass a bill requiring audits of spending by Southern California Edison and the state\u2019s two other big for-profit electric companies on wildfire prevention.<\/p>\n

The survivors pointed to an investigation by The Times<\/a> that found that Edison had not spent hundreds of millions of dollars that it told regulators before the fire was needed to keep its transmission system safe. Edison had begun charging customers for the costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornians funded the wildfire prevention,\u201d Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor\u2019s Network, told members of the Assembly Utilities and Energy Commission on Wednesday. \u201dAnd we survivors paid the price when that work was not done.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the government\u2019s investigation into the fire has not yet been released, Edison has said<\/a> it believes that a century-old transmission line, which had not carried power since 1971, may have briefly re-energized on the night of Jan. 7, 2025, to ignite the fire. The inferno killed 19 people and destroyed thousands of homes and other structures in Altadena.<\/p>\n

Chen\u2019s wildfire survivors group and Consumer Watchdog sponsored the bill, known as Assembly Bill 1744. It would require the wildfire safety spending by Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric to be audited by an independent accounting firm.<\/p>\n

The state Public Utilities Commission would have to consider the audits\u2019 findings before agreeing to raise customer rates to cover even more wildfire spending.<\/p>\n

\u201cHad Edison known it would be accountable for those funds, that wildfire may not have started,\u201d Jamie Court of Consumer Watchdog told the committee, referring to the Eaton fire.<\/p>\n

All three utilities said at the hearing they opposed the bill.<\/p>\n

A lobbyist for San Diego Gas & Electric said he believed the audits were unnecessary because the commission was already reviewing the spending.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think it creates a duplicative process,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

At the committee hearing, Edison\u2019s lobbyist did not say why the company was opposed to the bill.<\/p>\n

The company has previously said that safety is its top priority and that it does not believe maintenance on its transmission lines suffered before the Eaton fire.<\/p>\n

Also voicing support for the bill at the hearing were survivors of other deadly wildfires in the state, including the 2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed much of the town of Paradise. Investigators found that the fire was ignited when equipment failed on a decades-old PG&E transmission line.<\/p>\n

The bill\u2019s author, Assemblywoman Tasha Boerner, an Encinitas Democrat, pointed to how independent audits of the three companies\u2019 wildfire spending from 2019 to 2020 found that $2.5 billion could not be accounted for.<\/p>\n

Those were the last independent audits of the three companies\u2019 wildfire spending. <\/p>\n

Despite the findings, the commission did not require the companies to return any of the questioned amounts to electric customers. Instead, the commission agreed the companies could spend billions of dollars more, Boerner said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is frankly unacceptable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Asked for a response to those audits, the lobbyist from San Diego Gas & Electric told the committee he wasn\u2019t familiar with the findings.<\/p>\n

California electric rates are the nation\u2019s second highest after Hawaii.<\/p>\n

In 2024, wildfire expenses amounted to 17% to 27% of the costs the three companies charge to consumers, according to a legislative analysis of Boerner\u2019s bill. The average residential customer pays $250 to $490 a year for that spending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Survivors of the devastating Eaton fire called on state lawmakers on Wednesday to pass a bill requiring audits…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[41630,3653,1804,15234,83648,27653,52394,114348,3288,48,52,51,37216,47,50,49,95044,11662,316,114346,114347],"class_list":{"0":"post-259223","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-audits","9":"tag-bill","10":"tag-company","11":"tag-consumer-watchdog","12":"tag-devastating-eaton-fire","13":"tag-edison","14":"tag-electric","15":"tag-energy-commission","16":"tag-fire-survivor","17":"tag-la","18":"tag-la-headlines","19":"tag-la-news","20":"tag-lobbyist","21":"tag-los-angeles","22":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","23":"tag-los-angeles-news","24":"tag-san-diego-gas","25":"tag-state-lawmaker","26":"tag-wednesday","27":"tag-wildfire-prevention-spending","28":"tag-wildfire-safety-spending"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}