Utilities’ Fire Prevention Under Scrutiny

The head of an Assembly committee challenged utility executives Friday to prove they were not putting profits ahead of public safety by failing to keep trees properly trimmed away from power lines.

Diane Martinez (D-Monterey Park), chairwoman of the Utilities and Commerce Committee, called the hearing in the aftermath of last month’s raid by investigators on Southern California Edison Co. The session was convened in connection with last October’s Calabasas blaze and the criminal conviction in June of Pacific Gas & Electric by a Nevada County jury on 739 misdemeanors for its role in a 1994 wildfire.

“The track record of the utilities gives us no great comfort,” Martinez said, adding that she wanted to determine “how genuine the utilities are” in protecting the public from fires caused by power lines and faulty equipment.

State fire officials suspect that equipment failed on an Edison power pole near Calabasas after Santa Ana winds blew eucalyptus branches into the pole, causing a weeklong fire that charred more than 13,000 acres, destroyed a dozen homes and other buildings, and injured 11 people.

David B. LeMay, the state forestry official who supervised the action against Edison, told the committee that the search was successful, but he declined to elaborate. Investigators raided Edison’s Rosemead headquarters and four branch offices Sept. 29, gathering evidence relating to the Calabasas fire.

James Kelly, Edison’s manager for regulatory compliance, declined to comment to the media on the raid or the fire. But he told the committee that Edison would agree to the appointment of a neutral party to examine the fire’s circumstances.

After the hearing, Edison attorney Steve Pickett said the utility had not discussed that idea with state fire officials.

“What we’d like to see is someone who does not have an incentive to collect [firefighting] costs do a neutral investigation,” Pickett said. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention “does a difficult job under difficult circumstances, but they can’t be neutral when they’re also trying to collect their suppression costs.”