Edison’s Lack of Cooperation Cited for Raid

State officials investigating the cause of last year’s Calabasas wildfire said their decision to launch an unprecedented law enforcement raid on the headquarters of Southern California Edison stemmed from frustration over a pattern of interference by Edison with investigations of major fires.

Officials with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention said the giant utility has repeatedly hindered investigations by refusing to provide information or by removing evidence from the scene of major fires in which power lines or equipment were a suspected cause.

Norman Hill, chief legal counsel to the forestry department, said in an interview that Edison’s failure to cooperate in the investigation of the Calabasas fire was “not an isolated occurrence,” but representative of what has happened “throughout the service area of Southern California Edison.”

Hoping to defuse an increasingly tense situation, Edison and the forestry department recently inaugurated a series of high-level meetings aimed at reaching an accord on how evidence will be handled at future fire scenes. Officials are “trying to develop some protocols on how we work together in the investigation of fires,” said Steven Conroy, an Edison spokesman.

Although he acknowledged that the “relationship [between forestry and Edison] has been strained,” Conroy denied that Edison has interfered with investigations, saying “that’s just highly inaccurate.”

“We have always tried to cooperate,” he said.

But state forestry officials have not been the only ones to complain. After last year’s 11,000-acre Grand fire in Ventura County, a county Fire Department report accused Edison of failing to produce requested documents, trying “to gain control of confiscated evidence” and attempting “to erase evidence by trampling on and destroying” burn marks on the ground from fallen live wires. Edison has denied the allegations.

U.S. Forest Service officials investigating the Hopper Canyon fire in the Los Padres National Forest, which burned 25,000 acres near Piru in August, complained that Edison crews replaced burned equipment in an underground electrical vault after being told to wait until authorities could inspect the equipment as a possible cause.

*

According to state forestry officials, investigators told Edison that a joint inspection of the vault would be held the next day and cordoned off the area with crime scene tape--only to find the tape rolled up and the equipment removed when they returned the next day. A U.S. Forest Service official declined to comment, saying that the agency is still investigating the cause of the fire.

“We were there and we did make some repairs” to the underground vault, Conroy said. But Edison crews did not remove the crime scene tape or “violate any of the instructions given by the fire agencies,” Conroy said.

The Calabasas fire raid of Sept. 29 and 30--in which fire investigators and local law enforcement officers swept through Edison headquarters in Rosemead and several branch offices, seizing records, equipment and tree limbs--came against a backdrop of mounting legal pressure on Edison over its role in major fires.

In several recent cases, the forestry agency has successfully sued Edison to recover the costs of fighting fires caused by trees brushing power lines or other maintenance failures, typically joining with private fire loss victims in filing negligence claims.

Some examples:

* The Mill Creek fire, which burned 4,680 acres in San Bernardino County in 1993, after a device called a lightning arrester fell from a power pole and ignited brush. Earlier this year, a jury found Edison negligent for failing to maintain an adequate firebreak around the pole and awarded about $900,000 in damages to three plaintiffs, including more than $295,000 to the forestry department. Edison, which contends that the arrester failed because vandals shot at the power line, is appealing the verdict.

* The Knoll fire, which charred 185 acres and several structures in the San Bernardino County community of Devore in November, 1990. A San Bernardino Superior Court judge ruled that the fire was caused by Edison’s failure to properly maintain an aging power line, and in April awarded damages of more than $2 million, including about $40,000 to the forestry department. Edison is appealing the decision.

* The Winchester fire in Riverside County, which scorched more than 25,000 acres and about 30 homes and mobile homes in October 1993. The forestry department and private plaintiffs blamed the fire on Edison’s failure to trim back eucalyptus trees that swayed into power lines in gusty winds, a charge Edison denied.

Edison was found negligent earlier this year by a Riverside County Superior Court jury and has been ordered to pay damages of about $2.5 million--including more than $1.2 million to the state forestry department. Without admitting liability, Edison agreed to pay additional sums in out-of-court settlements with other plaintiffs. But it is appealing the negligence verdict.

“The juries are sending a message to these guys that they have to pay attention,” said Shawn Caine, an attorney for several plaintiffs in the Winchester case. “They need to be more vigilant in their line-clearing inspections and apply their resources to public safety.”

But Conroy of Edison said the company believed it had strong defenses in each of the cases--and has “a right, and indeed, an obligation to defend ourselves on behalf of the ratepayers and the shareholders when we feel we were not responsible for starting a particular fire.”

*

The Winchester case also featured extensive finger-pointing between forestry officials and Edison over the handling of evidence. Dan Nichols, a battalion chief with the forestry department, said Edison crews took possession of downed wires that the state had tagged as evidence. And Edison said that destruction of tree limbs by forestry officials prevented it from proving that the fire was not caused by untrimmed trees, but by a broken limb that was thrown into power lines by gusty Santa Ana winds.

Profoundly souring relations between the agency and utility, Edison filed a cross-complaint, or secondary lawsuit, in the Winchester case, accusing the department and an individual investigator, Wayne Murray, of mishandling evidence. Edison later withdrew the cross-complaint, but not before Murray was the subject of an internal affairs investigation, Nichols said.

Steve Sunderland, fire prevention program manager for the forestry department, said the action sent a chill through fire investigators, “who all began wondering if they would get sued for trying to do their jobs.”

Murray and other forestry officials have asked the Riverside County district attorney’s office to investigate Edison for allegedly filing a false complaint against a peace officer, according to Assistant Dist. Atty. Randy Tagami, who said a decision will be made in the next few weeks on whether to take action.

Edison and fire officials also clashed over control of evidence from the Grand fire in April 1996, which a Ventura County fire investigator blamed on inadequate maintenance of Edison power lines. Firefighting costs have been estimated at more than $1 million, although state and county officials have yet to file claims.

Several ranchers and others have sued the utility for negligence, claiming damage to irrigation equipment and other property.

In his report on the fire, Ventura County Fire Capt. Keith Mashburn said an Edison claims investigator who arrived on the scene initially claimed not to know if Edison owned the power lines. Mashburn said that when an Edison consultant who came to the fire station to inspect evidence tried to introduce himself, an Edison representative cut him off, saying county fire officials “did not need to know this person.”

Mashburn also said Edison personnel tried to take possession of burned equipment and trampled arc marks on the ground from fallen wires in what Mashburn considered an attempt to erase evidence.

Conroy disputed some of Mashburn’s statements and described his claim about trampling arc marks as absurd.

Although Edison and the state forestry agency have previously clashed in civil cost-recovery cases, the Calabasas fire investigation is a criminal matter. The blaze last October, fanned by Santa Ana winds, engulfed 13,900 acres of the Santa Monica Mountains, destroying nearly a dozen homes and other structures and injuring 11 people, including one firefighter who was critically hurt.

State forestry officials, who believe the fire resulted from a failure to trim trees that brushed a power line just south of the Ventura Freeway, are investigating Edison under a state law that makes it a felony to “recklessly” cause a fire that results in serious bodily harm.

Edison has said the fire could just as well have resulted from windblown debris hitting power lines, in which case the utility would not be at fault. Further complicating the case, after news reports on the Edison raid, a woman came forward to say she saw the blaze kindled by sparks from the backfire of a truck passing by on the freeway.

“Operation Lights Out,” the surprise raid on Edison offices late last month by about 50 investigators and law enforcement officers, had been carefully planned. To get a detailed layout of the company’s Rosemead headquarters, the forestry department sent an investigator posing as an architecture student to map each floor.

Investigators pulled into the company’s parking garage and immediately ran up to the third floor to secure Edison’s claims department first.

The raid left Edison officials fuming over what they described as an unnecessary show of force. But in his sworn affidavit requesting the search warrant, a state fire investigator said Edison had directed officials seeking certain evidence to make a written request--and then had ignored a pair of letters.

Conroy acknowledged Friday that Edison was “not timely” in responding to the requests, attributing that to human error.

Officials with the state Public Utilities Commission, who took part in the raid, said last week that they have opened an investigation to determine if Edison has complied with commission rules requiring trimming of trees near power lines.

“The utility is really given responsibility for [keeping power lines clear] and our role is to make sure they comply with that,” said William Schulte, director of the commission’s consumer services division.

Edison officials said they take tree trimming seriously and will spend a record $20 million on it this year alone.