Altadena asked Edison to bury power lines. Some fire victims say that could cost them $40,000

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Connor Cipolla, an Eaton wildfire survivor, last year praised Southern California Edison’s plan of burying more than 60 miles of electric lines in Altadena as it rebuilds to reduce the risk of fire.Then he learned he would have to pay $20,000 to $40,000 to connect his home, which was damaged by smoke and ash, to Edison’s new underground line.A nearby neighbor received an estimate for $30,000, he said.“Residents are so angry,” Cipolla said.

“We were completely blindsided.”Other residents have tracked the wooden stakes Edison workers put up, showing where crews will dig.They’ve found dozens of places where deep trenches are planned under oak and pine trees that survived the fire.

In addition to the added costs they face, they fear many trees will die as crews cut their roots.“The damage is being done now and it’s irreversible,” homeowner Robert Steller said, pointing Maiden Lane to where an Edison crew was working.For a week, Steller, who lost his home in the fire, parked his Toyota 4Runner over a recently dug trench.He said he was trying to block Edison’s crew from burying a large transformer between two towering deodar cedar trees.

The work would “be downright fatal” to the decades-old trees, he said.The buried lines are an upgrade that will make Altadena’s electrical grid safer and more reliable, Edison says, and it also will lower the risk that the company would have to black out Altadena neighborhoods during dangerous Santa Ana winds to prevent fires.Brandon Tolentino, an Edison vice president, said the company was trying to find government or charity funding to help homeowners pay to connect to the buried lines.In the meantime, he said, Edison decided to allow owners of homes that survived the fire to keep their overhead connections until financial help was available.Tolentino added that the company planned meetings to listen to residents’...