Fire survivors call for audits of Edisons wildfire prevention spending

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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’s two other big for-profit electric companies on wildfire prevention.The survivors pointed to an investigation by The Times 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.“Californians funded the wildfire prevention,” Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network, told members of the Assembly Utilities and Energy Commission on Wednesday.

”And we survivors paid the price when that work was not done.”While the government’s investigation into the fire has not yet been released, Edison has said 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.Chen’s 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.The state Public Utilities Commission would have to consider the audits’ findings before agreeing to raise customer rates to cover even more wildfire spending.

Climate & Environment Southern California Edison began charging customers for hundreds of millions of dollars of maintenance on its aging transmission lines that regulators approved but it did not actually do in the four years before the Eaton fire, according to state documents.“Had Edison known it would be accountable for those funds, that wildfire may...