Fire Survivors Call For Audits Of Edison's Wildfire Prevention Spending - Beritaja

Survivors of the devastating Eaton occurrence called connected authorities lawmakers connected Wednesday to walk a measure requiring audits of spending by Southern California Edison and the state’s 2 different large for-profit electrical companies connected wildfire prevention.

The survivors pointed to an investigation by The Times that recovered that Edison had not spent hundreds of millions of dollars that it told regulators earlier the occurrence was needed to support its transmission strategy safe. Edison had begun charging customers for the costs.

“Californians funded the wildfire prevention,” Joy Chen, executive head of Every Fire Survivor’s Network, told members of the Assembly Utilities and Energy Commission connected Wednesday. ”And we survivors paid the value erstwhile that activity was not done.”

While the government’s investigation into the occurrence has not yet been released, Edison has said it believes that a century-old transmission line, which had not carried powerfulness since 1971, whitethorn person concisely re-energized connected the nighttime of Jan. 7, 2025, to ignite the fire. The inferno killed 19 group and destroyed thousands of homes and different structures successful Altadena.

Chen’s wildfire survivors group and Consumer Watchdog sponsored the bill, known arsenic Assembly Bill 1744. It would require the wildfire information spending by Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric to beryllium audited by an independent accounting firm.

The authorities Public Utilities Commission would person to see the audits’ findings earlier agreeing to raise customer rates to screen moreover much wildfire spending.

“Had Edison known it would beryllium accountable for those funds, that wildfire whitethorn not person started,” Jamie Court of Consumer Watchdog told the committee, referring to the Eaton fire.

All 3 utilities said astatine the proceeding they opposed the bill.

A lobbyist for San Diego Gas & Electric said he believed the audits were unnecessary because the committee was already reviewing the spending.

“We deliberation it creates a duplicative process,” he said.

At the committee hearing, Edison’s lobbyist did not opportunity why the institution was opposed to the bill.

The institution has antecedently said that information is its apical privilege and that it does not judge attraction connected its transmission lines suffered earlier the Eaton fire.

Also voicing support for the measure astatine the proceeding were survivors of different deadly wildfires successful the state, including the 2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 group and destroyed overmuch of the municipality of Paradise. Investigators recovered that the occurrence was ignited erstwhile instrumentality grounded connected a decades-old PG&E transmission line.

The bill’s author, Assemblywoman Tasha Boerner, an Encinitas Democrat, pointed to really independent audits of the 3 companies’ wildfire spending from 2019 to 2020 recovered that $2.5 cardinal could not beryllium accounted for.

Those were the past independent audits of the 3 companies’ wildfire spending.

Despite the findings, the committee did not require the companies to return immoderate of the questioned amounts to electrical customers. Instead, the committee agreed the companies could walk billions of dollars more, Boerner said.

“This is frankly unacceptable,” she said.

Asked for a consequence to those audits, the lobbyist from San Diego Gas & Electric told the committee he wasn’t acquainted pinch the findings.

California electrical rates are the nation’s 2nd highest aft Hawaii.

In 2024, wildfire expenses amounted to 17% to 27% of the costs the 3 companies complaint to consumers, according to a legislative study of Boerner’s bill. The mean residential customer pays $250 to $490 a twelvemonth for that spending.