Approximately 14 hours before the Eaton fire began on January 7 in the hills over Altadena and Pasadena, California, the electric lines in the area had signs of being under tension in intensifying winds.
The new data of a company that maintains electrical sensors suggests that the transmission network in southern California Edison emphasized long before the most severe winds cross the Los Angeles region, which increases the growing criticisms that the electrical services company did not make enough to prevent the fire. Edison is already under review as the possible cause of the Eaton fire, which killed 17 people and destroyed more than 9,400 buildings.
The data comes from whisker Labs, a technology company in Maryland, and suggests that there were failures or electrical malfunction, in Edison’s transmission lines at 4:28 am and 4:36 am the wind speeds at that time were kept at 60 miles per hour, with gusts of up to 79 mph, strong enough for engineers to consider the engineers.
Later in the day, whisker identified two failures only a few minutes before the fire began, at approximately 6:11 pm, in the transmission network near Eaton Canyon, where the fire investigators have said that Eaton’s fire began. These faults coincided with flashes in the transmission lines recorded by a video camera at a nearby arc service station.
The southern California, Edison, which supplies energy to several communities near Eaton Canyon, including Altadena, did not reduce the power to the transmission lines despite the faults of the morning. Nor did the utility cut the power in the transmission lines after the second set of failures at night when the winds reached 100 mph
“They are very similar,” said Bob Marshall, co -founder and executive director of Whisker Labs, about morning and night failures. “We believe they are in the same area. They are definitely transmission failures.”
Marshall said his company informed Edison about his latest findings, which he identified after the company’s experts analyzed more data. Whisker Labs operates sensors in homes to help predict and prevent residential fires.
The critics of the utility argue that the mass failures, that were so strong that the sensors as far as Portland, Oregon, and Salt Lake City recorded them, suggest that Edison should have reduced the power to the transmission lines as the climatic conditions worsened.
“I think we have a great image of what happened,” said Robert McCullough, director of McCullough Research in Portland, who has been reviewing data and information about Edison, even whisker Labs, at the request of the New York Times. “Too many people did not respond quickly enough,” he added.
Although the researchers have not determined the cause of the Eaton fire, residents and local governments have filed demands against Edison, arguing that the public service company team turned on one of the worst forest fires in the history of California. In his lawsuit against Edison, Los Angeles County cited the video of the service station as evidence. The video was first informed by the Times.
Kathleen Dunleavy, a spokeswoman for Edison, said the decision to reduce energy was based on many factors, including wind speed and the threat of forest fires in a particular area. Electrical failures alone would not justify the decision to reduce energy, he said. But the National Meteorological Service had issued fire warnings of the red flag that led to January 7 for southern California, pointing out extreme climatic conditions along with dry vegetation.
According to Edison guidelines, engineers should consider reducing energy to the transmission lines when the winds are between 68 and 90 mph, Mrs. Dunleavy said the conditions did not justify electricity to the electricity lines, known as public safety energy closures, a step that the utilities consider a final resort in forest fire prevention.
“We do not comply with the PSPS threshold, based on wind speed and the threat of fire,” Dunleavy said.
But the wind speeds registered on the threshold of the utility several times that day, as shown in the government data. The bursts in the mountains of the East of San Gabriel in the Altadena area exceeded 68 mph at least 20 times between 2 in the afternoon of January 6 and 1 in the morning of January 8, according to an analysis of the Times of the data of the National Meteorological Service.
The utility had failures in the transmission lines in the Times Whisker Labs registered on the morning of January 7, but Mrs. Dunleavy said that the failures early in the day were not related to the lines in Eaton Canyon. She acknowledged that the utility had been talking to Whisker Labs about her findings.
“These two failures did not happen in any line that crossed the cannon,” Dunleavy said. “They are not relevant to any line in Eaton Canyon.”
Initially, the profit made similar statements about the faults of Whisker Labs recorded around 6:11 pm, but the video station video showed that the failures coincided with the flashes in the transmission lines in the Altadena area, and Edison told state regulators that seeing visual evidence caused the utility to expand their own investigation in the cause of the fire.
Edison reduced power before the fire began three low voltage circuits that serve the Kinneloa Mesa community on the opposite side of Eaton Canyon from Altadena. But none of the high voltage transmission lines in Eaton Canyon or the low voltage lines in Altadena went out when the wind speeds rose and the fire began.
On Monday, Edison began physical and video inspections and electrical equipment tests at Eaton Canyon in the area where fire investigators said the Eaton fire began. The public services company said that this phase of the field tests would last several weeks, followed by a laboratory and engineering analysis, as part of the research on the cause of the fire.
“We owe it to the public here, and I have said from the beginning that I want to make sure that we are completely transparent here,” said Pedro Pizarro, president and executive director of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison.
Eaton’s fire was one of several forest fires that began in the Los Angeles area on January 7. They include the fire of Palisades, which destroyed much of the coastal community of Pacific Palisades, and the fire of Hurst, which began north of Eaton’s fire.
Edison has told state regulators that his team can be involved in the cause of Hurst’s fire. Three large failures were identified in the transmission network near Hurst before that fire began, according to mustache data.
Joey K. Lee Contributed reports.
