The Eaton Fire erupted on the same day as the Palisades Fire, on January 7. The cause was widely suspected to have been faulty electrical wires, which sparked, causing flames that spread rapidly in the high winds. Los Angeles County is already suing SoCal Edison, acting on behalf of local residents in an area that is officially unincorporated and therefore governed by Los Angeles County rather than the City of Los Angeles itself.
The county has successfully sued SoCal Edison for compensation for previous fires.
The Los Angeles Times reported:
Seeking to avoid lengthy litigation, Southern California Edison said Wednesday it will offer to compensate Eaton fire victims directly for damages suffered, even though it has yet to formally concede that its equipment ignited the blaze on Jan. 7.
Edison said it planned to launch a Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program this fall that would be open to those who lost homes, businesses or rental properties in the fire that killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 homes and other structures in Altadena. It would also cover those who were harmed by smoke, suffered physical injuries or had family members who died.
…
If Edison is found responsible for the fire, the state’s $21-billion wildfire fund is expected to reimburse the company for all or most of the payments it makes to victims. Brigford said he believed the wildfire fund would be enough to cover the Eaton fire claims.
Residents of Pacific Palisades and Malibu may not be as lucky. While some are suing the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), which emptied the local reservoir and left it empty after a dry summer heading into fire season, the power company in that part of Los Angeles is not suspected of being the initial cause of the blaze (though one lawsuit claims an LADWP line sparked a secondary blaze there).
The most widely-supported explanation for the Palisades Fire is a re-ignition of a New Year’s Day fire that was allegedly set by young people setting off fireworks on a local mountaintop. While the culprits could conceivably be found, they would not have deep enough pockets to compensate residents for their losses. That means litigation might not offer relief, leaving residents to try other ways to fund the rebuilding effort.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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