Woolsey Fire: No Charges For Southern California Edison

LOS ANGELES, CA — The California Department of Justice won't prosecute Southern California Edison for any role the utility giant's equipment may have played in the Woolsey Fire, the department announced Friday.

The 2018 blaze took three lives, destroyed 1,643 buildings and cost an estimated $6 billion as one of the largest fires in Los Angeles County history, scorching 96,949 acres. The fire forced nearly 300,000 to flee their homes. The prosecution of Southern California Edison would have been a watershed moment for the state in an era of routinely catastrophic wildfires. However, the California Department of Justice announced Friday that there isn't enough evidence to support a criminal prosecution. SCE equipment may have started the fire, but prosecutors concluded they couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the company's officials knew and ignored "that its actions presented a substantial and unjustifiable risk of causing a fire."

The California Attorney General's Office and California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, in conjunction with the Ventura County Fire Department, conducted the investigation into the origin and cause of the wildfire. The investigation involved the examination of video footage of the fire, taking statements from responding fire personnel, experts involved in investigating the fire, and witnesses to the events, and the review of physical and scientific evidence from the fire and the results of autopsies.

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Consistent with the scientific findings contained in the report issued by Cal Fire and the Ventura County Fire Department, investigators determined that electrical and communication equipment owned by SCE caused the Woolsey Fire.

Specifically, the evidence revealed that high winds caused a loose guy wire near the utility's equipment to contact energized conductors on a lightweight steel pool, which resulted in electrical arcing that caused the first ignition. A guy wire is a non-energized, tensioned cable used to stabilize utility poles and electrical equipment.

SCE's poor vegetation control near its communication conductor lines also contributed to a second ignition point when those lines became energized by the first arcing event, investigators determined.

State prosecutors have informed the families of the victims of the decision, saying the department was "acknowledging the tragic loss of life and offering condolences to the families."

CADOJ's probe, however, revealed insufficient evidence to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that SCE violated Section 452 of the Penal Code by unlawfully causing a fire or committed any other felony violation of California law. Section 452 would require prosecutors to not only prove that the utility's equipment caused the fire, but also that the company was aware that its actions presented a substantial and unjustifiable risk of causing a fire, that it ignored this risk, and that doing so was a gross deviation from what a reasonable utility would have done in the same situation.

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.