Several plaintiffs whose homes were destroyed in the deadly Palisades fire in January are suing the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), accusing the utility of contributing to the conflagration via downed power lines and an empty reservoir.
The lawsuit was filed on Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court in the wake of the LADWP’s conflicting statements about a power line that ran near the site of the fire’s first ignition. The utility initially said the Royal-Monte Grande 1 Line was not energized on the day of the fire but later altered that statement to clarify a “misunderstanding,” according to the complaint.
“Plaintiffs are informed and believe that there was no ‘misunderstanding,’” the lawsuit states. “Rather, plaintiffs allege that this was a massive coverup by the LADWP, not only to conceal from the public that its electrical equipment was the source of several additional ignitions of the Palisades Fire, but to affirmatively represent that it was not.”
The fire’s first ignition took place at about 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 7 on the Temescal Canyon Trail in Pacific Palisades, according to the lawsuit. It ultimately became the worst fire in the history of the city of Los Angeles, destroying nearly 7,000 structures, killing 12 people and injuring three civilians and a firefighter.
One of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Roger Behle, said in an email to the Southern California Record that the utility told a Washington Post reporter in January that the Royal-Monte Grande 1 Line had been abandoned for five years.
“The Royal-Monte Grande 1 Line was actually not abandoned and was energized at the time of the fire,” Behle said. “Then they said the line was energized early in the day on Jan. 7 but was turned off later that day. The story keeps changing. We need straight answers. We will get them.”
On Tuesday, the LADWP said in a statement that although the line had been de-energized for several years prior to the fire, it was re-energized last year to support the utility’s electrical operations and was energized the morning of the fire. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is investigating the origin of the fire, has not concluded that LADWP equipment was involved in the ignition of the blaze, the statement says.
And the utility’s distribution circuits that supply power to residents and businesses are all underground in the region where the fire is suspected to have started, according to the LADWP.
“LADWP has one overhead line in the area, an overhead (34.5-kilovolt) sub-transmission line – the Royal-Monte Grande 1 Line – that passes approximately a quarter mile from the reported origin of the Palisades Fire,” the utility’s statement says. “Devices monitoring the Royal-Monte Grande 1 Line recorded no faults or anomalies near the reported time of ignition of the Palisades Fire.”
The line was manually de-powered by about 2:15 p.m. on Jan. 7, according to the utility. That timing would indicate that the line could not have been the source of a second ignition that occurred at 10:30 p.m. the same day, the LADWP said.
The lawsuit criticizes the utility for not correcting the initial false statement about the Royal-Monte Grande 1 Line until a LADWP attorney clarified the issue in a letter to counsel for the plaintiffs on March 20.
The lawsuit alleges that the utility tried to conceal its knowledge that there had been a fault at “10:30 p.m. when its H-frame pole snapped in half, sending energized power lines crashing to the ground” above The Summit neighborhood in Pacific Palisades.
At the time of the fire, the utility’s 117-million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir had been empty for months as it awaited repairs, limiting the water available to fight the fire, according to the lawsuit.
In January, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered fire officials to put together an independent report on the causes of the water-supply issues during the Palisades Fire and to examine the water pressure in the city’s water systems. Newsom called the loss of water pressure during firefighting operations “deeply troubling.”
The lawsuit seeks damages for the plaintiffs’ loss of homes, lost wages and earning capacity, business-interruption losses, attorneys’ fees and prejudgment interest.