A new trial accuses the Los Angeles Water Department and the power to deliberately cover the role that the power lines played in the food of the devastation formulated by the fire of the Palisades.
A group of palisades fire victims alleged that an electric LADWP electric tower began a second ignition when it was overthrown at 10:30 p.m. on January 7, around 12 hours after the start of the fire.
Fanni by formidable winds of Santa Ana, the flames in the surrounding brush quickly consumed houses in the top district and quickly spread in the Palisades and Malibu, according to the complaint. The applicants request compensation for the damage they suffered as a result of the fire.
The trial accuses the usefulness of deliberately concealing the damage he caused by telling the Washington Post in January that the line in question had been disabled in the past five years.
Last week, lawyers representing public service admitted the lawyers of complainants that the declaration was inaccurate.
“This declaration is the result of a misunderstanding. The line had been disabled for several years before the fire,” said Ladwp in a letter of March 20. “He was energized when the fire ignited.”
Although the public service qualified the misunderstanding declaration, the lawyers described it as “massive concealment” to “hide from the public that its electrical equipment was at the origin of several additional ignitions of the palisades fire”.
In response to the trial, the LADWP published a new declaration specifying that, although the line was brought to the day of the fire, it was disabled around 2:15 p.m. – a few hours before the applicants say it started a second lighting.
The Declaration also points out that the Alcohol, Tobacco and Figure Bureau, which is investigating the fire in Palisades, did not indicate that LADWP facilities were involved in the fire of the palisades fire. ATF has not yet determined an official cause of the fire.
The fire of the Palisades began at 10:30 am on January 7 along the canyon temescal trail near Skull Rock in the Pacific Palisades, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. He burned 23,707 acres, destroyed 6,837 structures and claiming 12 lives.
Familiar sources with ATF’s investigation said they believed that the palisades fire had human origins. The investigators examine if it could have rekindled from the embers of a smaller fire that occurred on January 1 around the rock zone of the skull.
Although an electric tower of Southern Edison is surveyed as a possible cause of Eaton’s fire in Altadena, ATF has said nothing about the electric infrastructure responsible for devastation in the palisades.
The complainants of the new trial allege that the power-down power lines of a broken electric pole were a second ignition source above the ladwp TESSCAL water tank on the Tesscal Canyon Trail at 10:30 p.m.
The LADWP told lawyers that there were no faults – abnormal conditions in an electrical system that disturb the flow flow – on the line around the moment when the fire fled. However, the photos included in the trial show wooden poles of the electric tower and electric lines dispersed on the ground.
The photos also show flames spread around the broken pole area shortly after the applicants claim that the lines started a second ignition.
In addition to the shot down power lines, applicants say that the lack of water in the Sana Ynez tank of LADWP is responsible for the damage caused by the fire.
“The day the fire of the Palisades began, the Sana Ynez tank of Ladwp had been empty of its capacity of 117 million gallons for about 11 months, leaving the Pacific palisades with only 3 million gallons of total water storage,” said the complaint. “This meant that Pacific Palisades had only 2.5% of its total water storage capacity available to fight against palisades.”
LADWP has already been struck by a deluge of legal proceedings on the part of the owners requesting compensation for damage which, according to them, were caused by poor management by the water resources service.
Last month, the public service approved a $ 10 million contract over three years with the Munger firm, Tolles & Olson to defend itself against the litigation of Palisades fire.
California Daily Newspapers
