Power lines? Old embers? Arson? Investigators, experts, amateurs look for cause of L.A. fires
- Investigators are beginning their work to determine the origin and cause of the devastating fires in Los Angeles.
- The work will likely take months, if not longer, as investigators consider a slew of potential factors.
As Los Angeles reels from the astonishing losses of the firestorms, one question holds profound economic, financial and political consequences: What sparked the fires?
The Palisades and Eaton fires have burned more than 12,000 structures and are expected to be the most costly fires in American history, with estimates ranging from $50 billion to $150 billion.
Residents are comparing notes on what they saw in the hills around them in the run-up to the blazes. Utilities are looking into nearby faults in their equipment. Politicians are pointing fingers. Online sleuths are sharing video and other purported evidence on social media platforms.
There was a small blaze near the site of the massive Palisades fire a week before, on New Year’s Day. Could old embers have been rekindled? Homes that burned in the Eaton fire appeared to still have power amid high winds before the inferno sparked. Were downed power lines to blame? A “person of interest” was identified in the Kenneth fire. Are any of the blazes the work of arsonists?
Officials so far have been circumspect and careful. They don’t have solid answers just yet, but they will, they said — just as soon as they can complete the complex and often months-long “origin and cause” investigations that are only just beginning now.
“There’s a lot of misinformation floating around, and a lot of people want answers — which is understandable. And we will provide those answers,” said Ginger Colbrun, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the lead agency investigating the cause of the Palisades fire. “But we have to get additional people here and investigate.”
The ATF’s National Response Team — one of the nation’s most renowned units for investigating mass disasters — is handling the Palisades fire and will get to the bottom of it, Colbrun said. But with the fire still burning, burn patterns shifting and new evacuation orders still coming out, investigators still need time to gather the facts.
“To jump to any conclusions right now is speculation,” she said. She could not offer a timeline for when the investigation would be concluded.
The same is true for other investigations across the region being led by other city, county and state agencies with fire investigation expertise — which are splitting the workload with the ATF given the number of fires and the complexity of the work.
Investigators are looking into whether downed Southern California Edison equipment ignited the Hurst fire near Sylmar, officials said.
Investigations into the cause of blazes as large and intense as these L.A. fires often take months, if not longer. After the massive wildfire that killed more than 100 people on Maui in August 2023, for example, the ATF’s National Response Team took more than a year to investigate — only issuing their official findings on the cause in October 2024.
Experts said the cause of wildfires, including those that sweep into urban areas, can be extremely difficult to investigate — for obvious reasons, including the intensity and temperature of such large blazes destroying nearly everything in their path.
“You’re basically throwing a crime scene in an oven,” said Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University and a former California wildfire commissioner.
However, the science behind fire investigations has become extremely advanced and technical, he said — and in urban environments can draw on huge amounts of available data, including from utilities.
Getting to a cause for these fires will be critically important, Wara said, as that information can help L.A. and other cities avoid similar fires in the future. But for the same reason, it is more important to reach the correct conclusions than to rush to an answer, he said.
“We need to be respectful of the process and let the process play out,” he said. “We also want to be pushing to make sure that the process is full and complete.”
Research shows rapid shifts between wet and dry extremes are increasing. Scientists say this ‘hydroclimate whiplash’ contributed to California’s devastating fires.
One thing to keep in mind about such fires, Wara said, is that it is not necessarily the case that there is a single origin or cause. Sometimes, massive fires have multiple origin points, especially amid the sort of weather L.A. has experienced recently, with Santa Ana winds blowing at unusually high speeds.
Wara said a major question he has is about utility decisions — by Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power — to either cut power to lines amid the high winds or to leave them electrified.
SCE has said it cut power, but that is in question, he said. LADWP generally does not cut power, banking on the efforts it has made to stabilize and strengthen its lines, including by putting them on steel rather than wooden poles.
A major issue in winds as powerful as those last week, he said, is “blow-in” — or material such as tree branches that can fly through the air and strike power lines even from a distance, even if the lines’ immediate easement area has been well maintained and cleared by a utility.
Wara said the investigations into the fires’ origins will likely include the collection of data from utilities, including from individual homeowners’ meters, about what was happening on the electrical grid in the early hours of the fires.
If LADWP lines did cause the Palisades fire, it could be costly for the city financially, he said. Private utilities found at fault in past fires have been forced to pay out billions of dollars to victims. Some portion of the damage could be paid by the state’s Wildfire Fund.
Dean Florez, a member of the California Air Resources Board and former state senator, said that although the investigations are now examining a number of potential ignition sources, “if history is any indication, power lines remain a primary focus.”
“The past has taught us that utility equipment is a leading cause of California’s deadliest wildfires. This historical pattern cannot be ignored when discussing preventive measures,” Florez said. “The real issue here isn’t just how these fires might have started, but how preventable they might have been.”
He said the state, through the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), has undercut its wildfire prevention strategy by reducing funding for programs to put power transmission lines underground, which he said is a proven long-term solution to reduce wildfire risk.
“Yes, undergrounding is expensive at $3 [million to] $4 million per mile, but it pales in comparison to the catastrophic costs of wildfires like those devastating Los Angeles County, which can easily exceed $500 billion in damages,” Florez said.
He said he believes the CPUC has inadvertently allowed these risks to persist “by favoring lower-cost, less effective strategies such as insulated wires and vegetation management while deprioritizing undergrounding.”
The utilities Southern California Edison and PG&E have made progress in reducing fire risks by placing some transmission lines underground, Florez said, and as a result have reported significant declines in utility-sparked fires in high-risk areas. But he said the CPUC’s funding cuts have forced utilities to reduce these efforts, and that even SCE’s modest plan to put 100 miles of power lines underground this year is at risk.
Investigators in recent days have appeared focused in part on an area around an electrical transmission tower in Eaton Canyon that burned, with officials acknowledging their work there was part of the investigation into the start of the Eaton fire. Edison says it has seen no evidence to suggest that its power equipment sparked the fire.
Investigators looking into the cause of the devastating Eaton fire have been studying the site around an electrical tower in Eaton Canton. Residents took photos of the early moments of the fire and believe it started there.
One other theory that recently arose for the Palisades fire is that a fire in the area a week prior — caused by fireworks in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day — had been rekindled by the high winds, despite the Los Angeles Fire Department having previously stomped it out.
Colbrun said such a link right now is just speculation, though investigators will be considering all possible causes for the blaze.
Sources with knowledge of the investigation told The Times officials were aware of the earlier fire and its general proximity to the starting point of the Palisades fire, and looking into whether they are related. People have been known to hang out in the area, and the sources said it’s possible someone there on Tuesday sparked another blaze in the same location.
Wara said such an origin would be possible. He cited as an example the massive Hermit’s Peak-Calf Canyon fire in New Mexico, which arose after remnants of a prescribed burn set by the U.S. Forest Service rekindled. The Oakland Hills firestorm in 1991 also began after a smaller fire wasn’t fully extinguished.
It’s also possible that the Palisades fire could have been caused by multiple things at once, Wara said. As an example, he cited the Marshall fire in Boulder, Colo., which was caused both by a damaged power line and by embers from a week-old trash fire.
“There could be multiple ignitions that happen nearly at the same time and place,” Wara said.
Until more evidence is gathered, it will be impossible to reach any conclusions about what started L.A.’s fires, Wara said. But getting to the right answer is important, he said.
“We need to learn from these urban firestorms,” Wara said, “so we can figure out ways so they don’t happen again.”
Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Winton contributed to this article.
