(Reuters) -Southern California Edison, a unit of utility Edison International, was hit by multiple lawsuits on Monday claiming its electrical equipment started one of the major wildfires currently raging in the Los Angeles area, according to court filings.
The legal actions appear to be the first of hundreds, or even thousands, of claims that may arise from the wildfires that have engulfed parts of Southern California in the past week.
The lawsuits were filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of homeowners, renters, business owners and others with properties destroyed by the Eaton Fire in the Pasadena area.
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At least 24 people have died since multiple fires began last Tuesday, and more than 90,000 residents have been forced to flee their homes. More than two dozen people are reported missing, authorities said.
The Eaton Fire in the foothills east of the city of Los Angeles has scorched more than 14,000 acres (57 sq km) or 22 square miles, nearly the size of Manhattan. That fire is the second most destructive inferno in California history, according to one complaint.
The suits cited multiple eyewitness accounts and images that appeared to show a fire at the base of a transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison (SCE) before powerful Santa Ana wind gusts quickly spread the flames.
Some of those witnesses shared videos of the incident on their social media accounts, including a post by Instagram user @jeffrey.ku of a video of a fire at the base of a transmission tower that he said was taken shortly after the start of the Eaton Fire.
One lawsuit also referred to Brendan Thorn, who was interviewed by local ABC News. Thorn said in the interview that he lives near Eaton Canyon and saw “knee high” fires around transmission towers shortly after the fire began.
Some of the lawsuits cite data from electrical monitoring company Whisker Lab indicating that the power grid in the area experienced multiple potentially spark-causing grid disruptions leading up to the blaze.
The lawsuits say Edison infrastructure in the area was still energized at the time of the fire. Last Wednesday, Southern California Edison said its distribution lines immediately to the west of Eaton Canyon were de-energized well before the reported start time of the fire.
Southern California Edison did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the lawsuits.
On Monday morning, its CEO said in a TV interview the company was continuing to investigate the fires and had not identified any electrical anomalies from its equipment around the time the Eaton Fire broke out.
“It’s pretty typical you see those when you have a spark coming from equipment,” Edison International CEO Pedro Pizarro said during a CNBC interview on Monday morning when asked about the company’s investigation into the Eaton Fire.
“There could be some other mechanism here. Unfortunately we have not been able to get close to the lines yet,” he said.
Edison International’s shares were down nearly 12% to $57.24 on Monday. They have declined by about 27% since the fires broke out last week.
SCE, on Jan. 9 and 10, filed safety incident reports on the Eaton and Hurst fires, respectively.
SCE said it has received notices from insurance companies to preserve evidence related to the Eaton Fire, adding the fire could allegedly be attributable to its utility facilities, which prompted it to release its Jan. 9 report.
It also added that no fire agency had suggested its electric facilities were involved in the ignition of the fires.
However, a day later in the Hurst report, the company noted it had found a downed conductor in the area but did not know if the damage occurred before or after the start of the fire.\
(Reporting by Vallari Srivastava, Seher Dareen in Bengaluru and Laila Kearney in New York; Additional reporting Jody Godoy and Peter Henderson in California and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Writing by Liz Hampton; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta, Aurora Ellis and Sandra Maler)
