Los Angeles:
Unused Power Line Caused 19 Deaths

Aug 18, 2025

Officials from the state of California and Southern California Edison now admit that the deadliest of January’s Los Angeles fires, the Eaton fire, was most likely started by an Edison power line which had not been used since 1971.

It has long been known that unused power lines can get activated and start wildfires—and Edison knew that 24 years ago, for sure, when one of its unused lines caused someone to be electrocuted.

So, the Eaton fire would not even have happened if Edison had removed the idle power line, as it should have.

It’s not just an oversight. When engineers working for the state proposed in 2001 that utilities be required to remove their unused power lines, Edison and the two other big for-profit utilities in California fought it tooth and nail. By the time the state’s regulating agency, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), finalized the rule in 2005, the requirement was gone out the window. The rule now said that it was up to the utility companies to decide when to remove lines that were no longer used—just like it was before, that is.

Not a surprise, considering that the chairman of the PUC was a former Edison president at that time. The utilities “pretty much wrote those rules,” said Raffy Stepanian, an engineer who was part of the PUC’s safety team that had proposed the removal of unused lines.

Abandoned power lines have continued to pose a threat, with hundreds of miles of the unused transmission lines running like spider webs through California. In 2019, investigators traced the Kincade fire in Sonoma County, which destroyed 374 homes and other structures, to an abandoned line owned by Pacific Gas & Electric.

But the utilities don’t want to remove idle lines for the same reason they ignore other basic safety measures, such as maintaining their aging power networks and clearing vegetation near their power lines. They don’t want to spend money on safety, so that they can channel more profit to their big shareholders’ bank accounts.

The Eaton fire has killed 19 people, and counting—the latest body was discovered just recently. All those deaths were avoidable, along with dozens of other deaths in previous fires caused by the utilities’ equipment. The three big California utilities have started more than 3,600 wildfires since 1992.

Causing death through willful negligence is supposed to be a crime in California. But if you are a big utility, you not only get away with the crime—you richly profit from it.