SCE to Cooperate on Study of Power Pole Role in Malibu Canyon Fire

• Residents Question Cost Rationale on Maintenance of Overhead Lines by Mega-Utility Corp

BY HANS LAETZ

Southern California Edison officials say they will cooperate with state and county fire investigators probing a stretch of power poles that some Malibu residents said were substandard when they snapped and apparently sparked the Canyon Fire last month.

But the company said its power poles on Malibu Canyon Road met all legal standards, and were not overburdened or spindly, as some have charged in the wake of a pole that snapped with disastrous results last month.

“All the poles that are up meet the requirements and the design criteria,” said Southern California Edison vice president Steven Conroy late last week.

An official investigation continues, and may continue for several months, fire officials said. But firefighters who were at the point of ignition on Malibu Canyon Road above Rindge Dam at 4:55 a.m. Oct. 21 said an Edison pole snapped near its base, fell, and started the fire.

The 4565-acre blaze took six days to put out, and claimed nearly a dozen houses, businesses and classrooms in Malibu. No damage total has been released, but state officials say it cost $5.8 million to extinguish.

Los Angeles County’s Board of Supervisors voted last week to investigate the challenge of hundreds of miles of powerlines in fire-prone sections of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents the Malibu area, said before the vote that the time has come to determine whether existing standards for poles or routings need to be changed.

Conroy said the company would participate in any study “to review Edison facilities in high-risk situations.”

A similar power line failure caused the 1996 Calabasas fire, which burned houses in Latigo Canyon and injured six firefighters. Edison officials were alleged to have not assisted state investigators in that probe, and state fire marshals actually raided Edison corporate offices in the San Gabriel Valley to seize records on how power poles were being maintained.

That investigation ended with Edison being charged with failing to cut brush and grass near its lines, but the company’s maintenance of the poles was determined to not be at the criminal level, authorities said in 1997.

Conroy said longtime Edison line personnel “say they have never seen winds” like the 80 mile-an-hour sustained gusts, peaking above 100 mph, in the canyon that night last month.

“We are aware that there were power poles and lines that did come down in Malibu Canyon,” he said, “but at this point it is too early to determine exactly how Edison poles and facilities performed in that fire.”

Conroy acknowledged that high-voltage poles that once only carried powerlines now also bear the weight of cable TV, cellular phone and fiber-optic lines.

“Did they come down because of anything other than the wind?” Conroy posed. “We will look into that, but we take every reasonable precaution to design, maintain and construct our overhead lines in the safest way possible.”