We Didn't Start the Eaton Fire

TV news went nuts for the blaze and now ignores the Invisible Hand that ignited it

If a Palestinian or a Tesla protester had killed 17 people and destroyed 9,414 buildings, causing an estimated $10 billion in damages, it’d probably be a pretty big story when they were identified and caught.

And yet, while newspapers and online news outlets are reporting on new lawsuits identifying the alleged perpetrators of January’s Eaton Fire — the worst of the wildfires that may be the most costly “natural” disaster in American history — TV news is remarkably free of the kind of coverage it lavished on Luigi Mangione for (allegedly) killing one people and destroying zero buildings in his (alleged) fight against profit margins.

The new lawsuits allege that the perpetrator of the Eaton Fire is Southern California Edison (SCE), a corporate entity driven by profit margins and kind of a person according to too many politicians. Here’s the evidence, as laid out in lawsuits from Los Angeles County and others, as well as by those meddling kids at the New York Times.

A series of videos obtained by the Times shows the progression from an arcing power line at the site of three SCE electrical towers on Jan. 7, 2025, into the kind of situation that Smokey the Bear would blame on careless hikers and campers:

Here are three videos the Times published that show three stages of the progression from little zap to holy crap:

The Los Angeles County lawsuit includes a photograph taken of the site that shows the burgeoning fire burgeoning with a lot more clarity right at the base of the towers.

See all that blackness around the fire? That’s the telltale trail of the fire not coming from anywhere else.

A lawyer for victims of the fire said that SCE not only failed to shut off power during high winds known to threaten the lines, but had failed to maintain the equipment properly. And, he said, SCE “utterly failed to control vegetation growth near its power lines.”

So how is it that a power line just up and decides to give away electricity in the first place? The lawsuit claims that the arcing came from an idle power line that hadn’t been used since 1971. And then, on Jan. 7, briefly had electricity flowing through it again.

Why would SCE keep unused power lines up for half a century?

“They give us optionality,” Edison Chief Executive Officer Pedro Pizarro told Bloomberg. Pizzaro said SCE doesn’t remove idle lines in order to keep the property easements it would need in case it ever needs that route for power again. “We’re the kind of company that has to think in decades.” Y’know, like the decades his victims won’t get.

What SCE is thinking about isn’t decades. It’s dollars. Because more than five decades went by without any need for that line. And it definitely would have been cheaper than $10 billion to remove idle lines and then either pay for new easements if needed or, hey, here’s an idea, put new lines underground.

You’d think, anyway. Except that Edison won’t actually be paying for all the damage. The California Wildfire Fund will.

The fund was created after Pacific Gas & Electric killed 84 people in the 2018 Camp Fire. (Eight-four people. That means Pacific Gas & Electric killed 80 people and then killed four more. That adds up to a whopping 84 on the Mangione scale.)

The fund was created by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). It was created with $21 billion and as of January had $12 billion left after paying out for utility-company rampages. And where, you might ask, does the fund get all this money to compensate people for wildfire damages and/or killings?

Half of it was paid into by the shareholders in the three big utility companies. And the other half? That comes out of the pockets of their customers.

That’s right, utility customers had to put up half the money needed to protect the company that already bills them every month from the consequences of pursuing its profit margin to enrich the executives who run it (executives who don’t themselves have to put any money into the fund unless they’re unfortunate enough to be self-screwing themselves as one of their own customers).

From 2019 through 2023, state lawmakers gave a green light — despite the high electrical costs of green lights — for the state’s three utility companies to hit customers for $27 billion in insurance and ostensible wildfire prevention.

It gets better. By which I mean enragifyingly worse.

Remember when I rhetorically asked where the fund gets the money to compensate people? It doesn’t. The fund, your TFN would like to note with torches and pitchforks, does not reimburse the property owners or dead people.

It reimburses SCE for whatever it loses in court. Meaning, SCE’s victims still have to go through a legal fight to be compensated.

Meanwhile, SCE President and CEO Steven D. Powell, seen below failing to properly maintain vegetation on his forehead, was paid $3.18 million in 2023.

Southern California Edison Pres. and CEO Steven D. Powell, whose forehead has been ravaged by climate change, in an undated photo. (Uncredited SCE photo.)

---

TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.