Science
Regulators criticized Edison's wildfire safety actions months before deadly Eaton fire
State regulators criticized Southern California Edison for falling behind in inspecting transmission lines in areas at high risk of wildfires just months before the deadly Eaton fire, according to state documents.
Utility safety officials also said the company’s visual inspections of splices in its transmission lines were sometimes failing to find dangerous problems, according to their October report. Instead, those problems were not discovered until the company inspected the lines with X-ray equipment, which is far less frequently used.
The report by the California Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety was issued less than three months before devastating wildfires broke out in Los Angeles County last week. Fire investigators say they are looking into whether the company’s electrical equipment was involved in starting the Eaton fire, which has killed at least 17 people and destroyed thousands of homes and other structures.
Edison said its work to mitigate wildfires had reduced the risk of catastrophic fires by 85% to 90% compared with the risk before 2018.
“As we have been doing, SCE will continue to perform inspections in its high fire risk areas more frequently than is required,” the company said in a statement to The Times.
Four lawsuits were filed this week accusing Southern California Edison of sparking the Eaton fire. The company says its reviewing the lawsuits. It said earlier that its analysis showed its equipment didn’t start the fire.
Videos and photos taken by residents show what may be the first flames of the fire, burning at the base of an electrical transmission tower before racing down a canyon toward homes.
Power lines in Eaton Canyon on Sunday, Jan. 12, 2025 in Pasadena.
(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)
Fire agencies are also investigating whether the company’s equipment started last week’s Hurst fire near Sylmar, which led to mandatory evacuations and burned nearly 800 acres before crews got it under control. A downed powerline was discovered near one of the company’s transmission towers. Edison said it doesn’t know whether the damage occurred before or after the start of the fire.
Joseph Mitchell, an expert on California utilities’ wildfire mitigation plans, said the October report by regulators raised concerns for the 15 million people living in Edison’s territory.
Mitchell said the X-ray equipment that Edison told regulators was finding problems that its other inspections missed was “not in wide use and not easy to use.”
“You won’t be able to examine the entire transmission infrastructure with the X-rays,” said Mitchell, a board member of the Mussey Grade Road Alliance, a group working to improve fire safety in the state.
In their October report, regulators questioned whether the company’s repairs to its aging transmission lines were holding up over the months and years.
When a tree or wind damages or breaks an electric line, crews use splices, which are steel sleeves, to reconnect and repair the line.
If there is a problem with the splice, the transmission line could fall.
Safety regulators asked Edison for information on its inspections of the transmission splices, including the age of each splice and the cause of the problem that was found.
The utility said in a response to regulators sent a week later that it would be difficult to gather that information.
The company said that “given the high find rate” of problems with the splices, it was considering “forgoing the inspection and moving straight to remediation.” To do that, it said, it was considering a program to replace the splices, beginning in 2026.
Executives also told regulators that in areas with high fire risk they were falling behind on the number of transmission lines they planned to inspect. They said they had reduced the planned inspections this year from 28,000 to 24,500 “due to environmental and access constraints,” according to the October report. Regulators said the company “must improve its response” to those constraints because its equipment in those areas “still present[s] wildfire risk.”
In its response, Edison told regulators that to compensate for the reduced number of inspections it would focus on transmission equipment most susceptible to failing and make repeated attempts where inspections were incomplete.
The regulators’ report, as well as the company’s wildfire mitigation plan for this year, is scheduled to be considered by the state Public Utilities Commission at a Thursday meeting. It is included on the commission’s consent agenda, on which items are routinely approved without discussion.
Edison said it expected the commission to approve its new plan. “Our plans have been approved every year,” it said.
The company estimated that it spent more than $1.8 billion last year on work aimed at mitigating the risk of wildfires. Some of the money was used to install electric lines with a coating that greatly reduces the risk of fire. The company said last year that it had installed more than 5,600 circuit miles of coated wire in the last five years.
Michael Wara, a Stanford University energy and climate law professor who was appointed to a state commission on wildfires, said the philosophy of California’s utility regulators is one of pushing companies toward continuous improvement.
“Their position is nobody’s perfect, and what we expect of you is that you get better every single year,” Wara said. “There’s no such thing as safe. There’s safer than last year, and that’s what that regulator is trying to push the utilities every year to achieve.”
Several of California’s most destructive wildfires have been caused by transmission lines, rather than the smaller distribution lines like those connecting homes.
The 2018 Camp fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people, was traced to a high-voltage transmission line, owned by Pacific Gas & Electric, that was nearly 100 years old.
The Kincade fire in Sonoma County in 2019 was sparked by a broken jumper cable on a PG&E transmission tower.
Wara noted that the transmission line had been inspected not long before the Kincade fire broke out.
Robert McCullough, an electric utility consultant in Portland, Ore., said he believed the L.A. wildfires would result in major changes to how utilities inspect their equipment.
“We are going to have to change our approach,” he said. “We have to do this much, much better.”
Our universe might be chock-full of cosmic wonder, but you can observe only a fraction of astronomical phenomena with the naked eye. Meteor showers, natural fireworks that streak brightly across the night sky, are one of them.
The latest observable meteor shower will be the Lyrids, which has been active since April 14 and is forecast to continue through April 30. The shower reaches its peak April 21 to 22, or Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.
According to NASA, the Lyrids are one of the oldest known meteor showers, and have been enjoyed by stargazers for nearly 3,000 years. Their bright, speedy streaks are caused by the dusty debris from a comet named Thatcher. They appear to spring from the constellation Lyra, which right now can be seen in the eastern sky at night in the Northern Hemisphere.
The moon will be about 27 percent full tonight, appearing as a thick crescent in the sky, according to the American Meteor Society.
To get a hint at when to best watch for the Lyrids, you can use this tool, which relies on data from the Global Meteor Network. It shows fireball activity levels in real time.
And while you gaze at the heavens, keep an eye out for other stray meteors streaking across the night sky. Skywatchers are reporting that the amount of fireballs is double what is usually seen by this point in the year.
Where meteor showers come from
There is a chance you might see a meteor on any given night, but you are most likely to catch one during a shower. Meteor showers are caused by Earth passing through the rubble trailing a comet or asteroid as it swings around the sun. This debris, which can be as small as a grain of sand, leaves behind a glowing stream of light as it burns up in Earth’s atmosphere.
Meteor showers occur around the same time every year and can last for days or weeks. But there is only a small window when each shower is at its peak, which happens when Earth reaches the densest part of the cosmic debris. The peak is the best time to look for a shower. From our point of view on Earth, the meteors will appear to come from the same point in the sky.
The Perseid meteor shower, for example, peaks in mid-August from the constellation Perseus. The Geminids, which occur every December, radiate from the constellation Gemini.
How to watch a meteor shower
Michelle Nichols, the director of public observing at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, recommends forgoing the use of telescopes or binoculars while watching a meteor shower.
“You just need your eyes and, ideally, a dark sky,” she said.
That’s because meteors can shoot across large swaths of the sky, so observing equipment can limit your field of view.
Some showers are strong enough to produce up to 100 streaks an hour, according to the American Meteor Society, though you probably won’t see that many.
“Almost everybody is under a light-polluted sky,” Ms. Nichols said. “You may think you’re under a dark sky, but in reality, even in a small town, you can have bright lights nearby.”
Planetariums, local astronomy clubs or even maps like this one can help you figure out where to go to escape excessive light. The best conditions for catching a meteor shower are a clear sky with no moon or cloud cover, sometime between midnight and sunrise. (Moonlight affects visibility in the same way as light pollution, washing out fainter sources of light in the sky.) Make sure to give your eyes at least 30 minutes to adjust to seeing in the dark.
Ms. Nichols also recommends wearing layers, even during the summer. “You’re going to be sitting there for quite a while, watching,” she said. “It’s going to get chilly, even in August.”
Bring a cup of cocoa or tea for even more warmth. Then lie back, scan the sky and enjoy the show.
Where weather is least likely to affect your view
Storm systems sweep across the country in early spring, and some will be obscuring skies tonight. But there will still be plenty of areas with clear skies, particularly in parts of the central United States.
“The best spot is going to be in the Upper Midwest,” said Rich Bann, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center.
Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa will offer especially good sky-viewing weather and a beach on the Great Lakes could be a nice spot to look up at the stars.
But don’t expect to view the show from Chicago, as Illinois could see some thunderstorms. The weather will be better in the Northern and Central Plains, particularly the eastern Dakotas.
High, wispy clouds are expected over the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys and into parts of the Mid-Atlantic. But, Mr. Bann said, “you may be able to see some shooting stars through thin clouds.”
Clouds will be draped across much of the Southeast and the Northeast, though there could be some clearing in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia. Remember, the meteors could be visible all night long. If you look outside and see clouds, try again later.
Catching the spectacle will be challenging across much of the West, particularly from Washington into Northern California, where a storm system is bringing rain and snow. That system will move east overnight.
There are likely to be some pockets of clear skies at times across southern Nevada, northwest Arizona and southwest Utah, Mr. Bann said.
Amy Graff contributed reporting.
WASHINGTON — Amid growing national security concerns, the FBI said Tuesday that it has launched a broad investigation in the deaths or disappearances of at least 10 scientists and staff connected to highly sensitive research, including four from the Los Angeles area.
“The FBI is spearheading the effort to look for connections into the missing and deceased scientists. We are working with the Department of Energy, Department of War, and with our state and state and local law enforcement partners to find answers,” the agency said in a statement.
The FBI’s announcement comes after the House Oversight Committee announced that it would investigate reports of the disappearance and deaths of the scientists, sending letters seeking information from the agencies involved in the federal inquiry as well as NASA, which owns the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, where three of the missing or dead scientists worked.
“If the reports are accurate, these deaths and disappearances may represent a grave threat to U.S. national security and to U.S. personnel with access to scientific secrets,” Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the committee, and Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) wrote in the letters.
President Trump told reporters last week that he had been briefed on the missing and dead scientists, which he described as “pretty serious stuff.” He said at the time that he expected answers on whether the deaths were connected “in the next week and a half.”
Michael David Hicks, who studied comets and asteroids at JPL, was the first of the scientists who disappeared or died. He died on July 30, 2023, at the age of 59. No cause of death was disclosed.
A year later, JPL physicist Frank Maiwald died at 61, with no cause of death disclosed.
Two other Los Angeles scientists are part of the string of deaths and disappearances.
On June 22, 2025, Monica Jacinto Reza, a materials scientist at JPL, disappeared while on a hike near Mt. Waterman in the San Gabriel Mountains.
On Feb. 16, Caltech astrophysicist Carl Grillmair was fatally shot on the porch of his Llano home. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department arrested Freddy Snyder, 29, in connection with the shooting. Snyder had been arrested in December on suspicion of trespassing on Grillmair’s property.
Snyder has been charged with murder.
There is no evidence at this point that the deaths and disappearances, which occurred over a span of four years, are connected.
A spokesperson for NASA, which owns JPL, said in a statement on X that the agency is “coordinating and cooperating with the relevant agencies in relation to the missing scientists.
“At this time, nothing related to NASA indicates a national security threat,” agency spokesperson Bethany Stevens wrote. “The agency is committed to transparency and will provide more information as able.”
Representatives from Caltech, which manages JPL, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The sun had barely risen over the Pacific Ocean when a small motorboat carrying a team of Indigenous artisans and Mexican biologists dropped anchor in a rocky cove near Bahías de Huatulco.
Mauro Habacuc Avendaño Luis, one of the craftsmen, was the first to wade to shore. With an agility belying his age, he struck out over the boulders exposed by low tide. Crouching on a slippery ledge pounded by surf, he reached inside a crevice between two rocks. There, lodged among the urchins, was a snail with a knobby gray shell the size of a walnut. The sight might not dazzle tourists who travel here to see humpback whales, but for Mr. Avendaño, 85, these drab little mollusks represent a way of life.
Marine snails in the genus Plicopurpura are sacred to the Mixtec people of Pinotepa de Don Luis, a small town in southwestern Oaxaca. Men like Mr. Avendaño have been sustainably “milking” them for radiant purple dye for at least 1,500 years. The color suffuses Mixtec textiles and spiritual beliefs. Called tixinda, it symbolizes fertility and death, as well as mythic ties between lunar cycles, women and the sea.
The future of these traditions — and the fate of the snails — are uncertain. The mollusks are subject to intense poaching pressure despite federal protections intended to protect them. Fishermen break them (and the other mollusks they eat) open and sell the meat to local restaurants. Tourists who comb the beaches pluck snails off the rocks and toss them aside.
A severe earthquake in 2020 thrust formerly submerged parts of their habitat above sea level, fatally tossing other mollusks in the snail’s food web to the air, and making once inaccessible places more available to poachers.
Decades ago, dense clusters of snails the size of doorknobs were easy to find, according to Mr. Avendaño. “Full of snails,” he said, sweeping a calloused, violet-stained hand across the coves. Now, most of the snails he finds are small, just over an inch, and yield only a few milliliters of dye.
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