By Laila Kearney
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Attorneys for a woman who lost her home in the Los Angeles-area Eaton Fire filed an emergency request late on Thursday for Southern California Edison to preserve additional electrical equipment to be examined in blaze investigations, court filings show.
Multiple fires that began to burn and quickly spread across Los Angeles in strong Santa Ana wind gusts last week have killed more than two dozen people and charred some 40,000 acres of the second-largest U.S. metro area.
While official investigators have not released the cause of the Eaton Fire near Pasadena, residents and business owners with destroyed property have filed lawsuits accusing SCE power infrastructure of sparking the initial flames.
Evangeline Iglesias, who is among those suing SCE after her Altadena home was decimated in the inferno, asked the Los Angeles Superior Court to halt efforts by SCE to destroy some distribution lines and other electrical equipment in the burn area, according to court documents.
A spokesperson with SCE said the company is focused on restoring power to affected areas. The company said it is aware of lawsuits related to the Eaton Fire and will review them.
SCE, which is the main subsidiary of Edison International, previously said that it preserved some power equipment to be examined in fire investigations.
The law firm representing Iglesias, Edelson PC, said in the filings that SCE told the firm in letters that it planned to imminently remove physical power infrastructure in the burn area unless told specifically which equipment to keep.
That level of specificity, Edelson argued in its emergency request to the court, was unreasonable, “particularly where most or all of that evidence is owned by SCE and where SCE has unique knowledge of the fire’s origin and spread,” the filings showed.
Multiple investigations into the cause of the Eaton and Palisades fires — the two most destructive fires in California — are ongoing.
(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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