By Edvard Pettersson

Southern California Edison has agreed to pay $80 million to settle a civil lawsuit by the U.S. Forest Service that blamed the utility’s equipment for the massive Thomas Fire that tore through Southern California in late 2017.

The Thomas Fire burned about 282,000 acres in Santa Barbara County and Ventura County before it was contained in January of 2018. At the time, it was the largest wildfire on record in modern California history, but it soon was surpassed by even more destructive wildfires in Northern California later that year.

The Justice Department sued Edison on behalf of the Forest Service for negligence, among other claims, to recover the costs of fighting the fire as well for the extensive damage to the Los Padres National Forest. Edison isn’t admitting liability as part of the settlement, provided Monday by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

“The settlement with the Department of Justice resolving the Thomas Fire litigation is a reasonable resolution,” Southern California Edison spokeswoman Diane Castro said. “We continue to protect our communities from the risk of wildfire with grid hardening, situational awareness and enhanced operational practices.”

The settlement is the largest ever by the office to recover the costs of fighting wildfires.

“This record settlement provides significant compensation to taxpayers for the extensive costs of fighting the Thomas Fire and for the widespread damage to public lands,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph McNally said. “The United States Attorney’s Office will continue to aggressively pursue compensation from any entity that causes harm to our forests and other precious national resources.”

The Thomas Fire was reportedly caused by two separate incidents. In Anlauf Canyon, the U.S. claims that high winds caused two Edison power lines to make contact with each other and to ignite dry vegetation below the conductors. Separately, on nearby Koenigstein Road, the U.S. claims an Edison pole transformer failed and caused an energized power line to fall to the ground, igniting adjacent dry vegetation.

The fire is one of several unprecedentedly destructive wildfires that have plagued California in the recent past as the state contented with prolonged droughts that left its woods and forests bone dry. In the wake of the Thomas Fire, as the scorched hillsides above Santa Barbara were without vegetation to hold back the soil, a rain storm caused large mudslides that engulfed the affluent town of Montecito.

As of Sept. 30, 2023, Edison had paid $8.4 billion under executed settlements related to the wildfires and mudslides in 2017 and 2018, according to its latest quarterly report.

In 2021, Edison reached a settlement with the California Public Utilities Commission under which the utility would be on the hook for $550 million in penalties, disallowed cost recoveries and safety improvements for violations that contributed to devastating wildfires in Southern California in 2017 and 2018.