The Search for Accountability in California’s Wildfires

SoCal Edison quickly acknowledged that its equipment most likely caused the Eaton Fire. In reports to the California Public Utility Commission in January 2025, SoCal Edison said it had detected a “fault” on one of its transmission lines.

Kathleen Dunleavy, a spokesperson for SoCal Edison, told TIME that the utility company is reviewing the report, and the findings are “generally consistent with what [the company has] been saying regarding the ignition of the Eaton Fire.”

“As we have said, Edison believes that it’s likely that its own equipment was associated with the start of the Eaton Fire,” she says. However, it is “definitely” not just the equipment to blame for how intense the fire became.

“A fire of the size and magnitude of Eaton is rarely the result of just one thing,” she explains.

With nearly 1,000 lawsuits against SoCal Edison from the families of the deceased, as well as those who lost their homes in the fire, the company filed its own countersuit in January 2026, accusing Los Angeles County, local water agencies, and the Southern California Gas Company of failing to warn residents about or prevent the spread of the fire.