The Brief

Almost nine months have passed since the Eaton Fire blazed through neighborhoods of Los Angeles County in January, destroying more than 9,000 buildings and causing an estimated billions of dollars in damages.

Since then, dozens of lawsuits, including two filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, have blamed high power transmission lines managed by the utility company, Southern California Edison, for starting the flames. SoCal Edison acknowledges that its transmission equipment could have been associated with the ignition of a fire that started just after 6 p.m. on Jan. 7, when sparks were spotted near high power lines in Eaton Canyon, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

By the end of January, when the fire was finally contained, Altadena was one of the neighborhoods most damaged. Almost all 19 of the people who died in the blaze perished in the neighborhood. But the community is miles away from Eaton Canyon, and satellite imagery shows that the Eaton Fire front didn't cross into the western part of Altadena until after 5 a.m. the next day, according to a report commissioned by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

For months, amongst each other and in groups online, Altadena residents have wondered whether something else might have started fires earlier in their neighborhood. An NPR investigation now reveals that transmission lines were not the only kinds of electrical equipment that caused problems on Jan. 7.

Distribution lines that power individual homes malfunctioned in Altadena as early as 11 a.m., NPR found, and at least one fire linked to a problem with a distribution line started in Altadena hours before the sparks near Eaton Canyon. Throughout that morning and afternoon, firefighters were dispatched to different parts of Altadena to respond to problems with power lines. And although SoCal Edison can prevent the damage electrical fires can cause by shutting off the power that flows through power lines, the utility did not turn the power off to most of the circuits in Altadena on Jan. 7, NPR found.

An aerial view of cleared residential lots, with the San Gabriel Mountains in the background, in Altadena on Aug. 21, just over six months after the Eaton Fire, which claimed 19 lives and destroyed more than 9,000 structures.

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Malfunctions, or "faults," can happen when falling tree limbs or poles touch power lines and trigger voltage drops in the current running through the wires, said Bob Marshall, the CEO of Whisker Labs, a company that collects voltage activity information from grids across the U.S. Electricity jumping into the air in the form of a spark or arc at points of contact can melt metal parts of the electrical infrastructure that can fall to the ground and ignite wildfires.

In the calmer weather days leading up to the wildfires that started on Jan. 7, distribution power lines never malfunctioned more than 18 times across L.A. But on Jan. 7, as winds across the region reached hurricane strength, the distribution lines malfunctioned more than 200 times in the L.A. region, Whisker Labs estimates.

Three of those malfunctions were in Altadena. The first of the three was at 11 a.m on the eastern side of Altadena, well before the Eaton Fire started. Another occurred at 9:38 p.m. in West Altadena, hours before satellite imagery appeared to show the Eaton Fire front arrived in that part of the neighborhood.

More distribution malfunctions could have happened that the Whisker Lab sensors didn't detect, said Marshall. And each malfunction that the sensors did pick up was significant enough to have ignited flames.

"All of those events when we see sharp voltage drops, it's something that's going wrong on the grid," Marshall said. "Most of them likely have an arc or a spark associated with them and they could start a fire."

Meanwhile, all morning and afternoon, firefighters were being dispatched to respond to electrical problems on power lines. On Jan. 7, firefighters were sent to locations in Altadena at least 35 times because of calls that had to do with wires down or arcing, records obtained by NPR from the Los Angeles County Fire Department show. Most of those dispatches — 30 of them — were made before 6 p.m., around when sparks were seen on transmission lines miles away in Eaton Canyon.

When asked to comment, SoCal Edison replied through a representative that "the investigation into the Eaton Fire is ongoing."

The fact that firefighters were dispatched to locations because of problems with power lines doesn't mean there was a fire at each of those places. The dispatch records only log the reason for the dispatch, not the gravity of the situation when firefighters arrived.

But hours before sparks were seen near Eaton Canyon, at least one family saw a fire start on their property following a problem they believe was with distribution lines nearby.

Just after 4 p.m. on Jan. 7, Tom Ware said he noticed the lights flickering on and off inside his house near Catherine Road, a street just west of Lake Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares of the neighborhood.

When Ware went outside to investigate what was causing his electricity to falter, he saw that a ground fire had started in his backyard, near a tall, wooden utility pole and wires that carried power to his home and that of his tenant, whose unit was also on the property. The electrical equipment had sprayed sparks on the ground, Ware said, which started the fire.

"So I grabbed the hose, a couple of hoses, one for me, one for my tenant," said Ware. "And we started to battle that from our side of the fence."

Lea Chazin stands in front of her home in Altadena, which was damaged by the Eaton Fire.

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Their property survived the first fire. But the tenant's unit caught fire two more times within the next 24 hours, Ware said. Flames eventually burned everything inside the walls.

Walking around a pile of debris next to the destroyed unit where her tenant used to stay, Ware's wife, Lea Chazin, said the fires that started on their property devastated their family.

"It was really our future, just to have this house and be able to rent the front house for our retirement, which, of course, we can't do now," said Chazin. "And we don't really think we'll have enough in insurance money to rebuild it."

Preventable problems

There was early evidence that weather conditions were dangerous and the power grid was strained. The National Weather Service issued two red flag alerts for the Altadena area on Jan. 6 and Jan. 7, meaning the wind and weather conditions created "an increased risk of fire danger." On Jan. 7, the agency added an additional rare warning, advising that conditions in Altadena over the next two days were so dangerous that they qualified for the most extreme advance notice that can be issued by the NWS for expected weather hazards. By 8 a.m. that day, the wind gusts swirling at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains had reached hurricane strength.

That kind of wind can easily knock tree branches and other electrical equipment into power lines, the sort of activity that can lead to malfunctions on distribution lines. And the distribution lines were already faulting all over L.A.

Utility companies are able to shut power off to the circuits they manage. Cutting off power from flowing through the wires on those circuits prevents voltage drops and the electrical fires they can cause.

SoCal Edison did take some preventative action. At around 3:30 p.m., SoCal Edison shut the electricity off to sections of two of the 12 circuits that power homes in Altadena, according to data SoCal Edison submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission, the state group that monitors utilities. By around 9:46 p.m., SoCal Edison had shut off sections of two more circuits that power Altadena, the L.A. County report shows.

But SoCal Edison left eight circuits in Altadena on as the wildfire spread on Jan. 7, allowing electricity to continue flowing to buildings powered by those lines all day.

Workers work on repairing and restoring power lines on Jan. 13, in Altadena, where the devastating Eaton Fire caused widespread damage.

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Raj Roy, the vice president of Distribution Operations at SoCal Edison, said the utility company carefully examines weather conditions to come to decisions about shutting off power. A company report states the utility also weighs the financial, reliability and safety cost to residents from losing power, which can have consequences for people who rely on electricity to power devices important in emergencies, like cell phones and medical equipment.

"We don't take that decision lightly, it impacts customers. And so we only de-energize when we feel there is warranted fire risk," said Roy. "We care about our communities and honestly, it was such a historic event."

Some residents in Altadena whose homes were destroyed feel the utility company should have done more to protect them.

"You keep telling us that what happened was just unprecedented and that there was nothing they could do," said Marisol Espino, an Altadena resident whose house and family truck were both incinerated in January. "But the majority of us are just not buying it."

It's unclear how much electrical problems on distribution lines contributed to damage caused by wildfires in January. Fires could have been sparked and spread by other causes. Winds created flames up to 200 feet long and sent embers flying up to two miles away, according to the L.A. County report.

But the electrical problems in Altadena may have worsened an already dangerous situation on Jan. 7.

"Additional ignition sources in the neighborhood could be significant in terms of helping the fire to spread and complicating firefighting efforts," said Michael Wara, an attorney at Stanford University who lectures about wildfires.

SoCal Edison increasing rates, despite starting more fires 

SoCal Edison is required to report fires that its equipment starts to state authorities. That data shows that SoCal Edison's infrastructure is igniting more fires than it did a decade ago. In 2024, SoCal Edison's equipment ignited 178 fires, up from 39 in 2014, the company's data shows.

But the utility's 2025 data may be incomplete, NPR found.

Firefighters were dispatched at least 47 times to Altadena during the month of January in response to electrical issues, like wires down or arcing, the Los Angeles County Fire Department data shows. One of those times, during the fire at Catherine Road, NPR confirmed that firefighters helped put out a fire that met most of the criteria for ignitions that are required to be reported by utilities to authorities.

When NPR requested SoCal Edison's list of all ignitions during January that involved its equipment, however, the list the company provided did not document any fires that started in Altadena.

"Appropriate SCE personnel must be made aware of the ignition in order for it to be reported," a SoCal Edison representative responded, after NPR asked why the company did not list the fire on Catherine Road.

The damaged fence where the charred utility pole fell stands between Lea Chazin's home and her neighbor's backyard.

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Zaydee Sanchez for NPR

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The destruction the fires caused in January is still front of mind for the residents who lived in Altadena. For months after the fires, construction teams were the only people walking up and down otherwise mostly empty streets. While some businesses and home owners have returned to the neighborhood, many residents remain in temporary housing, unable to move back in until their houses are restored.

That's what happened to the family that lived on Catherine Road. After high levels of toxins were found throughout the tenant unit that burned, the structure was demolished. Tom Ware and Lea Chazin have not yet moved back into their home and have been living in an Airbnb as they battle their insurance company for the money to fix the property.

In July, SoCal Edison announced a program that is expected to start offering direct compensation in the fall to some fire victims that choose to waive their rights to sue the company. But all Altadena residents will soon have to pay more for electricity to SoCal Edison.

But in September, the California Public Utilities Commission granted SoCal Edison permission to charge ratepayers 9% more, starting Oct. 1. The rate hike would cover growing operational and infrastructure costs, SoCal Edison representatives have said.

Some residents resent being asked to pay the utility more when they believe the company is at fault for contributing to fires that burned down their homes.

"It's just so aggravating to me," said Espino. "They just don't want any accountability."

Methodology

Analysis of distribution line faults
Whisker Labs provided data to NPR collected from plug-in sensors that monitor electrical networks in individual homes. The sensors form a network for mapping regional electrical disturbances that originate on the electric utility grid and can detect voltage changes as small as a fraction of a volt.

NPR analyzed Whisker Lab's data between Dec. 27, 2024, and Jan. 8, 2025, from the greater Los Angeles area, identifying events where sensors recorded a change in voltage at the same time. These voltage changes are known as transient faults and are the difference in measured voltage between consecutive readings.

Events were estimated by Whisker Labs to be distribution level if recorded by less than 70% of sensors, or transmission if recorded by 70% or more sensors.

Analysis of LA County Fire Department dispatch logs
NPR analyzed dispatch data from the Los Angeles County Fire Department for the month of January. The information contained responses for ZIP codes 91001 and 91003 and included dispatches resulting from calls received or requests from field units. Data provided did not include "incidents that were handled as part of the Eaton incident," a representative told NPR.
Copyright 2025 NPR

That ocean breeze is just not cutting it in schools in Torrance and Long Beach as Southern California reels from a heat wave.

Parents have taken to social media, created petitions and are proposing a bond measure in order to address the sweltering classrooms as temperatures hit triple digits in some areas.

Only 25% of Torrance Unified classrooms have air conditioning, according to a district spokesperson. And while 90% of Long Beach Unified schools have air conditioning, the schools without air conditioning have to bear this heat spell until the end of 2027 when new air conditioning will be in all classrooms.

What are schools doing to beat the heat?

In Long Beach, the district says there are portable fans in classrooms without AC and the district has installed heat-blocking window covers.

"The things that we do immediately and have been doing for several years, hydration stations,” Keith Butler, the deputy superintendent at TUSD, told the school board early this week. “So our nutrition services freezes blocks of ice, puts them into containers with water, and students are — and staff are able to rotate through and at least get ice water.”

There is also a classroom rotation system so everyone gets a turn in cooling zones, he said.

Can schools close on extreme heat days?

Eric Mitchell, a spokesperson for LBUSD, told LAist, “The District will not close schools because of extreme weather unless the City of Long Beach Public Health Department or a state-authorized emergency response agency directs it.”

Baillie echoed his words adding that a state-declared emergency allows schools to close temporarily without needing to make up teaching time. School funding is dependent on attendance and instructional time.

If a local emergency is declared, school districts, she said, must consult with labor unions to adjust the school schedule to either extend the school year or move to a student-free professional development day.

“Our district is actively discussing creating union-approved ‘weather days’ that would provide a mechanism to adjust the schedule,” Baillie said. “Thresholds would be part of that discussion and might focus on when national weather alerts elevate a heat advisory to an extreme heat event, as they did this week.”

So how can Torrance get ACs in the classroom?

School districts like Torrance pay for facility upgrades like new ACs through district issued bond measures. A school district takes a loan and the people in that city pay back that loan through an increase in their property taxes. That is because there is no specific state allocation of funding for major upgrades or construction. Most of the money schools get from the state is spent on instruction and other student services. There have been some occasional grant programs, like CalShape, but no ongoing source of funding.

This week, a petition to get TUSD to place a bond measure on the ballot to fund ACs has already garnered over 1500 signatures.

But, Baillie said, “Third-party polling completed earlier this year showed a willingness to vote for additional future bonds; however, when specifically asked about the costs of specific bonds to fund the $520 million needed to upgrade the electrical systems and install AC at all 34 campuses, polling showed there would not be enough support (bonds require 55% +1 of voters in an election) to pass a bond for AC.”

And so the bond measure was not placed on the upcoming ballot.

Butler, the deputy superintendent, explained during this week’s school board meeting that parents cannot simply donate an AC unit.

“ One [reason] is it's not super effective to have a typical window unit from a home that would be trying to cool a 960 sq. ft. classroom with 27 students and a teacher, maybe an instructional aide,” he said. “But the bigger issue is the ones that are large enough to really do that, the room has to have a large electrical load, and our electrical system within our buildings where most of them were built in the 1960s, it's just not meant to handle what it does.”

LAist reporter Mariana Dale contributed to this article. 

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is hosting a buyback event Sunday where people can exchange their e-bikes and e-motorcycles for up to $1,000 in gift cards. The goal is to reduce the number of illegal bikes on the road, and give parents an incentive to get dangerous vehicles out of kids’ hands.

“These vehicles are not child’s play, and the consequences are incredibly dangerous and increasingly deadly,” DA Todd Spitzer said in a news release announcing the event.

Communities in Orange County have been grappling with a surge in e-bikes and e-motos on the road, including among young kids, and an accompanying increase in serious crashes.

“Our area has pretty much the highest concentration of e-bike injuries and e-bike accidents in the country,” said Dr. Tetsuya Takeuchi, the trauma medical director at Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo.

Takeuchi said  just over 70% of the children treated at the hospital for e-bike injuries had some level of head injury, “from a simple concussion to devastating brain damage, brain bleed and skull fracture."

A lot of those injuries are among teenagers not wearing helmets, he said. Plus, many e-bikes on the market are too heavy and fast for children to control, Takeuchi said.

Besides safety concerns, tensions have flared with other drivers, pedestrians, and neighbors in areas with heavy concentrations of e-bikes.

Newport-Mesa Unified School District became one of the first districts in the country this year to restrict e-bikes to high school campuses only. District leaders say the policy is working to disincentivize young students from riding e-bikes to school. But at one middle school, students with e-bikes have opted to ride them anyway, parking in the surrounding neighborhood and raising the ire of homeowners.

The DA’s approach

The DA’s office has started to target parents who allow their children to ride e-bikes and e-motorcycles that have been illegally modified for high speeds, sometimes with deadly consequences. In April, the district attorney filed child endangerment charges against a mother from Aliso Viejo after her 14-year-old son struck and killed an 81-year-old man while doing wheelies in the street in Lake Forest. The boy was riding an e-motorcycle souped up to reach 60 mph.

Details of the buyback program

The e-bike and e-motorcycle buyback program is part of the DA’s plan to address safety concerns with e-bikes. Local police departments, hospitals and the California Office of Traffic Safety will also be onsite with information booths.

People can bring in functioning or non-functioning e-bikes, e-motorcycles, e-scooters and pocket bikes and exchange them for gift cards worth up to $1,000 — while supplies last.

The event takes place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 13, at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.

An appeals court issued a ruling Friday that strikes down a federal government effort to block a lower court’s order requiring the construction of 2,550 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West Los Angeles.

The long-running case, brought forward by disabled veterans struggling with homelessness in the L.A. area, has centered on the use of the sprawling 400-acre VA campus.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter had previously scrutinized leases for the private Brentwood School’s athletic facilities, a parking lot company, an oil drilling enterprise and UCLA’s baseball stadium.

Ruling that the campus was meant to aid veterans, Carter ordered the VA to not renew the leases and quickly build 750 units of temporary housing and 1,800 units of permanent housing.

But Carter’s September 2024 order has been on hold ever since the defendants asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to review his decision.

Case returns to lower court

On Friday, more than two-thirds of the court’s 29 judges ruled against the VA’s petition for a rehearing.

“It's a historic day for veterans,” said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel representing the plaintiffs.

“The government has been fighting their veterans, who went to fight on behalf of the nation,” he added. “They've been fighting them like they are the enemy. They went to the district court to fight. They lost.”

Rosenbaum said he’s pleased to see the case return to Carter’s courtroom after a long appeals process. Carter, himself a Marine Corps veteran who served in the Vietnam War, took an active role in pushing the VA to address a homelessness crisis that has thousands of former service members experiencing homelessness on any given night in L.A. County.

Could the VA pursue further appeals? 

Carter has also ordered the VA to stop using veterans' disability payment benefits as a reason to make them ineligible for supportive housing programs due to income restrictions.

But Rob Reynolds, an Iraq War veteran who advocates for L.A.’s veteran community, said the federal government’s attempts to win an appeal could continue.

“The government can still appeal this to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Reynolds said.

When veterans involved in the case first heard today’s news on the 9th Circuit ruling, he said they immediately asked about the potential for further appeals.

“All of us are really hoping that the government stops this fight, and that we can get housing built for our veterans and end this madness once and for all,” Reynolds said.

A spokesperson for the VA declined to comment on the ruling, saying the department does not discuss pending litigation.

Jenny Yang, a comedian from L.A., has been traveling across the country turning immigrant grocery stores into comedy hubs. Now she’s back in L.A. getting ready to start a mini-residency in Highland Park, tape her first one-hour special and share moments from the tour.

Yang kicked off her Good Egg Immigrant Grocery Store Standup Comedy Tour in June in L.A., then took it to 15 cities across the country. She told LAist the decision came as a way to cope with the grief from her dad’s death, 10 failed in vitro fertilization treatments between 2020 and 2025 and seeing the news of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids spread across the country.

She said the idea to tour grocery stores was a way to reclaim those spaces, after immigration enforcement left many afraid to go out and do simple tasks like buying groceries.

“If we cannot laugh in front of a wall of instant ramen around our bok choy," Yang said, "then what is the American dream for?"

Her routine wove in stories about her fertility struggles and the challenges of having to be a “good egg” growing up as the child of immigrant parents from Taiwan. Her hope for the tour was to connect with people, to make jokes and help people feel lighter after.

The tour proceeds went to local nonprofits serving immigrant communities, and Yang said those organizations helped recruit the grocery stores. She said some stores said no at first — they felt overwhelmed by ICE activity in their city, had lost staff or worried about drawing attention.

“That's part of the story of the tour is it's one thing to want to imagine this beautiful world where you can tell jokes inside of immigrant grocery stores," Yang said. "It's another thing to know what those obstacles are, and I think that's still very telling for where we are as a country.”

One moment stood out to Yang: performing at Shuang Hur Supermarket in Minneapolis. It’s near the memorial for Alex Pretti, the nurse that a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed in January as federal agents carried out immigration enforcement in the city.

“I was able to talk to Henry, the owner who’s a Chinese American uncle. [He] was so proud of being able to help his regular patrons, who for the most part even though it was an Asian centered grocery store, were majority Latino,” Yang said. “I was able to bear witness to their resilience as a community, what they did to take care of each other.”

Now she’s back in L.A. and is doing a mini-residency at the Outside In Theater at 5317 York Blvd. in Highland Park. Her first show is 6 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 12, followed by shows on Sept. 19 and 26 at the same time. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, and you can find them at Outside In's website.

In February 2027, Yang will be taping her first one-hour special at Rancho Meat Market #1 in Lincoln Heights. She describes it as a love letter to Los Angeles that’s endured so much, from the ICE raids to the January fires.

You can follow Jenny Yang’s work here.