In a letter sent this week to the commissioners and leaders of the L.A. Dept. of Water and Power, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass asked for quick repairs on 753 utility poles posing a risk to the public — known as priority one tickets.
Her stepped up demands came the same week LADWP agreed to pay a $38-million dollar lawsuit settlement to the family of Ferdinand Tejada, 53, and his daughter Janina Tejada, 20. They died in January 2021 after being electrocuted when a downed power line fell in the backyard in their Panorama City home.
Bass called the equipment failure that led to their deaths "a tragedy for the Tejada family. This was not a mere failure of a power pole, but a failure of management and leadership."
Bass' letter, dated Thursday, also comes as public utility companies commissioners pressed leadership on the backlog of 1,600 high-risk utility poles dating back to 2021.
Her letter calls for these immediate actions:
She also asked for increased accountability on "safety culture and risk management practices" and called for the creation of an inspector general for the department.
According to LADWP standards dating back to 2013, priority one tickets should be fixed within 24 hours. The department's senior assistant general manager Brian Wilbur told the board that contractors were brought on board to replace old deteriorating poles.
"Our priority was replacing poles," he said. "Our contractors were replacing poles. The priority one fix-it tickets are not all pole replacements."
Cynthia McClain-Hil, president of the Board of Water and Power Commissioners, asked Wilbur if level-one fix-it tickets — that didn't require pole replacement — were not prioritized, Wilbur responded, "that is correct."
DWP management says crews will work around the clock to reduce the backlog to zero in the next three weeks. They've sent out between 3,500 to 4,000 notices to people with a pole in their yard or nearby.
Still, the public utility company has more than 46,000 non-emergency tickets, also known as "priority two" tickets. 13,000 have been backlogged for over a year.
Commissioner Nicole Neeman Brady has called for a cultural shift within the department. She told the department's management "to create a culture where employees are not scared to tell you when things are broken or behind, and that they feel they can bring forward requests for resources."
Bass is urging Board of Water and Power Commissioners and the Department to institute pole inspection reports and repairs regularly and report weekly progress to the mayor's office.
Advice from Southern California Edison
Advice from the CDC if you believe someone has been electrocuted
