Could utility gear set your home ablaze? California risk maps are 8 years old

Weeks after deadly fires swept through Los Angeles County, the state regulator in charge of overseeing utility companies declined a request that would have required California’s largest utilities to update maps showing high fire threat areas.

Consumer advocates argued for more up-to-date maps that could help assess risk to communities and impose more stringent requirements for utility infrastructure within high-threat areas.

The maps show the risk of a wildfire caused by equipment owned by the state’s three major investor-owned utilities; they are separate from Cal Fire’s maps that show the potential for fires based on fuel in a given area.

Originally filed eight years ago, the maps haven’t been updated as a whole. Instead, the utilities voluntarily file piecemeal updates to mark areas as at risk for fire, or no longer at risk, as they determine this with internal models.

Even with these additions, the maps badly need updating, according to Cal Advocates, which represents ratepayers before the California Public Utilities Commission.

A proposal from the agency would have required immediately updated maps and a shorter update period going forward. Originally filed in 2023 by the California Public Advocates Office, a state entity tasked with representing consumer interests, it had support from the three large power companies – Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric and Pacific Gas & Electric. But in late January, the commission voted against the proposal, with four commissioners in opposition and one, who previously led Cal Advocates, who recused himself.

“The CPUC is focused on monitoring utilities’ compliance with numerous rules and programs directing their activities in high fire threat areas of California,” Adam Cranfill, spokesperson for the commission, said. “We cannot comment today on a potential future vehicle about the fire maps.”

As investigators examine the causes of the recent fires in Los Angeles County, Southern California Edison, which serves the area, has come under increased scrutiny.

The utility said in a regulatory filing that its equipment may have played a role in starting the 799-acre Hurst fire in the San Fernando Valley, and the company is investigating whether its equipment may have been involved in the 14,021-acre Eaton fire that burned Altadena and parts of Pasadena.

Southern California Edison spokesperson Gabriela Ornelas declined to answer specific questions about the utility’s fire maps and whether updated maps would have helped prevent or extinguish the recent fires or its response. In a statement read over the phone, she said the company internally reviews the fire risk in its service area using multiple factors.

“Should that analysis determine that changes to the CPUC maps are warranted, SCE will file a petition to modify the map with the CPUC,” she said.

The commission’s fire risk maps sprung out of a regulatory response to a series of fires in late 2007 in Southern California, several of which were attributed to utility equipment. As a result, Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric, which serve the vast majority of the state, submitted maps in 2017 to identify potential areas where utility equipment could cause fires.

The three utilities are required to update their maps every 10 years, but both Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison have updated sections of their maps since the original filing. Southern California Edison is also currently seeking approval to update a portion of its maps. San Diego Gas & Electric has not updated its maps since 2017.

But Cal Advocates argued in its initial 2023 proposal that the maps need both a complete update and to be updated more frequently than once a decade. When Pacific Gas & Electric filed an update in 2023, for example, the new inclusions amounted to about 4.5% of its service area.

“Even its most recent mapping was in dire need of updating,” Cal Advocates said in its 2023 request. “This suggests public safety needs would be better met if utilities across the state update their wildfire risk mapping every five years.”

All three of the utilities with mapping requirements supported Cal Advocates’ position, which would allow the utilities to update the maps based on their own internal models. In a statement, Pacific Gas & Electric spokesperson Matt Nauman said the company updates its internal fire maps annually and expects to file updated maps with the commission at the end of this year.

Mussey Grade Road Alliance, a Ramona community advocacy group, pushed back on the proposal in May 2023 because of the discretion it would give the utilities to choose what counts as risky, which Cal Advocates later agreed with.

With the mapping comes additional regulatory scrutiny, as well as more stringent requirements for inspecting and maintaining utility infrastructure in high-risk areas.

The advocacy group’s Joseph Mitchell said the maps lack sufficient modeling for how wind affects the fires. The annual average of wind in an area doesn’t account for the short-term, significant gusts that were associated with large fires both recently and within the last decade.

San Diego Gas & Electric comes the closest to accounting for this, he said.

Alex Welling, spokesperson for San Diego Gas & Electric, said the utility regularly compares its maps against “wind speeds, historical fire data, fire modeling and more.” The utility will file to update the maps if it “identifies a need for updates,” Welling said.

“Identifying the most dangerous areas for appropriate mitigation is important and continues to be important,” Mitchell said.