Southern California Edison will spend $24.5 million in a settlement with the state over two incidents in 2011 that left three members of a San Bernardino family dead and 440,168 customers without power.
California’s Public Utilities Commission on Thursday approved the settlement between SCE and CPUC’s Safety and Enforcement Division, SED.
Nearly two-thirds of the settlement amount, $15 million, is required to be deposited into the state’s general fund within 30 days. The remaining $9.5 million will be used by the utility company to begin safety improvement plans in hopes of preventing future tragedies, according to the commission.
“Funding for the entire settlement will come solely from company shareholders and will not impact customer rates,” Rosemead-based SCE said in a prepared statement. “SCE believes the settlement is in the public interest and allows it to move forward with the utility’s principal mission of providing safe, reliable and affordable electric service.”
In the settlement, SCE admitted violating the Public Utilities Code, an action that led to three San Bernardino family members being electrocuted by a downed power line in January 2011. SCE also admitted electric poles and guy wires — used to brace poles — were below required safety levels and contributed to massive San Gabriel Valley power outages in late 2011.
“Remediation measures are forward-looking and, if well-designed and properly implemented, can correct problems in order to minimize or prevent the risk that harm will recur,” said Michael R. Peevey, CPUC president and commissioner assigned to the proceeding, in a prepared statement. “Importantly, the settlements require SCE to provide the CPUC with periodic reports on the results of the new programs designed to ensure that violations identified in the settlement do not happen again. This is very important, as the safety of electric infrastructure requires a proactive, ongoing commitment.”
The death of a husband, wife and their stepson were the end result of four years of faulty engineering, the settlement report indicates.
Before sunrise on Jan. 14, 2011, Steven Vego awoke to a fire in his backyard. The 43-year-old walked outside to extinguish the blaze and was electrocuted. His wife, Sharon, 42, went to help him and was also electrocuted. Their 21-year-old stepson, Jonathan Cole, followed in his mother’s footsteps and was killed as well.
The two remaining family members, a 17-year-old girl and her younger brother, remained inside the home and were not physically injured.
In a civil case settlement, SCE paid the two Vego children and their lawyers a combined $25 million, according to Wylie Aitken, of Aitken Aitken and Cohn, which represented the children in San Bernardino Superior Court. An SCE spokeswoman said all civil claims connected to the San Bernardino incident have been resolved but declined to discuss specifics.
SED’s investigation concluded two overhead conductors on a circuit above the Vego’s north San Bernardino neighborhood came into contact or near contact, causing one phase conductor to break and fall to the ground near the Vego’s home on Acacia Avenue.
Before the tragic morning, problems occurred on the same circuit between Dec. 23, 2006, and Oct. 14, 2008, resulting in blown fuses and conductor failures, according to the 40-page report and settlement agreement.
“SCE did not properly consider the potential significance of the previous incidents in designing, constructing or maintaining the facilities near the site of the Acacia Avenue Incident,” the report states.
The $16.5 million payout from the Acacia Avenue Incident was determined by multiplying the maximum penalty — $20,000 — to the days between the Acacia Incident and the October 2008 contact — 822 days — and rounding up.
Neither SED nor SCE said the fines were excessive, according to the settlement report.
The remaining $8 million of the settlement stemmed from a windstorm in the fall of 2011.
The storm knocked down 243 electric poles, the report says, eliminating power to 440,168 customers in the San Gabriel Valley, about 9 percent of SCE’s current 4.9 million customers.
Outages lasted up to eight days, and 226,053 customers were simultaneously without power, according to the agreement between SCE and SED.
In addition to the substandard safety levels of the electric poles and their braces, SCE’s collection methods prevented SED from reconstructing all but five of the failing poles for analysis.
“In mitigation, SCE believes that the preservation of all poles, conductors, and other associated equipment would have hindered SCE’s efforts to restore power to its customers impacted by the windstorm at some locations,” the settlement report states.
In the wake of the storm, SCE provided subpar customer service, according to the report, by giving customer’s incorrect power restoration estimate times, increasing the settlement agreement by $3.5 million to it’s $24.5 million total.
