ALTADENA, Calif. — He said he was standing at the right place at the wrong time when Jeffrey Ku recorded some of the earliest footage of the Eaton Fire in the canyon behind his home.
“I didn’t realize how bad things could get so fast,” Ku said of Jan. 7, when the wind was howling outside his Altadena home.
Minutes before recording the flames, Ku said he was sitting in his dark living room with his two dogs. He had received an email from Southern California Edison that his power would be shut off as a safety precaution.
“They sent an email saying the power could be out for a couple days,” Ku said.
His wife was the first to notice the flames while driving home from work. After she called him to come outside, Ku was shocked to see a group of electrical towers in Eaton Canyon surrounded by flames.
The fire was spreading fast.
“We had to wear masks because we couldn’t breathe anymore, the smoke was so bad,” Ku said.
He kept filming as they packed their car, hosed down the roof and then fled.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department is the lead agency determining the cause of the Eaton Fire. A spokesperson declined Spectrum News' request for an interview while the investigation is still open.
Ku’s video is one of several reviewed by attorney Mikal Watts, who filed a lawsuit on behalf of fire victims against SCE. Billions of dollars in potential liability claims are on the line.
“Seventeen people lost their lives, thousands of people lost their homes because Southern California Edison didn’t take care of its infrastructure and allowed a fire to spark that should have never been allowed to spark,” Watts said in an interview with Spectrum News.
In addition to the video, Watts said a private investigator found evidence of arcing — a jolt of electricity — on a tower labeled M16T1, a structure that hasn’t carried power in over 50 years. At 6:11 p.m. — minutes before Ku’s video — SCE detected a fault on a line miles away from Eaton Canyon.
“This line shouldn’t have been there,” Watts said of the M16T1 tower. “If this line wasn’t there, that had been taken down when it was decommissioned 53 years ago, this fire would have never happened.”
SCE spokesperson Kathleen Dunleavy said it’s too soon to say whether the M16T1 tower sparked the fire.
“We want to evaluate pre- and post-fire photos from the structure that you referenced, and we also want to make sure that we can examine our equipment in a laboratory setting,” Dunleavy said.
Watts claims the M16T1 tower should have been taken down.
The California Public Utilities Commission states: “Lines or portions of lines permanently abandoned shall be removed by their owners so that such lines shall not become a public nuisance or a hazard to life or property.”
Dunleavy disputes that the line was abandoned.
“This is an idle tower,” she said. “Again, important distinction there between ‘idle’ and ‘abandoned.’”
Dunleavy says finding the cause of the fire is a top priority for SCE.
“We live here,” she said. “We work here. We were also impacted by the Southern California wildfires, and our heart goes out to everyone that has been impacted.”
As for Ku, he feels lucky that his family and his home withstood the fire. He’s provided his video to fire investigators and to SCE.
“You could either do one of two things when things happen to you, that don’t go your way: You can either be bitter about it, or you can try and be better about it,” Ku said.
It’s a night he will never forget — one that changed him and his community forever.