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‘We do it for money’

Roberto Delgado and his wife were praying the rosary on the night of Jan. 7 when they heard two loud booms that shook their Sylmar home. Then came a flash of light so bright that in the dead of night they could briefly see out their window the rocks and gullies of the San Gabriel foothills behind their house.

Seconds later, Delgado said in an interview, the couple saw flames under two electric transmission towers owned by Southern California Edison — even more shocking because they had seen a fire ignite under one of those towers just six years before.

“We were traumatized,” he said. “It was almost the exact same thing.” In both fires, the family was forced to race to their car and flee with few belongings as the flames rushed through the brush toward their home, which survived both blazes.

Edison’s maintenance of its power lines is now under scrutiny in the wake of January’s devastating Eaton fire, which destroyed a wide swath of Altadena and killed 19 people. Video captured by eyewitnesses shows the Eaton fire igniting under Edison transmission towers.

A lawsuit making its way through Los Angeles County Superior Court is raising new questions about Edison’s role in the 2019 Saddle Ridge fire in Sylmar and whether the company was transparent about the cause of the blaze. The fire killed at least one person and destroyed or damaged more than 100 homes and other structures. Firefighters were able to contain the more recent Sylmar fire, called Hurst, before any homes were destroyed.

The lawyers contend that both fires were caused by the same problem: an improperly grounded transmission line running through the foothills of Sylmar that Edison failed to fix, which the company denies.

In a court filing, the lawyers included a deposition they took of an L.A. Fire Department captain who said he believed that Edison was “deceptive” for not informing the department that its equipment failed just minutes before the 2019 blaze ignited, and for having an employee offer to buy key surveillance video from that night from a business next to one of its towers.

Edison has flatly disputed the lawyers’ assertions, calling their claims about the 2019 fire an “exotic ignition theory” based on “an unproven narrative.”

Kathleen Dunleavy, a spokeswoman for Edison, said that the utility had complied with the requests of investigators looking into the two fires and that “there is no connection” between the incidents.

Dunleavy said Edison did not tell the fire department about the failure of its equipment in 2019 because it happened at a tower miles away from where the fire ignited. And she said it is common for any investigator to seek to obtain video that could aid in an investigation. “SCE’s investigator did not offer to buy surveillance video,” she said.

“We follow the law. Period,” she said.

Dunleavy said the company has completed tests that show the transmission line is safe. She declined to share the results and pointed to testimony by Edison’s expert in the case — Don Russell, a Texas A&M professor of electrical engineering — who said the line was properly grounded.

As for the Jan. 7 Hurst fire, the utility told regulators in a February letter that it believes its equipment “may be associated with the ignition” of the blaze. The letter said the company found two conductors on the ground under a Sylmar tower. The repairs, the letter said, included replacing equipment at several towers and more than three miles of cable.

Delgado and Perez say that on the night of the fire they heard two loud booms and a flash of light so bright they could briefly see out their window the rocks and gullies of the San Gabriel foothills.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Undergrounding of towers questioned

In dispute is whether the failure of steel equipment at the top of an Edison transmission tower on the night of Oct. 10, 2019, caused a massive power surge across the system, resulting in multiple towers becoming electrified and intensely hot.

The tower, where the steel part known as a y-clevis broke, sits just off the 210 freeway in Sylmar on land shared with a nursery. The Edison tower behind Delgado’s home where investigators say the 2019 fire ignited is more than two miles away from the nursery.

The attorneys said in court filing that Edison made a “cost-saving choice” when building the transmission line in 1970 to not include “any purposeful grounding devices” that would enable power surges to dissipate down the tower and into the earth. Instead, the company used “only insufficient concrete footings,” the lawyers said in their filing.

Mark Felling, an electrical engineer and paid expert in the case, testified that he found that the size of the cement footings under the towers along the line varied by a factor of 10. The size of the footings, he said,affects whether the tower is properly grounded.

Felling said he believed that a sudden power surge could cause some towers to become “electrified and potentially very hazardous.”

Edison has disputed that theory and said in court that the electrical surge caused by the failure of equipment at the tower by the nursery safely dispersed. The utility said it was scientifically impossible that the electrical surge caused a fire 2½ miles away.

“The undisputed material facts cannot support plaintiff’s theory that SCE caused the Saddleridge fire,” the company wrote in a motion this month, which asked the judge to dismiss the case. A hearing on the motion is scheduled for Oct. 6.

Edison’s motion included a copy of the L.A. Fire Department’s investigation, which included new details of how the company responded to fire investigators days after the 2019 fire.

Delgado said his rosary and prayers were important to surviving the fires.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Failure to report power surge

L.A. Fire investigator Robert Price arrived at the dirt road leading up to the hillside transmission line where the fire had ignited the night before to see the yellow crime scene tape lying on the ground and an Edison truck driving out, Price said in his report.

Price also wrote that Edison’s equipment recorded a fault that resulted in a surge of electricity about three minutes before Delgado reported the fire to 911 at 9 p.m. But the company did not tell the Fire Department about the fault, Price wrote.

Instead, L.A. Fire Capt. Timothy Halloran learned from a news report that Sylmar resident Jack Carpenter had recorded a large flash of light on his dashboard camera at 8:57 that night as he was traveling west on the 210 freeway.

Halloran traced the flash to a transmission tower built on land used by Ornelas Wood Recovery Nursery. Halloran interviewed employees at the nursery, who told him that an Edison employee had offered to buy the surveillance footage from the nursery’s camera, according to a deposition Halloran later provided to lawyers representing the victims.

A nursery employee also had taken photos of the broken steel equipment he found at the foot of the tower, according to Price’s report. The employee told Halloran that an Edison crew came the day after the fire and cleaned up the shattered pieces.

Halloran said in the deposition, according to a June court filing, that the company’s failure to report the fault and its offer to buy the nursery’s surveillance video made him believe that the company’s actions were “deceptive.”

Price said in his report that he also saw Edison crews cleaning the towers along the line three days after the fire’s start. An Edison employee told him that the utility cleans the towers once a year but had decided to clean them that day “because they were dirty from the smoke and fire,” Price wrote.

The cleaning did not prevent fire investigators from finding burn marks at the bottom of a second tower not far from where Delgado and his wife live, which Price said may be related to the “catastrophic failure” of equipment at the tower by the nursery.

In his final conclusion on the fire, Price wrote that it was “outside my expertise” to determine whether the failure of equipment at the tower above the nursery “could cause high voltage to travel back through the conductors … and cause a fire, possibly through the tower’s grounding system” more than two miles away.

“Therefore the cause will be undetermined,” Price wrote.

Dunleavy said that Edison had notified the California Public Utilities Commission about the fire before it began cleaning up the broken pieces of equipment found under the tower at the nursery. That cleanup and the company’s repairs, Dunleavy said, were needed to “ensure safety and reliability” of the line.

She added that it was common practice for utilities to wash down equipment after a fire before the system was reenergized.

According to an L.A. Fire investigator, Edison’s equipment recorded a fault that resulted in a surge of electricity about three minutes before Delgado reported the fire to 911 at 9 p.m.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

State utility investigators find violations

Also investigating the 2019 fire in the days after its start was Eric Ujiiye at the Public Utilities Commission.

The commission’s safety staff investigates fires that may have been caused by electric lines to determine whether the utility violated safety regulations.

Ujiiye said in his report that he found that Edison violated five regulations, including failing to safely maintain its equipment at the tower by the nursery.

Even though Price’s investigation for the L.A. Fire Department stated that the cause is undetermined, Ujiiye said in his report that he believed that the failure of equipment at the tower by the nursery “could have led to a fire ignition” at the pylon more than two miles away.

The commission’s staff asked Edison to perform tests to show that the towers on the line were properly grounded. According to a written response from Edison, the utility objected to the request as “vague and ambiguous.” But the company agreed to do the tests, which would be observed by the commission inspectors.

Terrie Prosper, a spokeswoman for the commission, said that the agency’s staff was planning to meet with Edison at the transmission line to witness the tests. However, COVID-19 pandemic restrictions delayed that meeting and the requested undergrounding tests. She said that commission staff later learned that Edison had performed similar tests soon after the fire. Those test results “sufficed,” Prosper said, and the company “was not made to re-do the tests.”

Prosper said the commission did not fine or otherwise penalize Edison for the five violations because the LAFD report said the cause was undetermined. She said company had corrected the violations.

April Maurath Sommer, executive director of the Wild Tree Foundation, which has challenged Edison’s requests to have utility customers pay for fire damages, questioned the commission’s handling of the 2019 fire.

“You would think that the Public Utilities Commission would use fines to address really egregious behavior in the hope it would deter future behavior that causes catastrophic fires,” she said.

Maurath Sommer noted that Edison has been repeatedly found to have failed to cooperate with investigators looking into the cause of devastating fires. For example, commission investigators said in a report that the utility refused to provide photos and other details of what its employees found at the site where the Woolsey fire ignited in 2018. The Edison crew was the first to arrive at the scene of the fire that destroyed hundreds of homes in Malibu. Edison argued that the evidence was protected by attorney-client privilege.

Edison’s Dunleavy said the allegation by commission investigators was later resolved. “We take our obligation to cooperate with the CPUC seriously,” she said.

Prosper of the commission said, “Public safety is, and will remain, our top priority,”

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1. Fire fighters kept an eye on the wild fire burning behind Olive View Medical Center. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times) 2. A firefighting plane drops red Phos-Chek, a fire retardant, to protect Olive View Medical Center from wind driven Saddle Ridge wild fire in October 2019. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times) 3. Interstate 5 and California State Rute 14 were closed to traffic through Newhall Pass due to the Saddle Ridge fire. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times) 4. Firefighters cleared brush and mopped up a hillside along California State Highway 14 due to fire in 2019. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)

Another fire in Sylmar

At about 10:30 on the night of Jan. 7, Katherine Twohy heard a loud crack and saw a bright flash. Edison’s transmission towers in Sylmar skirt around the edge of the Oakridge Mobile Home Park, where Twohy, a retired psychologist, lives.

“I was just coming in my back door and there was just this incredible flashing of white lights,” Twohy said. “Incredibly blue-white lights.”

She walked to her living room window where she can see two Edison towers, which are separated by more than a hundred yards. Twohy said she could see flames at the base of each one.

“The fires had made little circles around the base,” she said.

Twohy said she saw flames under the same towers the night the Saddle Ridge fire ignited in 2019.

“I thought, ‘Oh my god, it’s just like last time,’” Twohy said.

In court, lawyers representing victims of the 2019 fire have seized on Edison’s admission that its equipment may have sparked the Jan. 7 fire.

“The evidence will show that five separate fires ignited at five separate SCE transmission tower bases in the same exact manner” as the 2019 fire, they wrote in a June court filing.

Delgado’s home sits next to the dirt road leading up to the towers. The Jan. 7 fire melted his backyard fence but did little more damage. In the days after the fire, he found that some of the same Edison employees he spoke to in 2019 as a witness reappeared.

“I saw the exact same people from Edison show up,” he said. “I told them your towers almost killed my family again.”

Times staff writer Kevin Rector contributed to this report.

One of California’s largest agricultural employers plans to close a Central Valley grape nursery by the end of the year after laying off hundreds of employees, including many supportive of a United Farm Workers effort to unionize the workforce.

Wonderful Co., owned by billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick, plans to shut down the majority of the nursery in Wasco, northwest of Bakersfield, and donate the farm to UC Davis, representatives for the company and the university confirmed this week.

The move comes as Wonderful Nurseries remains locked in a battle with the UFW after the union last year petitioned to represent workers growing grapevines, using a new state “card check” law that made it easier for organizers to sign up workers. Company officials said their decision was unrelated to that.

“The decision to wind down Wonderful Nurseries was purely a business decision and in no way, shape or form related to our ongoing litigation with the UFW or the fraud so many farm workers reported by the union,” Wonderful Co. spokesman Seth Oster said.

In February, Wonderful Nurseries President Rob C. Yraceburu said in an email to employees that the state’s agricultural industry has seen tens of thousands of orchard and vineyard acres abandoned or removed. The table and wine grape industry is in a major downturn, meaning nurseries such as theirs have seen “significantly decreased sales and record losses, with no expectation of a turnaround anytime soon.”

Yet some labor experts and Wonderful employees are questioning the timing of the layoffs, which started just five months after the UFW won a key legal victory in its effort to organize the workforce.

Victor Narro, a labor studies professor at UCLA, said the closure and donation to UC Davis should be scrutinized.

“The question is, what’s the reason they’re doing it?” he said. “Is it really, in the end, to avoid unionization of the workforce? Or is it really that they’re making a sound financial decision?”

The UFW has not directly accused the Resnicks of retaliating against workers supportive of the union by closing the farm. But it has raised questions about the timing of both the layoffs and this week’s confirmation the nursery would be closed.

The entrance to Wonderful Nurseries on March 25, 2024, in Wasco, Calif.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

At its seasonal peak, the 1,400-acre nursery employs about 600 workers who would have been part of the bargaining unit, but now only 20 still work at the facility, said Elizabeth Strater, director of strategic campaigns for the union. Overall, about 100 employees now work there, according to the company.

Yraceburu told employees there will be a phasedown in shutting the grape nursery. Workers, including those employed by farm labor contractors, will have an opportunity to apply for other Wonderful worksites, he said. A company spokesman said no other Wonderful farm is facing a similar reduction in workforce.

The nursery has been operating at a significant loss for several years, Oster said, but he did not say for how long or just how much it has lost.

It was not immediately clear whether UC Davis will recognize the farmworkers union once the university takes control of the nursery.

In a statement, UC Davis spokesperson Bill Kisliuk said the university is grateful for the gift, which includes the Wasco facility combined with a $5-million startup donation. The university will form an implementation committee to plan the use of the facility, Kisliuk said.

Although the university has a long history of respecting labor agreements, he said, the academic use of the site will be significantly different from the current commercial operation.

“This gift expands and builds upon one of the world’s leading agricultural research programs and will catalyze discovery and innovation,” he said. “We look forward to working with the Wonderful Company to successfully transfer the Wasco facilities and property to the University later this year.”

The Resnicks are big donors to state politicians and charities, but their philanthropy has been the target of recent union organizing efforts. In late July, UFW and other labor organizers gathered outside the Hammer Museum, the recipient of more than $30 million in donations from the Resnicks, who have a building named after them. The gathering came after the union released a video that appeared to show a Wonderful employee paying other workers to participate in an anti-union protest.

In the video, the worker, who has been a forefront anti-union advocate and has organized protests, is seen handing out $100 bills from the trunk of a car and encouraging workers to sign a sheet. In a separate video, she can be heard saying that she was directed to first feed everyone, hand out $100 and then they would receive an additional $50.

The unedited versions of the videos were shown during a hearing before an administrative law judge for the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board, where Wonderful Co. has challenged the UFW’s petition to represent the nursery employees. The board oversees collective bargaining for farmworkers in the state and also investigates charges of unfair labor practices.

Wonderful Nurseries in Wasco.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Now that Wonderful is closing its Wasco grape nursery, it is unclear what will happen in the proceedings, because there will soon be no workers to unionize. But the board could issue a ruling that would affect future disputes.

The UFW and Wonderful Co. have traded accusations over the last year: The company accused the union of using $600 in COVID-19 federal relief funds to trick farmworkers into signing the authorization cards. The company submitted nearly 150 signed declarations from nursery workers saying they had not understood that by signing the cards they were voting to unionize.

The UFW has rejected those accusations and, with the video, is suggesting that workers were paid to protest against the unionization effort at the height of the back-and-forth a year ago.

Rosa M. Silva, a Wonderful Nurseries worker for the last six years, said tensions have long been running high at the nursery, with some co-workers saying they don’t have a right to ask for raises or benefits. She said she believes that the company would rather shut down the nursery to avoid negotiating with them, a claim that Wonderful has forcefully rejected.

In July, Silva took a day off work and rallied outside the Hammer Museum. Protesters handed out fliers that read: “Tell Wonderful Company’s billionaire owners: Respect the farm workers. Stop spending money fighting the United Farm Workers.”

“This is my message to the Resnicks: if you can give millions to this art museum, which a majority of your workers will never visit, why can’t you also pay your workers something fair?” she said at the protest. “If you care so much about being respected by artists and lovers of art, why can’t you respect the people who plant, grow and harvest the products you sell?”

The UFW filed its petition with the labor board in February last year, asserting that a majority of the 600-plus farmworkers at Wonderful Nurseries in Wasco had signed the authorization cards and asking that the UFW be certified as their union representative.

At the time, it appeared to be the UFW’s third victorious unionization drive in a matter of months — following diminishing membership rates over the last several years.

Under the law, a union can organize farmworkers by inviting them to sign authorization cards at off-site meetings without notifying their employer. Under the old rules, farmworkers voted on union representation by secret ballot at a polling site designated by the state labor board, typically on employer property. The state law has since revitalized the union’s organizing efforts, and it has gone on to organize other farms.

Wonderful has sued the state to stop the card-check law. A ruling by a Kern County Superior Court judge that found the certification process under the card-check law as “likely unconstitutional” was superseded in October by an appellate court, which is still reviewing the case.

Ana Padilla, executive director of the UC Merced Community and Labor Center, said the Central Valley has been blanketed with anti-union messaging ever since the passage of the card-check law.

She also questioned the timing of shutting down the Wasco nursery. “Layoffs, store closures and offloading organized worksites are all part of the anti-unionism playbook,” she said.

This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.

A MUM has shared how she ditched the UK for sunny Thailand with her kids and husband.

Lauren took to social media and shared why she left England and has no regrets in uprooting her family to South East Asia.

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The mum-of-two revealed that she and her family decided the cost of living and their busy schedule was too much.

Instead of putting up with it, they sold their house and bought a one-way ticket to Thailand for a new life.

She said: “We didn’t leave because we hated the UK.

“We left because life started to feel like one long checklist we didn’t remember choosing. Wake up. Rush. Work. Nursery. School. Bills. Repeat.

“We wanted more presence, more connection, more sunsets and slow mornings.

“So we sold almost everything, booked a one-way ticket, and figured it out as we went.

“It’s not perfect, but it’s ours, and we’ve never felt more free.”

Lauren often shared her new life in Thailand on social media and recently shared one of their favourite breakfasts while they stayed in Koh Samui.

She headed to one of her favourite food vendors and ordered fried chicken and sticky rice before getting some Thai milk tea.

The mum even said that she thought the iced tea was better than English Breakfast tea.

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The mum added: “Hands down they are better than an English breakfast tea. They’re sweet, they’re icy. They do give you that little tea fix.”

She said the next step to the perfect breakfast was to locate the nearest beach.

“The beach closest to our house here is Chong Mon. And if you are coming to Koh Samui, even just on holiday, I really recommend this area,” Lauren said.

“It’s kind of like a mix between touristy but not too touristy.

“The beach here is so good for kids because the water is really shallow.”

Finally, she and her family sat down on the beach to enjoy their breakfast with a stunning view.

The clip went viral on her TikTok account @lifealongsidelauren with 120k views.

People were quick to take to the comments in awe of Lauren’s new life.

One person wrote: “Living the dream, I would swap my builders’ tea in England for yours any day of the week.”

Another commented: “I have been following for a while just wanted to say that because of you and your TikTok my future with my kids will look the same!”

“I haven’t seen your posts for ages, glad you’re still enjoying your new life,” penned a third.

Meanwhile a fourth said: “Brekkie on the beach..elite!”

“Love watching your adventures! We are coming to to Thailand in August and can’t wait,” claimed a fifth.

Someone else added: “Such an inspiration.”