pedro pizarro

Eaton wildfire survivors’ anger about Southern California Edison’s burying of electric wires in Altadena boiled over Tuesday with residents calling on government officials to temporarily halt the work.

In a letter to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, more than 120 Altadena residents and the town’s council wrote that they had witnessed “manifest failures” by Edison in recent months as it has been tearing up streets and digging trenches to bury the wires.

The residents cited the unexpected financial cost of the work to homeowners and possible harm to the town’s remaining trees. They also pointed out how the work will leave telecommunication wires above ground on poles.

“The current lack of coordination is compounding the stress of a community still reeling from the Eaton Fire, and risks causing further irreparable harm,” the residents wrote.

The council voted unanimously Tuesday night to send the letter.

Scott Johnson, an Edison spokesman, said Wednesday that the company has been working to address the concerns, including by looking for other sources of funds to help pay for the homeowners’ costs.

“We recognize this community has already faced a number of challenges,” he said.

Johnson said the company will allow homeowners to keep existing overhead lines connecting their homes to the grid if they are worried about the cost.

Edison’s crews, Johnson said, have also been trained to use equipment that avoids roots and preserves the health of trees.

The utility has said that burying the wires as the town rebuilds thousands of homes destroyed in the fire will make the electrical grid safer and more reliable.

But anger has grown as work crews have shown up unexpectedly and residents learned they’re on the hook to pay tens of thousands of dollars to connect their homes to the buried lines.

Residents have also found the crews digging under the town’s oak and pine trees that survived last year’s fire. Arborists say the trenches could destroy the roots of some of the last remaining trees and kill them.

Amy Bodek, the county’s regional planning director, recently warned Edison that a government ordinance protects oak trees and that “utility trenching is not exempt from these requirements.”

Residents have also pointed out that in much of Altadena, the telecom companies, including Spectrum and AT&T, have not agreed to bury their wires in Edison’s trenches. That means the telecom wires will remain on poles above ground, which residents say is visually unappealing.

“While our community supports the long-term benefits of moving utilities underground, the current execution by SCE is placing undue financial and planning burdens on homeowners, causing irreparable harm to our heritage tree canopy, and proceeding without adequate local oversight,” the residents wrote.

They want the project halted until the problems are addressed.

Edison announced last year that it would spend as much as $925 million to underground and rebuild its grid in Altadena and Malibu, where the Palisades fire caused devastation.

The work — which costs an estimated $4 million per mile — will earn the utility millions of dollars in profits as its electric customers pay for it over the next decades.

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Gov. Gavin Newsom last year that state utility rules would require Altadena and Malibu homeowners to pay to underground the electric wire from their property line to the panel on their house. Pizarro estimated it would cost $8,000 to $10,000 for each home.

But some residents, who need to dig long trenches, say it will cost them much more.

“We are rebuilding and with the insurance shortfall, our finances are stretched already,” Marilyn Chong, an Altadena resident, wrote in a comment attached to the letter. “Incurring the additional burden of financing SCE’s infrastructure is not something we can or should have to do.”

Other fire survivors complained of Edison’s lack of planning and coordination with residents.

“I’ve started rebuilding, and apparently there won’t be underground power lines for me to connect with in time when my house will be done,” wrote Gail Murphy. “So apparently I’m supposed to be using a generator, and for how long!?”

Johnson said the company has set up a phone line for people with concerns or questions. That line — 1-800-250-7339 — is answered Monday through Saturday, he said.

Residents can also go to Edison’s office in Altadena at 2680 Fair Oaks Avenue. The office is open Monday to Friday from 8 to 4:30.

It’s unclear if the Eaton fire would have been less disastrous if Altadena’s neighborhood power lines had been buried.

The blaze ignited under Edison’s towering transmission lines that run through Eaton Canyon. Those lines carry bulk power through the company’s territory. In Altadena, Edison is burying the smaller distribution lines, which carry power to homes.

The government investigation into the cause of the fire has not yet been released. Pizarro has said that a leading theory is that a century-old transmission line, which had not carried power for 50 years, somehow re-energized to spark the blaze.

The fire killed at least 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 homes and other structures.

Edison International boosted the pay of its top executives last year despite their responsibility for the safety of the company’s power lines before the devastating Eaton fire, which destroyed a wide swath of Altadena and killed 19 people.

Although the company cut cash bonuses for its senior executives, citing the wildfires, their overall compensation went up substantially as the utility’s profit soared in 2025.

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of the parent company of Southern California Edison, received $16.6 million in cash, stock and other compensation last year, up 20% from 2024, according to a new company filing.

Steven Powell, president of Southern California Edison, received compensation totaling $6.5 million last year, up from $3.9 million in 2024 — a jump of more than 65%.

The utility’s transmission equipment is suspected of igniting two wildfires on Jan. 7, 2025, including the Eaton fire, which left thousands of families homeless.

The Times earlier detailed how Edison fell behind in performing maintenance on its aging transmission lines — work that it had told state utility regulators was needed. County prosecutors are investigating whether Edison should be criminally charged for its actions before the fire.

The government investigation into the cause of the fire has not been released and Edison has denied that it acted negligently. Pizarro has said a leading theory is that a century-old transmission line, which the company had not used for 50 years, may have briefly reenergized, igniting the fire.

A state law championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 protects utilities from paying for the damage due to fires sparked by their equipment. When it passed, Newsom touted the law’s requirement that utilities must tie executive compensation to their safety record, saying it would keep them accountable.

The law said that a utility “may” consider tying 100% of executive bonuses to safety performance and “denying all incentive compensation in the event the electrical corporation causes a catastrophic wildfire that results in one or more fatalities.”

Edison said in the new filing that the company’s board members who determine executive compensation decided to decrease the cash bonuses of Pizarro, Powell and Jill Anderson, the utility’s chief operating officer, because of the 2025 wildfires.

Pizarro’s cash bonus was cut by more than $1 million while Powell’s was trimmed by $442,000, according to the filing. Anderson lost out on $244,000.

The company, based in Rosemead, said its decision to cut the three executives’ cash bonuses “was not a reflection of the performance of the company or these executives.”

Despite those cuts, the executives’ total pay of salary, bonuses, stock and other compensation rose, according to the filing. That’s because Edison ties most executive compensation not to safety, but to the company’s financial performance.

And last year, Edison’s profit jumped more than 200% — from $1.3 billion in 2024 to $4.5 billion — despite the Eaton disaster.

The profit increase resulted from the protections from wildfire damage provided to Edison by the 2019 law, as well as a 13% hike in customer electricity rates in October.

The utility attributed the higher electric bills to several increases that it successfully lobbied the California Public Utilities Commission to approve. All five members of the commission were appointed by Newsom.

Scott Johnson, an Edison spokesman, said Tuesday that Pizarro and other company executives holding stock took a financial hit after the fires when the price plummeted.

Before the January fires, Edison International’s stock price was about $80. It fell to $50 the next month. It has recovered much of its value, closing on Tuesday at $72.92.

Edison is facing hundreds of lawsuits by victims of the fire. The suits claim it acted negligently, including by failing to remove the old, dormant transmission line in Eaton Canyon.

The lawsuits also blame Edison for not preventatively shutting down its transmission lines Jan. 7, 2025, despite the dangerous Santa Ana winds.

Pizarro has said the winds didn’t meet the company’s threshold in place at the time for turning off those high-voltage wires.

“Our deepest sympathies remain with all those affected, and this loss reinforces our commitment to public safety and wildfire risk mitigation,” Pizarro and Peter Taylor, chairman of the parent company’s board, wrote in a letter to shareholders that was released with the details on executive compensation.

The two executives added that the company’s “long-term objective remains unchanged: to significantly reduce wildfire risk while improving safety, reliability and affordability of electric service.”

Edison is now offering to compensate Eaton fire victims, including those who lost their homes, family members, businesses and apartments. The offer requires the victims to give up their right to sue the utility. Many survivors say the utility’s offer falls short of what they lost.

Pizarro and Taylor wrote that as of March 4, more than 2,500 claims had been submitted through the program. So far, Edison has extended offers to roughly 600 victims submitting claims and made payments totaling $31 million to 212 of those people, they wrote.

The utility also has begun settling claims of property insurers that covered Altadena homes that were destroyed or damaged, paying out hundreds of millions of dollars. The settlements will help cover the insurance companies’ losses.

Edison has told its shareholders that it expects most or all of those payments to victims and insurers to be covered by a $21-billion state wildfire fund that Newsom and lawmakers created as part of Assembly Bill 1054, which became law in 2019.

Critics say the law went too far, allowing a utility to allegedly spark a deadly wildfire without financial consequences to the company or its executives.

“The predictable outcome of continuing to protect shareholders and executives from the consequences of their own negligence is not theoretical. It is observable. More catastrophic fires,” Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, wrote in an email to state wildfire fund administrators this year.

Johnson responded, saying,”Our motivation to prevent fires and any incidents is to be good neighbors and provide affordable and resilient energy. There is nothing more important than safety.”

Taylor was on the board committee that approved the compensation package for Pizarro and other top executives. For his work chairing the board, Taylor received cash and stock compensation of more than $500,000.

Johnson said Taylor’s compensation was based on “typical board chair pay” at other utilities.

The new filing said Pizarro’s total compensation of $16.6 million was 75 times the median Edison employee’s total compensation of $220,000.

The present value of Pizarro’s pension is more than $19 million, the report said.

The company is facing a challenge from one of its shareholders — John Chevedden of Redondo Beach, according to the filing.

Chevedden is asking the company’s shareholders to vote to approve his proposal that would require Pizarro and other Edison executives to hold at least 25% of the stock they had received as compensation until they reach retirement age.

He said that requiring utility executives to hold a significant portion of their stock until retirement would focus their efforts on the company’s long-term success.

Chevedden pointed to “unfavorable news reports,” including the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuits against Edison for the Eaton fire and 2022 Fairview blaze, which killed two people in Riverside County.

Edison’s board urged shareholders to vote against Chevedden’s proposal before the company’s annual meeting April 23.

The board said the company already had guidelines that “closely align the interests of officers with the long-term interests of our shareholders.”