wildfire

Not long after Pacific Palisades and Altadena had burned, Gov. Gavin Newsom summoned reporters and television cameras to Dodger Stadium. Newsom stepped behind a podium dropped within a stadium parking lot, with a commanding view of Los Angeles as the backdrop.

He was there to unveil LA Rises, a signature initiative under which the private sector and philanthropists could unite to help Southern California rebuild and recover.

The most valuable player that day: Mark Walter, the Dodgers’ chairman and controlling owner. The big announcement: Walter and two of his associated charities — his family foundation and the Dodgers’ foundation — would contribute up to $100 million as “an initial commitment” to LA Rises.

“We should clap for that,” Dodgers co-owner Magic Johnson told the assembled media. “A hundred million dollars, that’s an outstanding thing.”

One year later, Newsom’s initiative has struggled to distinguish itself amid a panoply of wildfire relief efforts. LA Rises has delivered $20 million to date, including $7.8 million from Walter’s family foundation, according to Newsom’s office.

“If it’s a number of 20 million after one year, after such a severe occurrence, and with Los Angeles having the giving capacity to meet that goal, I would have expected to hear that there had been more commitments, at a minimum,” said Casey Rogers, founder of Santa Barbara-based Telea Insights, which advises philanthropists and leaders of nonprofit organizations.

“Maybe not all of those commitments would have been paid. Maybe they would have been commitments over a number of years. But it would have been closer to the goal.”

Walter stands by his pledge, Dodgers president Stan Kasten said. A representative of Newsom’s office said Walter’s pledge did not come with a timeline.

“I know we haven’t spent the full 100 yet,” Kasten said, “but this is a long-term commitment.”

Rather than solicit large donations up front and determine how to use the money later, LA Rises prefers to identify “impactful opportunities for investment” as they arise and then “coordinate financial support from a variety of private, public and philanthropic donors, including the Walter Family Foundation,” said Dee Dee Myers, director of Newsom’s office of business and economic development.

Of the Walter foundation contributions, $5 million went toward grants for impacted small business, workers and nonprofits, with $2.8 million to Pasadena City College for modernizing and expanding technical education programs to train workers that can help rebuild their own communities.

LA Rises also funded programs that include day camps and mental health intervention to children affected by the fires; streamlined architectural planning and permits for survivors wishing to rebuild; and support for Habitat for Humanity in building new homes and rebuilding damaged ones.

“The administration is incredibly grateful for any philanthropic dollars that have gone towards the rebuilding efforts in Los Angeles,” Myers said.

The competition for those dollars is fierce. The Milken Institute reported that private giving toward wildfire relief — from individuals, corporations and other entities — hit nearly $1 billion last year.

“I know there has been a lot of money that has been paid to various programs,” Kasten said, “and there has also been some rethinking about how LA Rises is deployed and what foundational money from the Dodgers is used for. We continue to work hard with a lot of groups on that tragedy.

“There are talks ongoing about a variety of programs and a variety of ways of funding things. We are still very involved with this, both with LA Rises and other entities.”

Kasten did not rule out Walter shifting some or all of his remaining funding commitment to an organization outside LA Rises.

“I don’t know exactly what entity we will be formally engaged with — or doing it separately — but we’re absolutely committed to helping out those programs that need that kind of help,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of it already, and we can do a lot more.”

The Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center filed a lawsuit against Southern California Edison Tuesday, claiming the electric company was to blame for igniting last year’s Eaton fire, which destroyed the congregation’s historic sanctuary, preschool and other buildings.

“Our congregation has been without a physical home for more than a year, at a time when our members had the deepest need for refuge and healing,” Senior Rabbi Joshua Ratner said in a statement. “While we’ve continued to gather and support one another, the loss is deeply felt.”

David Eisenhauer, an Edison spokesman, said the company would respond to the complaint through the court process.

“Our hearts remain with the people affected by the Eaton fire,” Eisenhauer said. “We remain committed to wildfire mitigation through grid hardening, situational awareness and enhanced operational practices.”

The temple had served hundreds of Jewish families since 1941. Congregation members were able to save little more than its sacred Torah scrolls.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, claims Edison failed to follow its own safety protocols despite advance warnings of extremely dangerous red flag conditions in an area known to be at high threat of wildfires.

The complaint points to the utility’s failure to de-energize its transmission lines that night, as well as its decision to leave up a decommissioned line that hadn’t carried electricity for decades.

It also cites a Times investigation that found that Edison fell behind in doing maintenance that it told state regulators was needed and began billing customers for.

“SCE’s maintenance backlog and unutilized maintenance funds show that it was highly likely that the subject electrical infrastructure that ignited the Eaton Fire was improperly inspected, maintained, repaired, and otherwise operated, which foreseeably led to the Eaton Fire’s ignition,” the complaint states.

The lawsuit seeks financial compensation for destruction of the campus, as well as injunctive relief aimed at preventing Edison from causing more wildfires in the future.

The government investigation into the cause of the fire has not yet been released.

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company, has said that a leading theory is that a century-old, dormant transmission line in Eaton Canyon briefly became energized that night, causing sparks that ignited the fire.

Edison is already facing hundreds of lawsuits from fire victims, as well as one by the U.S. Department of Justice. The utility is offering compensation to victims who agree to give up their right to sue the company for the blaze.

Under California law, most of those payments, as well as the lawsuit settlements, are expected to be covered by a state wildfire fund that lawmakers created to shield the three biggest for-profit utilities from bankruptcy if their equipment ignites a catastrophic fire. Some wildfire victims say the law has gone too far and doesn’t keep the utilities accountable for their mistakes.

The temple’s lawsuit details how investigators have found Edison’s equipment to have caused multiple wildfires in the last 10 years, including the the Round Fire in 2015, the Rey Fire in 2016, the Thomas, Creek, and Rye fires in 2017,and the Woolsey Fire in 2018.

Investigators also found that Edison’s power lines sparked the Fairview fire in 2022, which killed two people.