A lawsuit filed Monday claims that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is to blame for at least some of the damage in the Palisades Fire due to a power line that allegedly sparked a second blaze during the event.
The Orange County Register reported:
A new lawsuit blames part of the catastrophic Palisades fire — the worst in Los Angeles history — on downed power lines from wooden poles snapped in the hurricane-force winds.
The suit, filed Monday by attorney Alexander Robertson, alleges the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power tried for months to cover up the harm caused by the fallen line. It says the LADWP told the Washington Post days after the fire began Jan. 7 that the line was not energized at the time of the blaze and had not been for the past five years.
However, the agency reversed itself March 20 in a written statement to Robertson’s law firm, saying the line was indeed active at the time of the blaze that destroyed nearly 7,000 high-end structures and killed 12 people, according to the lawsuit. The LADWP attributed the original statement to a “misunderstanding,” the lawsuit alleges.
The firm that filed the suit, led by Alex “Trey” Robertson, specializes in lawsuits on behalf of wildfire victims.
The Eaton Fire, which broke out the same day, is widely suspected to have been caused by SoCal Edison power lines that snapped and sparked in the high winds. Los Angeles County is already suing the company over the fire.
LADWP has been faulted for having a nearly empty reservoir, with a 117-million-gallon capacity, atop the Palisades.
The precise cause of the Palisades Fire has yet to be determined. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is still investigating. Breitbart News has reached out to the ATF for further comment on the issue.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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