(Reuters) – Around 278,150 Californian homes and businesses were without electricity on Friday morning in Southern California Edison’s service area, as multiple wildfires continued to rage uncontrollably around Los Angeles.
A company spokesperson said around 149,000 of those homes were without power due to the Public Safety Power Shutoff plan and 129,000 were because of other causes such as wind damage.
The fires, which have devastated neighborhoods and already rank as the most destructive in Los Angeles history, have so far killed 10 people and destroyed nearly 10,000 structures.
“SCE estimates 1.29 million customers have seen an impact since the storm started on Jan. 7,” said Jeff Monford, senior adviser of corporate communications at Edison, to Reuters.
Monford added SCE has thousands of field crew members working towards restoring power.
SCE, a subsidiary of U.S. utility Edison International, also added it could take them several days to restore power.
Earlier in the day, SCE had received notices from insurance companies to preserve evidence related to the Eaton Fire, but said no fire agencies have pointed the utility’s connection to the fire.
The company said it had also not found any interruptions or anomalies in its transmission lines until more than an hour after the reported start time of the fire, citing preliminary analysis done by the group.
Evercore ISI analyst Durgesh Chopra said on Friday a 10% decline in Edison International’s stock on Wednesday had erased about $3 billion in its equity value.
The decline, he said, was close to the company’s maximum exposure of $3.9 billion to AB 1054, also known as Wildfire Insurance Fund, if deemed imprudent with its electric equipment and facilities.
If the company is found imprudent or partially imprudent, shareholders must pay up to 20% of the $3.9 billion for Edison and the investigation can take one to two years, added Chopra.
Shares of the company were down over 7%.
(Reporting by Bipasha Dey, Arunima Kumar and Seher Dareen in Bengaluru; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Shinjini Ganguli and Krishna Chandra Eluri)
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