The city of Los Angeles’ electric and water utility was hit with a lawsuit faulting it for not supplying enough water to fight the biggest fire still raging in the second-largest US metropolis.
Property owners in the city’s tony Pacific Palisades neighborhood sued the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the largest municipal utility in the US. The complaint appeared late Monday on the Los Angeles Superior Court’s website, but hasn’t yet been fully processed by the court.
Earlier Monday, Edison International Inc.’s southern California utility was hit with several lawsuits blaming the energy provider’s equipment for igniting the Eaton Fire in the Pasadena area, the second-largest of the conflagrations that have ravaged Los Angeles since last week. Wells Fargo & Co. analysts estimated that the fires could result in losses of as much as $30 billion for the insurance industry, significantly exceeding last week’s highest prediction from JPMorgan Chase & Co. that the fires stood to cost insurers roughly $20 billion. The plaintiffs listed in the LADWP suit include about 14 people who lost their homes in the fire, along with a pizza shop that burned down.