FILE — A man searches through the wreckage of his home on Jan. 19, 2025, after it was destroyed by the Eaton fire. Three months after the Palisades and Eaton fires tore through Los Angeles County, residents are concerned about the potential long-term health effects of the fires, which burned over 16,000 structures and all of the toxic materials they contained. (Isadora Kosofsky/The New York Times)
- Southern California Edison said six senior executives will forgo an estimated $2 million in bonuses following last year’s deadly Eaton fire.
- The utility has acknowledged its equipment likely sparked the blaze, which killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 buildings, though the official cause remains under review.
- Edison faces hundreds of lawsuits from victims and has expanded compensation efforts, even as it disputes sole responsibility for the fire.
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A half-dozen senior executives at Southern California Edison and its parent company will lose an estimated $2 million in bonuses as a result of the devastating Eaton fire near Los Angeles last year, the electric utility said Wednesday.
California officials have not yet formally determined the cause of the fire, which killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 buildings in suburban Altadena, but the utility previously said its equipment had most likely started the inferno.
This will be only the second time that the compensation committee for Edison — California’s second-largest investor-owned power provider — has reduced executive pay because of a wildfire. Some executives lost their entire bonus after the 2018 Woolsey fire in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, the company said.
Edison began informing employees about the decision Wednesday, when its parent company, Edison International, also announced its financial performance for 2025. The company earned $4.5 billion last year, up from $1.3 billion a year earlier.
About half the bonus reductions will come from the pay of Pedro J. Pizarro, president and CEO of Edison International. In an interview, he said he supported the company’s decision to reduce bonuses. He added that Edison had enhanced benefits that it was offering to victims of the fire and had made a $2 million donation from shareholders to the Pasadena Community Foundation to support recovery in Altadena.
“It’s kind of a reflection of what the community’s been through,” Pizarro said. “It’s just a tragedy.”
Victims have filed hundreds of lawsuits against the power company, and Edison has created a compensation fund to resolve cases more quickly. Some residents and their lawyers have criticized the compensation as insufficient.
Edison said Wednesday that it would now offer renters enough money to cover current market-rate rent rather than basing the amount on the rent they had paid before the fire.
But Edison has also said it does not bear sole responsibility for the devastation caused by the blaze. The company filed lawsuits in January against local governments and another utility, Southern California Gas, claiming that they had contributed to the destruction.
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
By Ivan Penn
c.2026 The New York Times Company
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