Southern California Edison officials have so far said they do not believe their electrical equipment was responsible.
Matthew Logelin, who lives at the base of Eaton Canyon in Pasadena, heard a loud bang about 6:11 p.m. Tuesday as he was preparing dinner for his children. [Could also be firework or other explosive device.]
He ran outside to see whether one of the big pine trees in their backyard, which backs up to Eaton Canyon, had fallen in the high winds. Seeing no major damage, he went back into the house, looked through the kitchen window and saw that a fire had ignited on the ridge beneath a massive metal power line.
He called 911 at 6:13 p.m. when the blaze “was the tiniest fire — it looked like a camp fire at that point,” he said.
early photo of fire:
Did New Year’s Eve fireworks start the largest Los Angeles fire?
About 30 minutes after the Palisades Fire started on Tuesday, the firefighters’ radio crackled: The flames were coming from a familiar sliver of a mountain ridge.
“The foot of the fire started real close to where the last fire was on New Year’s Eve,” said a Los Angeles County firefighter, according to a Washington Post review of archived radio transmissions.
“We know that fires rekindle and transition from smoldering to flaming,” said Michael Gollner, a professor of mechanical engineering and fire scientist at the University of California at Berkeley who reviewed The Post’s materials. “It’s certainly possible that something from that previous fire, within a week, had rekindled and caused the ignition.”
[As hurricane force winds blew through the area.]
[Rectangle is identified as the burn scar of the NYE fire, smoke plume from jan 7th start of the Palisades fire.]