The timing could not have been better — or worse. The findings from a long-awaited investigation into the origins of a deadly Southern California wildfire were released Tuesday, pinning it on an electrical arc from a Southern California Edison transmission tower. Simultaneously, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration was asking legislators to limit the financial liability of SoCal Edison and other investor-owned utilities when their equipment ignites wildfires, which have become an inescapable fact of Californians’ lives. The report dealt with the Eaton Fire, one of several that swept through the Los Angeles area in January 2025, driven by hot winter winds known as Santa Anas. Once ignited, it quickly engulfed communities in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, particularly Altadena, charring more than 14,000 acres, destroying more than 9,000 homes and other buildings and claiming at least 19 lives. It took firefighters 24 days to fully extinguish it. “After 18 months of thorough review of all evidence, alongside retained electrical and metallurgical experts, the investigation concluded that the cause of the wildfire conflagration was due to the electrical arcing events that took place on the out-of-service Southern California Edison tower,” the Los Angeles County Fire Department wrote in the condensed report it produced along with Cal Fire. The electrical arc not only ignited the Eaton Fire, it also launched a predictable sequence of finger-pointing and legal maneuvering over insurance payouts to fire victims and efforts by their insurers to shift the financial onus onto the utility and its stockholders. It was predictable because similar scenarios had erupted during other fire disasters, such as the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed the Butte County town of Paradise, caused by a faulty Pacific Gas and Electric transmission line. Even before the 2025 Southern California fires erupted, the Camp Fire and other major wildfires