Lawyers for Lahaina residents and business owners told a Maui court that cable and phone companies share responsibility for last month’s wildfire disaster because they allegedly overloaded and destabilized some of the poles. This was after a visit to a warehouse last week where Hawaiian Electric Company is housing power poles and electrical equipment.
The lawyers said the cables were attached in a way that put too much tension on the poles, causing them to lean and break in the winds on August 8 when flames burned down much of Lahaina, killing at least 115 people and destroying more than 2,000 structures, according to the Associated Press.
Law firm LippSmith LLP has filed a proposed class action against Hawaiian Electric and Maui County in state court. Attorney Graham LippSmith is now asking the court to add multiple telecommunications companies and public and private landowners to the original suit.
When LippSmith’s team visited the warehouse, together with officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, they said they saw a pole that had snapped at the base and fallen to the ground, damaging the cross arms of a neighboring pole. Because sections of poles had been cut up, they could not tell if one pole or several had snapped. The cables had also been stripped off the poles and Hawaiian Electric only brought its own equipment to the warehouse, they said, according to the Associated Press.
Then the LippSmith attorneys and their fire investigators viewed pre-fire photos of the poles. They said those showed no slack in the cable TV and telephone lines that ran between the poles, mid-height. That over-tensioning and the uneven distribution of weight caused the poles to lean downhill, they claim.
Charter Communications, operating as Spectrum, which provides cable television, internet and home phone service, declined comment.
The proposed amended complaint still holds the power utilities responsible for the wildfires. It accuses them of failing to shut off power preemptively despite especially high winds and dry conditions. It also claims the power utilities failed to replace old wooden poles too weak to withstand 105 mile per hour winds as required by a 2002 national standard, and blocked evacuation routes while crews serviced fallen lines.
The complaint also seeks to hold other parties responsible. It says when old wooden power poles fell, they landed on flammable vegetation that had not been maintained by private and state landowners and both “ignited the fire and fueled its cataclysmic spread.” It says the county should have properly maintained vegetation, aggressively reduced nonnative plants, and sounded sirens to warn people of the approaching fire.
Hawaiian Electric acknowledged last week that its power lines started a fire on the morning of August 8, but faulted county firefighters for declaring the blaze contained and then leaving the scene, only to have a second wildfire break out nearby. The publicly traded utility faces several lawsuits over the fires. The company said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation. So too, said the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources.
Maui County blames the utility for failing to shut off power. John Fiske, an attorney at a California firm that’s representing the county, has said the ultimate responsibility rests with Hawaiian Electric to properly keep up its equipment, and make sure lines are not live when they’ve fallen or could fall, notes the Associated Press.
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
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