The stock market quickly digested the awful news and images from LA and promptly wiped 10%, or US$3.1 billion ($4.25 billion), from the value of Edison International, owner of Southern California Edison, the utility serving 15 million customers across a swath of territory including much of Los Angeles County.
It is a measure of California’s range of natural dangers that the state’s Wildfire Fund is administered by the California Earthquake Authority. The cost of making a state prone to drought, flood, fire and tremors not merely viable but desirable, and who pays, have been controversial constants all the way back to Los Angeles’ so-called “water wars” a century ago.
Today, as LA contends with fire, the question of liability is as potent as ever.
