LA Times Studios and Pedro Pizarro, Edison International CEO discuss Altadena Wildfire Recovery

Thanks for having me, Audrey.

It's heartbreaking and it's our community. As Edison, you know, we've been in the Southern California community for 140 years this year. I've been in the Pasadena area for almost four decades now. And so seeing our friends, our neighbors impacted has been really heartbreaking. And so we've been focused on ways to help. The first has been to help rebuild by building a stronger system and including things like an Altadena rebuilding with something like 63 miles of underground power lines. We established that to help people help businesses move forward and do so more quickly. We not only have been in the community, but we will be in this community for the long term. So our team, much of our team lives here, will volunteer here. We'll support the organizations to serve the community. And when I look back at the community, the people here, I get a lot of hope from the real progress that I see the community making and I'm pleased that we can work side by side with them.

Yeah, I'll focus on the wildfire recovery compensation program, Audrey, because again we see that as a way to accelerate the ability of people to rebuild their homes and rebuild their lives. And so we set up a voluntary compensation program. We have unfortunately had the experience of having had fires in the past and the litigation that's associated with that. Most of the cases have been settled and so we designed this program to have settlement values that are similar to what we've seen in past wildfire lawsuits but with a much more streamlined, fast approach. And so the program is offering several forms of compensation for people who are impacted. Compensating for economic losses like property damage and business interruption, physical injury, compensating for non-economic losses like for personal impacts. There's in addition to that a direct claim premium for participating in the program that wouldn't be available under normal litigation. And then individuals and businesses can participate with or without the support of an attorney. For those who choose to use an attorney, there's also compensation to help support attorney's fees. Program has been open for a few months now, will be open through the end of November of 2026. It's easy to fill out the form. Typically is taking folks about two hours to complete a claim. That's been a main way to help provide economic compensation to help people rebuild more quickly.

Yeah, look, from the very beginning it was really important to listen to the community in designing the program and so we continue to partner with community organizations through engagements to do that. But started off by seeking real experts to help provide perspectives on how to do this and you'll be talking later with you mentioned with Ken Feinberg and Camille Biros. The two of them together bring more than 35 years of experience resolving complex disaster cases like the 9/11 fund that they helped to set up and they've also advocated for impacted communities and so bringing them on meant that helped us to make sure that the process was a fair one. We have had a guiding principle of the program having multiple options that can help cover most people. It's not a one-size-fits-all approach. We engaged RAND, many of your listeners will know RAND, respected nonprofit research organization and they did an independent very thorough evaluation of how our program is using a model that was developed by Compass Lexecon another firm to do the valuation of eligible properties look at their value before the fire and after the fire. We had developed a protocol for what the program would look like and in September of last year we made that public and we asked for input and feedback and we got we had more than a dozen community workshops before launching. We got more than a thousand different voices that provided input. We made several dozen changes to the program. So it's another way to reflect the community input and in the end end up with a program that provides support across multiple categories. I talked big picture already but down in the details provides compensation for total and partial losses for single family residences. Total and partial loss for multifamily residences. Coverage for both owners and tenants. Commercial property losses. Smoke and ash. Business interruption and of course the tragedy of physical injuries and fatalities. So the way we structured the program and the way that we continue to monitor it has been rooted in listening to our public.

It's voluntary. You don't make a commitment until you decide whether you like it or not at the very end. It's fair and it's fast. Now, that's the headline. Digging into that a little bit more, traditional lawsuits can take years and that creates uncertainty not only for a company but more importantly creates uncertainty and extends the time period and it creates added cost for people who have been impacted and so for individuals and businesses who need the help now the program can offer a much faster path. We've already seen a number of folks in the community who have decided that this worked for them and just to give you some numbers you and I are talking in April listeners may be listening to us a little later but as of now we've had close to 3,000 claims that have been submitted and many of those claims represent multiple individuals. So that's something like 8,700 individuals who are part of those 3,000 claims as well as some trust and legal entities. We have now extended or SCE has extended nearly 1,300 offers to more than 3,200 claimants. Those offers have totaled more than $425 million to date. Checks have gone out for 266 claims paid to 518 claimants. That's total over 67 million and it's increasing by the day. So you see that a number of folks have checked out the program. Again, it's no cost to check it out. About two hours on average for filling out the application and they've decided that that program worked for them. I will say that maybe one more thought on the role of attorneys in this. Again, participants can engage in the program with or without an attorney. If they choose to have an attorney represent them, we pay an additional premium of or amount of 20% of net damages to help support the attorney's fees. We've had, SCE has had a number of plaintiff attorneys that have engaged directly have brought multiple clients with them and are checking out the program. We even had one recently Ben Crump who's I think a well-known respected attorney. He's particularly known for his engagement with the black community nationally. I think he represented the estates of George Floyd, Trayvon Martin. And he represented some clients of his who decided that the program made sense for them and they spoke out publicly about it. It is sad however that we've also seen examples where or aware of plaintiffs attorneys discouraging their clients from participating or checking out the program. Our team even heard directly from someone who chose to participate in the program who showed us the letter that their prior attorney sent them essentially dismissing them. They're declining to continue to represent them just because this individual had decided to participate. And so, we encourage people to check it out. There's no cost to it. There's no obligation and it may work for you.