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A company that monitors electrical activity is talking about malfunctions Los Angeles power outages have skyrocketed in the same areas where three of this week’s major wildfires are currently raging.
Bob Marshall, chief executive of Whisker Labs, told Fox News Digital that the company saw a spike in malfunctions in the hours leading up to the Eaton, Palisades and Hearst fires.
Marshall said his company has a network in Los Angeles of about 14,000 sensors, known as “ting” sensors, that can pinpoint and identify faults caused by arcing. With its network of sensors in homes, Whisker Labs can monitor the electrical grid with “extreme accuracy and precision.”
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Power lines hang from broken power poles in the middle of a street caused by a fire in the Palisades on January 8, 2025. in the Pacific Palisades community of Los Angeles, California. A company that monitors electrical activity says accidents along Los Angeles’ power grid have soared in the same areas where three of this week’s major wildfires are burning. (Jay L. Clendenin/Getty Images)
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“Faults are caused by tree branches touching wires or wires blowing in the wind and touching. It creates a spark in the fault and we detect all of that,” Marshall explained.
Other causes include the ignition of faulty electrical equipment, a sudden surge in demand, or an earthquake. Strong Santa Ana winds were blowing in Los Angeles at the time the fires broke out.
The company’s data, which was provided to Fox News Digital, is staggering.
In the Palisades area, the largest of the fires currently raging, there were 63 accidents in the two to three hours before the fire started, Marshall said. As of early Tuesday, 18 errors had been reported.
So far, the flames have burned 12,300 houses and buildings across the region. Throughout the district The number of dead has increased to 11 people, and the authorities expect this number to grow.
“In the case of the Eaton fire near Altadena, there were 317 malfunctions in the hours leading up to the fire,” Marshall said. “And then the Hurst Fire had about 230 errors that we measured in the sensor network.”
He said that on a typical day there are very few mistakes.
Bob Marshall, CEO and co-founder of Whisker labs, holds the “Ting” sensor. (Fox News Digital)
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Sparks from faults can fall to the ground and ignite vegetation, essentially setting a match on the landscape. A strong wind then carries the flames at great speed.
Investigators have not yet determined what caused it forest fires are raging that destroyed large areas of Los Angeles, but a spike in power grid faults can provide vital clues.
“The important thing is that we cannot say whether one of these errors caused the fire. We don’t know that,” Marshall said. “What we know from our data is that there is an increase in outages on the grid in the area where these fires started.”
He said the data showed the power was not immediately shut off when the outages occurred.
“But again, we can’t say definitively whether one of these faults caused the fire. I want to be very, very clear about that,” he added.
Marshall said Whisker Labs has discussed using its data with utility companies, but currently the data is not shared.
Right now, ting sensors notify homeowners of power surges so they can take preventative measures to prevent house fires. Marshall said the company has a network of about one million ting sensors across the United States
“A power surge can damage appliances and devices. In the worst case scenario, it can cause a house fire,” Marshall said.
He said “smart and super-sophisticated” technology could prevent 80% of potential house fires.
A house is engulfed in flames during the Eaton fire in the Altadena neighborhood of Los Angeles County, California, on January 8, 2025. (JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)
If the sensor detects a fault, the home sensor is notified via the app, after which they can arrange to call an electrician and make the necessary repairs.
“We make 30 million electrical measurements every second AI (artificial intelligence) in the sensor, (and) we transmit the data to the cloud, which is specifically designed to detect electrical faults in homes, he continued. – And then the sensor network detects faults in the network, because if there is a fault in the network, it is simultaneously measured by many sensors ting in the community. So if there’s a fault in your home, that fault doesn’t spread to the whole community, we only detect it on one sensor in your home.”
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Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Department of Water Resources did not shut off power in advance to reduce the risk of fire ahead of this week’s devastating wildfires. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday with reference to regulatory documents.
The preventive measures are in place at every other major California power company after the utility sparked wildfires in the past, the Journal reported.
An LADWP spokesperson told the Journal they have other precautions in place, such as disabling technology that automatically restores power after a blackout. She added that widespread preventive power outages could also harm emergency services.
Bree Stimson of Fox News contributed to this report.
