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Tree branches hitting SoCal Edison equipment may have sparked Bobcat Fire, utility says

Firefighters work the Bobcat Fire in the Angeles National Forest on Sept. 23, 2020, in Los Angeles. (FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

Tree branches may have come in contact with Southern California Edison equipment and sparked the Bobcat fire in the Angeles National Forest, according to a letter the utility sent to regulators on Monday.

As part of the U.S. Forest Service’s probe into the fire, investigators took a 23-foot-long line of conductor belonging to the utility, an “H-Frame structure” with two power poles and three tree branches, Edison wrote in its letter to the Public Utilities Commission.

Monday’s letter was a supplement to the utility’s Sept. 15 filing with the CPUC, where the company notified regulators that there was an “incident” on their grid in the same general area and around the same time as the beginning of the Bobcat fire.

The fire has scorched more than 115,000 acres between the San Gabriel and Antelope valleys and destroyed more than 80 homes since it began Sept. 6 near Cogswell Dam in the Angeles National Forest.

Read the full story on LATimes.com.