A half-dozen senior executives at Southern California Edison and its parent company will lose an estimated $2 million in bonuses as a result of the devastating Eaton fire near Los Angeles last year, the electric utility said on Wednesday.
California officials have not yet formally determined the cause of the fire, which killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 buildings in suburban Altadena, but the utility previously said its equipment had most likely started the inferno.
This will be only the second time that the compensation committee for Edison — California’s second-largest investor-owned power provider — has reduced executive pay because of a wildfire. Some executives lost their entire bonus after the 2018 Woolsey fire in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, the company said.
Edison began informing employees about the decision on Wednesday, when its parent company, Edison International, also announced its financial performance for 2025. The company earned $4.5 billion last year, up from $1.3 billion a year earlier.
About half of the bonus reductions will come from the pay of Pedro J. Pizarro, president and chief executive of Edison International. In an interview, he said he supported the company’s decision to reduce bonuses. He added that Edison had enhanced benefits that it was offering to victims of the fire and had made a $2 million donation from shareholders to the Pasadena Community Foundation to support recovery in Altadena.
“It’s kind of a reflection of what the community’s been through,” Mr. Pizarro said. “It’s just a tragedy.”
Victims have filed hundreds of lawsuits against the power company, and Edison has created a compensation fund to resolve cases more quickly. Some residents and their lawyers have criticized the compensation as insufficient.
Edison said on Wednesday that it would now offer renters enough money to cover current market-rate rent rather than basing the amount on the rent they had paid before the fire.
But Edison has also said it does not bear sole responsibility for the devastation caused by the blaze. The company filed lawsuits in January against local governments and another utility, Southern California Gas, claiming that they had contributed to the destruction.
Ivan Penn is a reporter based in Los Angeles and covers the energy industry. His work has included reporting on clean energy, failures in the electric grid and the economics of utility services.
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