PG&E’s equipment malfunctioned near Lafayette fires, utility says

PG&E’s equipment malfunctioned near where two separate fires began in Lafayette on Sunday, the utility told state regulators.

According to incident reports that the utility sent to the California Public Utilities Commission, two fires that burned through opposite sides of Highway 24 Sunday afternoon may be linked to PG&E equipment problems.

Two fires sparked around the same time that the equipment malfunctioned, according to the reports.

Around 2 p.m. on Sunday, callers told authorities that a brush fire on a hillside near Pleasant Hill Road was moving toward the highway in Lafayette. The flames quickly spread across part of Highway 24, prompting evacuation orders for residents in the area of Camino Diablo and Springbrook Road.

At about 5:20 p.m., PG&E workers found a fallen pole and transformer at Camino Diablo Road, PG&E told CPUC.

“Contra Costa Fire Department personnel on site communicated to the (PG&E) Troubleman that they were looking at the transformer as a potential ignition source,” the report said.

ConFire spokesman Capt. George Laing said Monday that the Tennis Club building on Camino Diablo was extensively damaged, with two outbuildings destroyed and a home suffering minor roof damage.

Callers reported fallen power lines in the area, and Laing himself saw a power line that blocked part of Camino Diablo Road and obstructed access by the fire engine, although he said he was not sure when that pole fell.

The pole was still down and blocking the roadway on Monday afternoon.

The utility also responded to another reported incident at Pleasant Hill and Condit Roads in Lafayette late Sunday afternoon, where they found a “lashing wire of a communication cable near PG&E open wire secondary conductor was broken,” the report notes.

No wires were reported down at that location, PG&E said, but ConFire told the worker it was investigating the problem as a possible ignition point for a brush fire south of Highway 24 that was reported shortly after the Mount Diablo fire.

Neither of the two fires were in the top three tiers of a “High Hazard Zone High Fire Threat District,” PG&E’s report said.

Although the flames on both sides of Highway 24 constituted two separate blazes, ConFire treated the incident as one fire because of resource limitations and their twin locations, Laing said.

Crews contained several acres worth of flames by late Sunday afternoon, ConFire said. The agency plans to investigate the cause of 16 vegetation fires that broke out Sunday, including the two Lafayette fires.

The reports come on the heels of last week’s revelation that PG&E’s equipment malfunctioned near the ignition point for the Kincade Fire in Sonoma County, which has since rippled through more than 66,000 acres and forced evacuations of around 185,000 people. The cause of Kincade Fire remains under investigation.

PG&E’s equipment was found responsible for the Camp Fire, which killed 86 people in the town of Paradise last fall.

Evacuations for both north and south of Highway 24 in Lafayette were lifted on Sunday night.

Staff photographer Jose Carlos Fajardo contributed reporting.