By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews.com
A wildfire that all but destroyed the community of Otis in September 2020 was caused by negligence when PacifiCorp failed to shut down its power lines in the area, according to a lawsuit filed against the utility in Lincoln County Circuit Court.
The suit, filed on behalf of State Farm Fire and Casualty Company, seeks more than $10.5 million in damages. It is the first lawsuit stemming from the Echo Mountain Complex fire.
In addition to PacifiCorp, the action named 50 individual defendants who are “as yet unknown to the plaintiffs,” according to the 15-page filing. The lawsuit will be amended to include their names once the individuals are identified, it said.
The crux of the suit is the allegation that PacifiCorp, doing business as Pacific Power, failed to “de-energize” its power lines prior to a severe windstorm that had already been included in National Weather Service forecasts for Labor Day 2020.
In the late evening of Sept. 7, 2020, high easterly winds blew down poorly maintained power lines, the lawsuit claims, which sparked a month-long conflagration that ultimately burned through 2,500 acres and destroyed 288 homes.
“The devastation was so extensive,” the lawsuit alleges, “that one year later, as of mid-September 2021, debris removal was only around 90 percent complete.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of State Farm by Grotefeld Hoffman, a legal firm with eight offices around the country, including Portland.
PacifiCorp, based in Portland, does not comment on current litigation, said Drew Hanson, a company spokesman.
The Echo Mountain Complex involved two separate fires – the Echo Mountain in Otis and Kimberling near Rose Lodge — which raged near each other, but which never actually converged.
The Oregon Department of Forestry, which was the lead firefighting agency on the fires, has not finished its investigation report that looks into the causes and potential sources of the fire, said spokesman Jim Gerbasch.
Other lawsuits elsewhere
While State Farm’s lawsuit is the first filed in Lincoln County, PacificCorp also faces at least two other lawsuits filed in Multnomah County that include similar allegations of negligence. Those stem from the Beachie Creek Fire, which burned more than 193,000 acres in the Santiam Canyon east of Salem around the same time. It also faces separate lawsuits from property owners impacted by the Archie Creek Fire along the North Umpqua River, as well as the Slater fire in northern California.
Attorneys for those plaintiffs last fall filed for class action status seeking to establish a single lawsuit that some 2,500 property owners affected by four of the Labor Day fires could participate in unless they to choose to opt out, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive.
The Multnomah County lawsuit alleges that PacifiCorp’s equipment was at least partially responsible for fires in Otis, in the Santiam Canyon, near Chiloquin and near Eagle Point.
Plaintiffs in those lawsuits allege that PacifiCorp’s failure to adequately trim trees away from power lines, its inadequate planning for wildfire mitigation, and its failure to proactively shut off its power lines amid extreme fire and wind conditions forecast days in advance was the cause of much of the damage.
PacifiCorp, the parent company of Pacific Power and itself a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, is Oregon’s second largest electric utility and its service territory is spread over much of rural Oregon.
- Dana Tims is an Oregon freelance writer who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. He can be reached at DanaTims24@gmail.com
To read the State Farm lawsuit against PacificCorp go here