Xcel Energy says its power equipment may have caused Texas fire

A U.S. utility’s acknowledgment that it caused the Smokehouse Creek Fire — the largest in Texas’s history — marks the latest instance of a power company being caught unprepared in guarding against ever-more devastating blazes, say energy and fire experts.

The Camp Fire, which destroyed Paradise, Calif.; the Marshall Fire in Colorado; last year’s deadly fires in Maui — all were ignited by downed power lines or equipment unable to withstand extreme winds and weather.

“We keep seeing the same pattern with these utilities,” said Gerald Singleton, an attorney for victims of the Marshall Fire who has also represented plaintiffs in other fires. “It’s become universal because the issues they face are universal.”

On Thursday, Xcel Energy — a major utility with operations in Texas and other states — acknowledged its power lines and equipment “appear to have been involved in an ignition of the Smokehouse Creek fire,” which has since grown to more than 1 million acres. State investigators were more definitive. The fire was ignited by power lines, said Linda Moon, assistant director of the Texas A&M Forest Service.

Xcel — the parent company of Southwestern Public Service Co., which serves about 403,400 customers in the Panhandle and other parts of Texas and New Mexico — said it was cooperating with fire investigators but disputed allegations that it was negligent in maintaining its power equipment, as a recent lawsuit against the utility has claimed.

Data obtained exclusively by The Washington Post showed that the grid was under extreme stress for about six hours before the fire started Feb 26., as winds topped 50 mph.

Whisker Labs, which uses an advanced sensor network to monitor U.S. electricity grids, recorded about 50 “faults” in the system, which often mean a power line may have come in contact with vegetation or another line or been knocked down, releasing power, usually in the form of sparks.

Bob Marshall, founder and chief executive of Whisker Labs, said the evidence suggests the company’s equipment was not durable enough to withstand the kind of extreme weather the nation and world increasingly face.

“We know from many recent wildfires that the consequences of poor grid resilience can be catastrophic,” said Marshall, who noted that his company’s sensor network recorded similar power malfunctions in Maui last year before the deadly blaze that ripped across the town of Lahaina.

To date, the Smokehouse Creek Fire, one of the largest in U.S. history, has destroyed hundreds of homes and killed two people, as well as about 3,600 farm animals. As of late Wednesday, the fire was concentrated in eastern Hutchinson County and was 44 percent contained.

In addition, fire investigators said Thursday that utility equipment was responsible for a separate blaze, the Windy Deuce Fire, which has burned more than 140,000 acres. Xcel has contended its equipment did not start that blaze. Whisker Labs sensors detected four faults in the area before the fire sparked.

Over the years, there have been warnings that Texas, which consumes more energy than any other U.S. state, is especially vulnerable to fires. It ranks third behind California and Colorado as having the most homes at risk of burning, according to a 2023 report from CoreLogic. About a decade ago, after a spate of blazes swept the state in 2011, the Texas A&M Forest Service found that power lines had caused more than 4,000 wildfires in three years.

“Often, power-line-caused fires occur in rural areas and therefore go unnoticed, spreading in high wind conditions until they are uncontrollable, causing significant damage,” B. Don Russell, the report’s author, warned federal lawmakers in 2019 testimony.

Despite such warnings, Xcel and its subsidiary have yet to publicly adopt a wildfire-prevention plan that is approved for use in Texas. Like the utility in Maui, it does not have a regulator-approved plan for shutting down power lines ahead of high winds or extreme weather, despite the legal-exposure risks that have plagued other utilities without such plans.

In 2021, Xcel Energy was found responsible for the Marshall Fire, which killed two people and destroyed 1,084 homes in the Denver suburbs. The company has denied responsibility but faces nearly 300 lawsuits that could severely affect its financial stability, according to its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

One lawsuit has already been filed against Xcel over the Texas blaze, and others are in the works.

Melanie McQuiddy, whose home near the town of Canadian was lost in the fire, filed the suit Friday against the Southwestern Public Service Co. and Osmose Utilities Services, a Georgia-based contractor that inspects wood utility poles. The suit claims the two companies “failed to properly inspect, maintain, and replace” a pole near Stinnett, Tex., that fell and sparked a fire that quickly grew into a conflagration.

According to McQuiddy’s lawsuit, the fire started Feb. 26 when a pole with live power lines cracked and snapped off its base. The suit accuses the companies of failing “to properly inspect, maintain, and replace” the pole.

Xcel has declined to comment on the litigation. Osmose, however, has rejected claims of inadequate pole inspections.

“Osmose takes these allegations extremely seriously,” CEO Mike Adams said in a statement. “We immediately launched an in-depth investigation, and we are committed to fully cooperating with any other local investigations into the cause of the fire. We stand by the quality and accuracy of our utility pole inspections.”

On Wednesday near Stinnett, Salem Abraham watched as Xcel officials and workers inspected and removed the downed power line that McQuiddy alleges was the cause of the fire. Abraham, a wealthy rancher and self-described jack of all trades whose family has been raising livestock in the area since around 1900, said that they have always had “big winds out here” but that they have been seeing more and more fires.

He said he has dealt with five fires caused by power lines and sued Xcel in 1996 over poor maintenance of a line that sparked a blaze.

“Our great-grandparents put these poles in the ground in the ’40s and ’50s,” he said. “Heck, some of these poles I’ve seen since I was 10 years old. You remember the marking and such.”

Abraham provided The Post with photos of one pole, the one that fell, which had a red label signifying that it was unsafe due to rot and deterioration and that workers should not climb it, according to the maker of the label and fire experts.

Compared with heat and cold events, wildfires have not been on the radars of the Texas Public Utility Commission or the utility, said Joseph Mitchell, a California-based expert who tracks utilities and fire threats. There is no plan to shut off power to areas during red-flag events, he said, as there are in California and Oregon.

Doug Lewin, an energy expert in Texas, said the state needs to start that conversation, although he acknowledges it won’t be easy.

“Shutting down transmission lines and having people without power just isn’t something that policymakers, utilities have wanted to talk about,” he said.

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Xcel Energy says its power equipment may have caused Texas fire