Wildfire Risk & SDG&E's Own Record

State regulators concluded the 2007 Witch, Guejito, and Rice fires were caused by arcing from SDG&E's own power lines during strong Santa Ana winds. Powerline-caused fires that October burned roughly 334 square miles of Southern California. ^{[1] [2]}

SDG&E paid about $2.4 billion to settle claims, then sought to pass roughly $379 million of remaining costs on to ratepayers — the CPUC and the courts refused. The company also agreed to a $14.4 million penalty in 2009. ^[1]

This is not hypothetical for the corridor. One of those three 2007 fires — the Rice Fire — started when a sycamore limb fell onto an SDG&E line that the company's own contractor had flagged for trimming and SDG&E had failed to cut. It burned 9,472 acres, destroyed 248 structures, and forced up to 45,000 people in Fallbrook, De Luz, and Rainbow from their homes — the same rural back-country west of Temecula that this line's approach would cross. ^[3]

That back-country — the De Luz hills and the Santa Margarita River canyon — is mapped by CAL FIRE as a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone, and it keeps burning: a De Luz fire in 2009, a vegetation fire near the Santa Margarita River Trail in 2025, and brush fires off the De Luz hillside that have put Old Town Temecula on evacuation warning. It is steep, chaparral country raked by Santa Ana winds and served by a handful of narrow canyon roads — exactly where a new ignition source, and the power shutoffs used to manage one, raise the stakes of getting people out. ^{[4] [5]}

The corridor sits in a high-wind, fire-prone region the CPUC maps for elevated-to-extreme fire threat. Adding a new high-voltage line and energized conductors here introduces fresh ignition risk in exactly the kind of terrain where catastrophic powerline fires have already happened. The environmental review must analyze the project's ignition risk, its effect on evacuation, and how aerial firefighting works around high-voltage lines. ^[2]

And here is the injustice at the heart of it: this line does not serve Temecula. By the grid operator's own account it was planned to supply San Diego and the Los Angeles basin and to connect remote desert renewables — not Riverside County. ^[6] Yet that fire risk carries a household cost here: insurance. Temecula's rural west side already sits in the Very High fire zones private insurers are fleeing — Riverside County's “last resort” FAIR Plan policies have grown more than 500%, averaging about $3,200 a year for thinner coverage, with a further 36% increase now sought. ^[7] A new ignition source can't by itself set any one homeowner's premium, but it adds hazard to the exact risk profile that decides whether homes in this corridor can be insured at all. So residents would pay more to insure their homes — and, because a 500 kV line's cost is spread across California through a statewide transmission charge, even help pay for the line itself — all for infrastructure that delivers them no benefit. ^[8]