A big wildfire and an SDG&E power outage: What happened?

An outage Friday on a San Diego Gas & Electric line that occurred moments before the start of the Norte fire that mobilized hundreds of firefighters and damaged homes in Orange County has raised questions about whether any of the utility’s equipment may have ignited the fire.

Smoke and ash from fires can cause electric outages and there is no currently no basis to conclude that there is a connection between our facilities and the ignition,” Allison Torres of SDG&E said in an email to the Union-Tribune.

Based on what we’re seeing, it’s very consistent with the probability that their equipment was related to the ignition of the fire,” Newport Beach lawyer Richard Bridgford told the Orange County Register . “The stars are aligned with what we’ve seen in prior utility-caused fires.”

The blaze, which was 75% contained by Monday afternoon, is under investigation by the Orange County Fire Authority .

We don’t get any shared information from the fire investigators until the (cause of the) fire is determined, so I have nothing to add or even share with that regard,” said Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Sean Doran.