The electric utility company Xcel Energy admitted on Thursday that it appeared to have played a role in Texas’s Smokehouse Creek fire, the largest wildfire in modern US history.
“Based on currently available information, Xcel Energy acknowledges that its facilities appear to have been involved in an ignition of the Smokehouse Creek fire,” it said in a statement on Thursday.
Xcel said it has been cooperating with investigations into the wildfires and conducting its own review of the incident.
It also encouraged people who have lost livestock or had property damaged in the fire to submit a claim to the company through its claims process.
But Xcel rejected claims that it was negligent in maintaining and operating its infrastructure, contradicting a lawsuit against it by a homeowner near Canadian, Texas, whose house was destroyed in the fire. In the lawsuit, Melanie McQuiddy claimed the fire was started by one of Xcel’s fallen utility poles.
She is also suing Southwestern Public Service Company, Osmose Utilities Services, and a Georgia contractor responsible for inspecting wood utility poles, alleging the companies “failed to properly inspect, maintain, and replace” the pole in question, which then “splintered, and snapped off at its base”, igniting the fire.
Xcel also faces a lawsuit in Colorado, where a fire in 2021, the Marshall fire, killed two people and destroyed nearly 1,100 homes.
The Smokehouse Creek fire has killed at least two people, burned more than 1.2m acres, and grown into the largest wildfire in modern US history since it started on 26 February in the Texas Panhandle, according to Texas A&M’s Forest Service, which is still investigating the devastating blaze. On Wednesday it said the fire had only been 44% contained.
• Reuters contributed reporting
