Who pays when power outages damage equipment? Some Long Beach businesses are stuck with costs

Some Long Beach small businesses are blaming SoCal Edison after a power outage and subsequent surge fried their pricey equipment, begging the question of who is responsible for it all.

A dental office and veterinary clinic both lost equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars following an October 2023 power surge.

On your Side's Kristine Lazar takes a look at what recourse utility customers have, if any, when an outage leads to property loss.

Doctor Camille Adli said she had to replace an $11,000 dental pump damaged from the surge, and she said the air conditioning broke, and her electric dental chairs stopped working too.

"The air conditioning is $14,000 and the dental chairs run $20,000-$40,000 thousand each," Adli said.

Consumer advocates say utilities reject claims of damage caused by outages more than they accept them.

Another small business owner neighboring the dental office is also dealing with the pain. Veterinarian Steve Manyak says the outage damaged his equipment at the animal hospital as well.

"A number of our equipment basically blew out....our ultrasound machine, that was a goner," Manyak said. 

He filed a claim with SCE about a week after the damage, but the utility company denied it because their facilities were vandalized 

The denial letter went on to state, "You can appreciate that an electrical utility company cannot accept responsibility for damage caused by elements over which it has no control."

This response left Dr. Maynak asking who is responsible. "We pay for their service and that service goes out and then their service causes the damage," Maynak said. 

Mark Toney with The Utility Reform Network or TURN, a consumer advocacy group, says its problematic that utilities get to decide if they are liable for damage.

"The challenge is, they get to decide whether they're at fault or whether you're at fault, or whether a third party or the weather, or things out of their control," Toney said. 

"So what that means is, they decide whether they're at fault. I will tell you most of the time they do not find themselves at fault, not surprisingly."

Toney explained small claims court is an option, with the limit for individuals at $12,500 and for businesses, it's half of that at $6,250. "It's almost not worth the effort," Toney said.

SCE said there were several claims that were denied for that October 2023 Long Beach outage.

In a statement, SCE said it is not responsible for food loss or damages caused by forced "outside their control," such as any type of weather, from wind and rain to extreme heat, earthquakes, or actions caused by a third party.