February’s Smokehouse Creek Fire that scorched more than a million acres of the Texas panhandle and killed thousands of head of cattle was sparked by a privately-owned electrical wire powering an oil well that fell from a disintegrating telephone, the Texas Tribune reports.
Famously underregulated, Texas does not monitor or inspect power cables that run on private property even if they’re split off from Texas’s failing power grid. In the case of the Smokehouse Creek Fire, the power line that sparked the blaze was owned by Xcel Energy.
The Tribune report details how at least three other fires were started by faulty, privately-owned power lines. In one case, conduits were improperly installed, leading to lines sparking in wind. Another contractor strung three power lines through a small tree, which eventually caught fire and caused the Windy Deuce Fire, which burned 140,000 acres.