Edison International (EIX) — the parent company of the utility Southern California Edison (SCE) — saw its stock drop more than 12% Monday following an announcement from SCE late last week that it's being investigated by California fire authorities for its potential link to the Los Angeles wildfires.

SCE said in a statement Friday that the authorities are investigating whether its equipment "was involved in the ignition" of one of the wildfires in Los Angeles. The utility said one of its powerlines fell Jan. 7 but that it "does not know whether the damage observed occurred before or after the start of the fire."

The Hurst fire had blazed through 800 acres of land in Southern California as of midday Monday, while the various wildfires overall had burned 40,000 acres.

Edison International stock's decline Monday puts shares down roughly 27% over the past five days. The stock had suffered as customers faced safety-related power shutoffs from the company. Roughly 30,000 of its 5 million customers were without power Monday, far below the number affected by outages last week.

If SCE is found liable for sparking the fire, its liability would be capped at $4 billion, JPMorgan insurance analysts wrote in a note Thursday.

As of Monday morning, the death toll from the fires in Los Angeles County climbed to at least 24 people, and at least 16 were reported missing. The fires had destroyed more than 12,300 structures, NBC reported. Meanwhile, the economic loss from the California blazes has soared to a range between $250 billion and $275 billion, AccuWeather said Monday.

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“Should a large number of additional structures be burned in the coming days, it may become the worst wildfire in modern California history based on the number of structures burned and economic loss,” AccuWeather chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter said. AccuWeather notes that the cost is far higher than the $13 billion to $16 billion in damage that resulted from the 2023 wildfires in Maui, Hawaii.

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As Edison stock dropped, so too did PG&E (PCG), the utility that serves northern California. PG&E has faced over $30 billion in legal claims for its role in past California wildfires, prompting the utility to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2019 — dubbed by Harvard researchers as "the first climate change bankruptcy."

Meanwhile, the stocks of some of the top commercial property and private market homeowner insurers in the state began to tick up after posting steep losses Friday. Allstate (ALL) and Chubb (CB) rose about 1% after declining 5.6% and 3.4% on Friday, respectively. AIG (AIG) and the Travelers Companie (TRV)s traded roughly flat, while Mercury General Corp (MCY). sank a little more than 2%.

JPMorgan wrote in a note last Thursday that insured losses from the fires so far total $20 billion.

Laura Bratton is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Bluesky @laurabratton.bsky.social. Email her at laura.bratton@yahooinc.com.

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