At an emotional news conference Thursday at the Iron Horse Trailhead, under an edifice of countless power lines from Southern California Edison’s Saugus Substation, Justin Kropp’s family thanked everyone for their help with Assembly Bill 365, which took effect Jan. 1.
And then Barry Kropp let everyone know he still had work to do.
Now his goal is to try to compel a national standard, he said, thanking Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth, for carrying the state measure, and former Senate candidate Kipp Mueller for writing its text.
The Justin Kropp Safety Act requires each utility, independent contractor or subcontractor of the utility to have an Automated External Defibrillator, or AED, available at every worksite where electrical utility workers are working on transmission or distribution lines of 601 volts or more.
“It’s a big deal,” Barry Kropp said. “For those who don’t understand the industry, when you start things someplace in a state as big as California, it’s likely that maybe, over time, it could become a nationally recognized standard. And that’s where we want to try to go with this down the road.”
Kropp worked for decades on the Salt River Project, a utility in Arizona, but became involved in advocacy after a tragedy involving his son, Justin, who was working with the local union chapter for electrical workers at a Mojave Desert job site when he was fatally injured.
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers representatives from the Santa Clarita Valley also showed up to share their gratitude Thursday.
Joseph Brent, Barry Kropp’s attorney and Mueller’s law partner, credited his client’s resolve, demeanor and determination throughout the yearslong process.
“He could have been really angry,” Brent said, “and he was not.” Brent said he was extremely involved “every step of the way” despite “extremely tragic” circumstances.
Justin Barry Kropp was working on power lines more than 75 feet above the ground Jan. 19, 2018, when a mistake occurred, Brent said, adding an unlicensed crane operator shifted the “bucket” Kropp was in and he was thrown forward. He made contact with a power line and completed the circuit.
That wasn’t the end of the tragedy, said Brent, who later settled a lawsuit with SCE with confidential settlement terms.
The lines Kropp struck had been powered down, but they still had what’s known as induced voltage, Brent said. That’s an electric potential generated in a conductor due to a changing magnetic field or a changing current in a nearby circuit, according to the University of California, Davis physics library online.
When Kropp hit the line, the charge was enough to knock his heart into arrhythmia, Brent said, but not kill him. However, the nearest emergency response was approximately 13 minutes away. Had an AED been available on site, Kropp’s life would have been saved.
Mueller said he had hoped to carry the legislation as a state senator, but after his election defeat in November 2024, he brought the measure to Schiavo and asked for her help, in what was a “universally supported” bill.
State Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares, R-Acton, voted in favor of the bill on a floor vote, which had no opposition recorded.
Schiavo, who teared up when she presented Barry Kropp with a framed copy of the legislation and the pen used to sign it into law, shared a connection to the Kropp tragedy she felt from her childhood.
“As the daughter of an electrician, hearing stories around the dinner table, it’s not if, but when you could get electrocuted,” she said. “This is such important equipment to make sure that we have all these kinds of work sites, where it’s even more dangerous to do that work. And now we have a law that will make sure that not only are they available, but that the employees, that the contractors, that the subcontractors, are all trained to make sure that they know how to operate it.”
