Fire hydrants ran dry in Southern California just when they were needed most

The water system used to battle the Palisades fire in Los Angeles buckled under the demands of what turned out to be the most destructive fire in the city’s history, with some hydrants running dry early Wednesday morning because they were overloaded without assistance from firefighting aircraft .

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power pumped aqueducts and groundwater into the system, but demand was so high it wasn’t enough to fill three 1-million-gallon tanks in the hilly Pacific Palisades that were pressurizing fire hydrants for the neighborhood . Many were left dry when at least a thousand buildings went up in flames.

The dry hydrants sparked a wave of criticism on social media, including from President-elect Donald Trump, over the water management policies of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom.

But state and local officials and experts hit back strongly, saying critics were connecting unrelated issues and spreading false information during a crisis. The state’s water distribution choices were not the cause of the hydrant problems, they said, nor was there a lack of overall supply in the region.

In a post on his Truth Social media network, Trump linked this to criticism of the state’s approach to balancing water distribution to farms and cities with the need to protect endangered species, including the Delta smelt protect. Trump has sided with farmers over environmentalists in a long-running dispute over California’s scarce water resources.

Janisse Quiñones, head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, later said at a news conference that there were 3 million gallons of water available when the Palisades fire started, but the demand was four times more than “we ever had in the system seen. .”

Fire hydrants are designed for fighting fires in one or two homes at a time, not hundreds, Quiñones said, and refilling the tanks also requires asking firefighters to pause firefighting efforts. Mayor Bass said 20% of the hydrants went dry.

“People are literally fleeing. People have lost their lives. Children lost their schools. Families completely torn apart. Churches burned down. And this guy wanted to politicize it,” Newsom said of Trump on CNN. He contrasted the former president’s accusations with President Joe Biden’s support of devastated communities.

Peter Gleick, a senior fellow at the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on global water sustainability, also rejected Trump’s criticism.

“These battles have been going on for a long time and have in no way affected the water supply for firefighting in Southern California,” Gleick said.

About 40 percent of Los Angeles’s city water comes from state-controlled projects connected to Northern California, where the Delta smoked. limits the water it supplies this year. Yet the reservoirs that help feed these canals are located in Southern California above average levels for this time of year.

Rick Caruso, a real estate developer and former commissioner of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power who lost to Bass in the last mayoral race, said officials needed to be held accountable for the system’s failures.

“You’ve destroyed thousands of homes, destroyed families, destroyed businesses,” he said. “I think you can figure out a way to get more water into the hydrants. I don’t think there is room for excuses here.”

Los Angeles isn’t the only city where its public water system is being strained by firefighting demands as human-induced climate change worsens wildfires. say experts.

Large urban fires can also melt or otherwise damage pipes, causing large amounts of water to leak, depressurizing the system, said Andrew Whelton, an engineering professor at Purdue University. Individual homes with water meters that can be turned off remotely could help utilities quickly stem such losses, Whelton said.

In Hawaii, the 2023 fire that ripped through the historic town of Lahaina and killed more than a hundred people burned so quickly in a densely populated area that pipes burstmaking it difficult to maintain sufficient water pressure for firefighting efforts. In the 2021 Marshall Fire in Colorado, the city of Louisville’s water department had workers manual opening of valves to release untreated water from the Colorado River and Boulder Creek into pipes to restore pressure. That helped the fire brigade, but also led to water pollution.

Greg Pierce, a professor of urban environmental policy at the University of California, who had a family member lose a home to one of the fires, pushed back on Caruso’s claim that the loss of water pressure was a clear sign of mismanagement.

Providing enough water could amount to a subsidy for very high-income areas, he said. “I think the conversation should be more about whether these areas are habitable.”

John Fisher, a retired battalion chief with San Diego Fire-Rescue, said California is among the best in the world at ensuring communities share resources and personnel to fight major fires.

“We’ll get it ready. We are positioning resources and manning spare engines,” he said. “Yesterday there were many more fires than firefighters. That will change when the winds die down and additional firefighters arrive and we will gain the upper hand.”

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