California: about those fire hydrants and that reservoir
From an interview with LA Fire Chief Kristin Crowley [my emphasis]:
“So if there’s no water, I don’t know how the water gets to the hydrants. Please defer that to DWP or whomever controls that part,” she added. “But I can tell you the resiliency of our firefighters. If there’s no water, they’re going to go find water. They’re going to figure out a way to do the best they can with what they’ve got in a very dynamic situation.”
What is this person doing being head of the LA Fire Department? I know, I know; DEI hire. But I think there’s more to it than that, and it says something about government bureaucracy in general – something that was already being satirized back in 1878, which is the opening date of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operetta “H.M.S. Pinafore.” It may seem that by putting this video up I’m injecting too much levity into this post. But listen to the words; they describe a situation all too frequent, of a person promoted to a high position for various reasons that have little to nothing to do with deep knowledge of the field:
So, should Kristin Crowley know “how the water gets to the hydrants”? I submit that she should. And if her formal training doesn’t include such information, it should. And she – or anyone else in her position – should be curious enough to have found out how it works even if she wasn’t taught it, and even if “the DWP or whomever” controls “that part.”
Part of learning a business is learning all aspects of it. The thing is that, although Kristin Crowley’s resume screams “DEI hire” (first woman; first lesbian), on paper her experience as a firefighter has been broad:
As a 22-year veteran of the LAFD, Chief Crowley has proven her credibility and character by promoting through the ranks. She served as a Firefighter, Paramedic, Engineer, Fire Inspector, Captain I, Captain II, Battalion Chief, Assistant Chief, Deputy Chief, Chief Deputy, and Fire Chief.
She has gained valuable experience in both field assignments on emergency apparatus and administrative duty in multiple areas within the Department. Before her appointment, she served as a Chief Officer for nine years as the Commander of Battalion 13 (South Los Angeles), Battalion 6 (San Pedro), the Professional Standards Division, Fire Prevention and Public Safety Bureau, and Administrative Operations.
So I suspect what’s going on here isn’t merely about Crowley herself or even DEI – I mean, look at the striking incompetence of the LA mayor and Governor Newsom. The latter is no DEI hire. DEI is almost certainly part of it, however, but I think the rot is much deeper.
And then there’s the empty reservoir, and Janisse Quiñones – who seems to be another DEI hire. Get a load of this:
The Daily Mail reports the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) CEO Janisse Quiñones was hired by Mayor Karen Bass on a $750,000 salary in May.
Now, LA Fire Department insiders are blaming Quiñones for a nearby reservoir disconnection and broken fire hydrants, the outlet reports, claiming this has led to firefighters running out of water.
The Mail reports that Quiñones’ past employer was linked to fire scandals. Quiñones previously held a top executive role at electric company PG&E. The company previously went bankrupt over liability for several California wildfires, the outlet reports. …
Quiñones reportedly oversaw the emptying of the Santa Ynez Reservoir in the Pacific Palisades area during bushfire season, sources told the outlet.
I have previously written about PG&E’s role in California fires and the tendency to blame them for everything, which I think is the easy and inappropriate way out. There’s plenty of room for blame on many fronts, and I have come to think that the largest element is California’s government bureaucracy and offices and their mismanagement of the situation. So many people have fallen short on prevention and preparedness in so very many ways.
ADDENDUM: There’s so much more about these fires that’s worth reading, but I’ll focus on Californian Victor Davis Hanson’s take:
… [I]t’s a systems breakdown, a civilizational collapse. When you look at the people in charge, [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom flew in, to sort of do these performance-art stunts, but he has systematically ensured that water out of the Sacramento River and the watershed of Northern California would go out to the sea, rather than into the aqueduct, so Los Angeles didn’t have sufficient amounts of water.
He bragged not very long ago that he blew up four dams on the Klamath River. They provided 80,000 homes with clean hydroelectric power. They offered recreation, flood control, irrigation. He blew them up.
California’s fire management, whether we look at the Paradise Fire or the Aspen Fire near where I’m speaking, it destroyed 60 million trees. We have no timber industry in California. [Newsom’s] dismantled it. …
So, it was a total systems collapse from the idea of not spending money on irrigation, storage, water, fire prevention, force management, a viable insurance industry, a DEI hierarchy. You put it all together and it’s something like a DEI-Green New Deal hydrogen bomb.
And to finish, what we’re seeing in California is a state with 40 million people. And yet the people who run it feel that it should return to a 19th-century pastoral condition. They are decivilizing the state, and deindustrializing the state, and defarming the state, but they’re not telling the 40 million people that their lifestyles will have to revert back to the 19th century when you had no protection from fire, you didn’t have enough water in California, you didn’t have enough power, you didn’t pump oil.
So, we are deliberately making these decisions not to develop energy, not to develop a timber industry, not to protect the insurance industry, not to protect houses and property.
And we’re doing it in almost a purely nihilistic fashion.
According to Thomas Sowell:
I think you’re right, Neo, and so is Victor Davis Hanson.
Yes the Fire Chief should have a working knowledge about the water system they rely on to fight fires, but maintaining the system is the responsibility of the Water Department of the city.
We lived in county area on it’s own water system and the volunteer fire department would run pressure tests on the fire hydrants in the area. Now living inside the city limits and the cities water department does the same testing by area.
It’s hard to imagine that anyone would have a mindset to purposefully allow a disaster of this magnitude to occur for some future vision of society– but we continue to see evidence that the Marxist’s “never let a disaster go to waste” should make us suspicious. Incompetence is as good a cover as any to hide the evil intent of the worst of these monsters.
I am also chasing another idea which I have not seen in the news as yet. My nephew in Thousand Oaks, in the hills in Ventura County, was without power for two days while the Santa Ana winds raged. His power supplier, So. Cal. Edison, cut it off as a fire prevention measure. As far as I know power was still on in LA County, even in the mountain areas which burned. Suppliers there are PG&E (which went bankrupt following the Paradise fire) and — the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the same agency which allowed a huge reservoir above the Palisades to be empty in the fire alert season.
But how many of those jobs/promotions did this future fire chief get for simply being a woman/lesbian?
Was she even qualified for all of those jobs?
If you’re going to talk about the drawbacks of DEI you might want to mention the very recent municipal water crisis in Richmond, Virginia. They have a DEI head of utilities and have had several days of widespread lack of water distribution, followed by a “boil advisory” as service sputters back on. I believe the current utilities chief is the first non-engineer to hold the position. I’m a little hazy on the details as there is very limited news coverage of the event.
In fairness to the Top Fire Lesbian I think her comment about the water and fire hydrants was a sarcastic question she was asking. The very first part of that statement before the highlighted part would seem to support this. And by then mentioning the Water Department she was passing the blame to them.
She (or her staff) should have foreseen this type of situation but I’m not sure what the fire chief (even a Top Fire Lesbian) could do about this though in such a dysfunctional, incompetent governmental structure.
I believe it was Rahm Emanuel who used the phrase “never let a disaster go to waste”.
He is the ex-mayor of Chicago, now the US ambassador to Japan. His brother, Ezekiel, is a medical oncologist at (where else?) Harvard.
Yes, they are Marxists, aka Democrats.
Note too that Sir Joseph tested well, and went into the law. The guns don’t point all in one direction.
dr death panel, as one recalls, from the days of the debate over the so called stimulus, more like steroids, the ARRA
but turtles all the way down, daley led to emmanuel, led to lightfoot and now tyler perry’s other brother, brandon jackson,
When the Democrats and DEI comisars are done with California would even Mexico want it back?
Thanks be that KamiHaukTuah only polished knobs and not handles as she rose, wot?
Griffin:
She could have resigned to bring attention to the problem when the reservoirs were emptied by the DEI Engineer In Name Only, not an Engineer In Training (EIT) or Professional Engineer (PE)?
Nope, that would have taken balls (cajones), AKA, courage.
VDH has been writing about the California water situation for many years. He’s been directly affected as a San Joaquin Valley farmer.
In the 1970s the plan was to build at least ten more dams.
But many anti-dam forces went to work, and nothing has been built since the early 1970s. The rreason:
“Now, however, the traditional split is as evident as ever. The environmentalists, the biology professors, the Friends of the River, the Aqua Alliance and others are pushing hard against new dams and new water to raise profitable crops like almonds. They say existing dams have already caused drastic declines in the fish population, especially salmon that go up California’s rivers to spawn. The farmers and the Southern California cities are pushing hard for more water storage, saying that in good, wet years the reservoirs can fill up and provide water in dry years.”
Much more here:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/dams-california-water-wars
All during the time no new water storage was built (1970s to recently), the population of California increased. The anti-dam forces were able to stop any new dams.
However, as I commented before, the wildfire problem in California has many authors. The lack of water storage is just one piece of the puzzle.
om,
But you can’t be a Top Fire Lesbian if you resign!
In an odd coincidence the LAFD lesbian triumvirate is named Kristin, Kristine, and Kristina.
If the fires really are the result of climate change, or as I like to call it, Gorebull Warning, why wouldn’t they take measures to mitigate the damaging effects? Or do they really think that solar panels, windmills, and EV’s are going to provide protection against firestorms?
Well, to the Top Lesbian’s credit, it appears that the Palisade reservoir wasn’t emptied on her watch. Google Maps appears to show it empty since June 2009.
Boobah:
No. Some people were interpreting a cover as being empty. It’s the cover that Google Maps showed.
Biobah:
Maybe, but really unless you have images for every year since 2009 all it shows is one time in 2009 when it was empty.
I give those folks no slack. None.
The reservoir, like all infrastructure, has to be maintained. When you take essential systems off line for maintenance there are risks.
Doh, I’m just a geologist who works with engineers. There are specialists called Fire Protection Engineers BTW.
Imagine a Former Top Lesbian Fire Chief with cajones, talk about cred.
I use google earth pro extensively for historical research. My quick look is prior to 2009 there was no cover. It was emptied and covered. It was full (ish) in 2021 and emptied by early 2022 and filled again by 1/2024 the latest google earth data.
So, should Kristin Crowley know “how the water gets to the hydrants?”
If after her 22 years of climbing the ranks of the fire department she’s still ignorant of municipal pipe networks and their relationship with fire hydrants, I have to conclude that she was placed on a preferred diversity-hire path to the top, no actual work necessary.
After many years of municipal engineering, in which a standard procedure of annual testing of hydrants was always carried out carefully by the fire departments, I’m super-skeptical of that super-glide to high pay and positions. Anyone who operates a hydrant must learn that an over-hasty closing of the hydrant valve can cause havoc back in the water mains, cracking or breaking them via water hammer. Either she’s lying, or was simply excused from the duties of a working fire-‘person’ in order to hastily pack the upper ranks with diversititsas.
One of the things that my daughter has brought up about the Eaton fire (and possibly others in LA as well) is that how many house with solar panels mounted on the roof were burned to cinders. She reported that local residents were warned about the danger of ash from the fire, or even wet ashes, landing on bare skin – and told to wash it off immediately, as it was a health hazard. No mention of WHY it was a health hazard, and she immediately thought of solar panels. I mentioned this at a regular zoom call of the Chicagoboyz contributors, and two of the guys immediately suggested arsenic and selenium as components of solar panels. So, leaching into the ground from burned houses … and would this create an expanse of toxic waste, in the burned residential areas? We wondered if our Fearless News Professionals will ever bring up that question…
Excellent point about toxic waste from burned solar panels, Sgt. Mom. One of the problems with the panels is that they cannot be easily recycled, or perhaps recycled at all. For now, panels which are removed are chopped up and buried.
Perhaps all these fire zones are now toxic waste dumps.
In an odd coincidence the LAFD lesbian triumvirate is named Kristin, Kristine, and Kristina.
–Marisa
And here’s LAFD Assistant Chief Kristine Larson, who made one of the most anti-male and politically insane videos I’ve ever seen.
‘________________________________________
LAFD Asst Chief: If I Have To Carry A Man Out Of A Fire, ‘He Got Himself In The Wrong Place’
“You want to see somebody that responds to your house, your emergency — whether it’s a medical call or a fire call — that looks like you.”
https://www.dailywire.com/news/lafd-asst-chief-if-i-have-to-carry-a-man-out-of-a-fire-he-got-himself-in-the-wrong-place
________________________________________
This man wants too see someone who can carry my ass out of a fire and save my life. It can be a flying purple people eater, for all I care, as long as it doesn’t eat me later.
I can’t believe Larson would say this for public consumption AND no one around her wouldn’t kill the video as political suicide.
I’d say LAFD Assistant Chief Kristine Larson got herself into the wrong place. I suspect she’s not staying there much longer.
BTW she makes $399K/year.
First you get down on your knees,
Fiddle with your keffiyehs,
Bow your head with great respect,
And check the box, check the box!
Doin’ the DEI rag.
_________________________
Apologies to Tom Lehrer.
I saw that, huxley. Speaking as a woman about the average height of men in this country, I want to see a firefighter strong enough to carry me out. I don’t care what that firefighter looks like, although I think the arrival of a strong man would make my rescue more likely.
Kristine Larson looks hefty but I have no idea how tall or strong she is.
Kate:
The toxic nature of combustion byproducts, ash, could include arsenic, lead, and other metals, organic semi-volatile compounds, maybe even Dioxins depending on what burned. Fluorescent light ballasts can contain PCBs which sometimes go to Dioxins when burned. There is also the possibility of asbestos from vinyl asbestos floor coverings and asbestos containing building materials. Back it the day there were asbestos sidewall shingles, who knows, and of course vermiculite loose fill insulation which may contain asbestos (especially if from the Libby, MT mine).
How to deal with it? Remove the upper most layer of soil when damp and bury it. Southern California may need some more landfill space for valuable real estate to be used again.
Burning houses are not like wood fires. There’s all kinds of nasty stuff liberated even if we stick to books, clothes, electronics, carpet, roofing materials, drywall, furniture, anything made out of plastic, various glues and fillers used in all of these things… That kind of stuff is already going to cause serious harm if much of it is inhaled, and the solar panels and fluorescent lighting are not going to make things materially worse.
The home I grew up in burned down a few years ago, and the kind of ash and soot left behind was just so obviously different from what you get from a wood fire.
Chimney sweeps had a much higher incidence of cancer than the general population due to their exposure to combustion byproducts from coal IIRC. Fire fighters (men, women, and other) both wildland and building fires have a higher cancer incidence,
From Brave browser:
Following up the toxic contamination discussion, it seems to me the clean up is massive and must begin as soon as possible to prevent more contamination.
Niketas bases his statement on what exactly? One data point and any chemical analysis? Toxicology, Industrial Hygiene? Or just smoke.
IIRC there was an event on 9/11/2001 that produced a lot of smoke/ash/debris that people were exposed to ….
@ huxley > “Doin’ the DEI rag.”
I don’t think Professor Lehrer would require an apology at all.
In re the assertion that “You want to see somebody that responds to your house, your emergency — whether it’s a medical call or a fire call — that looks like you.”
So: the LAFD and all good Woke organizations that serve (for certain values of “service”) the public pledge to maintain a staff that has sufficient numbers of all demographics that they can put together a response team for every incident that includes people who look like all of the individuals involved?
Or is this the usual DEI code for the usual identity groups, who don’t look like ME at all?
Since they believe that what puts one person “at ease” will do nothing for someone in a different group, it is obvious that they are only concerned about the “ease” of their preferred groups.
I’m in the “identity group” that prefers to see, and is most at ease with, people who are competent in their jobs.
Diversity refers to color judgment and class bigotry is an umbrella philosophy that includes racism, sexism, feminism, tranhumanism (e.g. human rites) , and other class-disordered ideologies, notably but not limited to practices in ancient secular cults and modern liberal democracies. DEI is a policy constructed on Diversity, Equivocation, and Incompetence… by virtue of color selection and class bigotry, with elements of political congruence (“=”) to judge and label public discernment for purposes of suppressing accountability. Can they abort the baby, cannibalize her carbon, sequester the “burden” of evidence, and have her, too? Time will tell, again, and again, and again.
I will note that blaming PG&E for the current fires is especially disingenuous because PG&E doesn’t serve that part of the state. That area is served by Southern California Edison and LADWP. See map: https://www.sce.com/regulatory/tariff-books/baseline-regions-map
(Disclosure: I own some preferred shares of PG&E, which I inherited from my late grandmother. They pay $600/yr in dividends.)
The thing that is being largely ignored, except by PJ Media and a few others I’ve seen, is homeless encampments are likely suspects for starting the fires. https://pjmedia.com/victoria-taft/2025/01/08/what-started-las-firestorm-we-have-some-ideas-n4935774
“Fire officials say that homeless camp wildfires doubled from 2020 to 2023 to 13,909. There were 24 “homeless related” fires in LA County responded to every day of 2021.
…
Here are just a few recent wildfires started by drug-addled “homeless” campers.
Jan 7, 2025: Santa Ana Riverbed Fire one acre, destroyed tents, RVs, and at least 12 cars.
Nov. 14, 2024: Van Nuys, impacted commuters on freeways throughout San Fernando Valley.
May 2024: Hollywood Boulevard, aforementioned electrical fire, threatened nearby buildings.
Jan. 7, 2024: Hollywood, Cahuenga Pass, during high winds. Two cars and some trees were destroyed.
April 20, 2021: Venice Beach, one home was destroyed and a dog killed. Believed linked to a string of homeless encampment fires in the area.”
For those interested in the visual context of the disaster, here is a map of the fire locations, as of January 8, from the NY Post.
https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/fire-map-WEB_REVISED-v2-1.jpg?resize=1536,1024&quality=75&strip=all
Mark Steyn, in a great Steynian piece about fire hydrants, describes LA Mayor Karen Bass:
_____________________________________
…as the first ciswoman of colour to go on a fact-finding mission to study West African emergency-services management, shattered the glass ceiling before it had a chance to burn down…
…it will make a great vignette for her pre-2028 political memoir It Takes a Child to Raze a Village.
–Mark Steyn, “Tapped Out”
https://www.steynonline.com/14908/tapped-out
Neo asked: Should Kristin Crowley know “how the water gets to the hydrants”?
This reminds me of bits of Congressional hearings for some of Biden’s nominees.
The Republican Congress attendees asked relevant questions that exposed the nominees lack of — IMO — important knowledge.
Examples I enjoyed:
John Kennedy, R-LA, proved that the ATF nominee knew little about guns, and another day proved that the FAA nominee knew little about flight safety.
Rep John Kennedy is a national treasure.
Huxley, as one who was raised on Tom Lehrer, I liked your latter day verse set to the tune of the Vatican Rag. When you consider that for the other side of the aisle, politics is often a substitute for religion–how else to explain how for decades they have viewed wingnuts as evil– it is rather appropriate that a song satirizing religion is adapted to satirize the Woke/Progressives.
Although Tom Lehrer is a standard liberal in many respects, Folk Song Army indicated that he could also satirize his side.
Oh really
https://x.com/JoshuaSteinman/status/1878482182181990695
No good deed, goes unpunished, but it is gotham on the pacific
Speaking of Tom Lehrer, his fans might be interested in this video. Songs That Inspired Tom Lehrer.
To paraphrase SNL, Karen Bass is not ‘terrific bass’. She’s toxically bad Bass, and needs to go ASAP.
The city slashed fire and other basic services after Mayor Karen Bass awarded fat contracts to government workers.
L.A.’s Total Leadership Failure
The totality of the failure is self-evident.
Kristin Crowley doesn’t know how the water gets to the hydrants. Am I surprised? Not in the slightest. I’m more surprised she didn’t know how foolish she would look making that public statement. That right there is reason enough to let her go.
from a certain point of view, she was just what was ordered,
In a promo for the Fire Department, one of the 3 K’s chuckled off a wife’s question about whether she could drag her husband out of a fire: “He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.” Would a husband really be that much harder to drag out of a burning building than she would?
LA’s Water Chief is likewise a DEI obsessed incompetent.
I’m nominating “buttigieg” for the Word of the Year. To buttigieg is to be obsessed with DEI and not do your real job. To be buttigiegged is to have this revealed. But I suppose there are enough buttigieggers in the world that another name might become the year’s new household word.
The Enviromental lobby is a big player in California politics, and especially in the push for “zero-emissions” lifestyles. Less water is double plus good.
Their bots in the democrat media push the “climate change has made all weather events more extreme”, but there’s no data that backs up that claim. The Santa Ana winds blow from September to February, but the October to December period is the prime season. No one should be emptying reservoirs that feed the water storage facilities, and ultimately, fire hydrants, during prime season in a fire prone area, unless there’s a suitable back up plan.
For the woke, Dems and DEI types their job is acquiring more power.
Let the blue collar types and nerds take care of keeping things running. That’s their job, no matter how hard the Dems make it.
Democrats have more important things on their mind.
Here in MT I have on several occasions become aware of the fact that many firefighters/administrators also have daughters. During these years (1990-present) I have known several fire administrators who feel they are being wonderful fathers by encouraging the Firefighter system to promote women into administrative roles. They may only have to be fully suited in ONE building fire to qualify for a leadership role. The idea that they can’t carry the weight of a male firefighter in order to rescue a fellow firefighter is no longer a part of the physical criteria for leadership. I believe the incredibel display of incompetence by each of these women will help to start a return to merit! We may even require a full listing of actual experience on a job application form ! You can also review the decline of our universities to see the horrific damage that pushing women into jobs for which they are not qualified has done over the past 40 years!
huxley,
Regarding the Steyn piece and the included Saturday Evening Post illustration:
On especially hot days in Chicago Firemen would sometimes open a hydrant for area kids to play in. It was tremendous fun! The joy was increased because one never knew when it would happen; it was a surprise and a great treat!
Firemen would also flood baseball fields in winter to form ice rinks. There was a firehouse one block from my house and when we’d get exhausted from playing basketball the firemen would let us use the drinking fountain in the firehouse.
Firemen were awesome when I was a kid!
On especially hot days in Chicago Firemen would sometimes open a hydrant for area kids to play in. It was tremendous fun! The joy was increased because one never knew when it would happen; it was a surprise and a great treat!
Rufus T. Firefly:
I recall the images but I never knew how that worked. Lovely!
It’s hard to imagine something like that happening today.
Marlene, I agree that John Kennedy of Lousiana is indeed a national treasure, but he is also one of their two senators, not a House rep. With 535 or 538 of them to keep straight, not a difficult mistake to make. 🙂
Anne: “… The idea that they can’t carry the weight of a male firefighter in order to rescue a fellow firefighter …” won’t matter after all of the male firefighters retire or quit, so then the lady firefighters will only have to be able to carry their female colleagues. Of course the few transgender members on the force may be heavier than normal, but social justice justifies that sort of sacrifice.
The last part of the VDH excerpt makes me think that many of the CA legislators are the sort of people that agree completely with Ted Kaczynski and his manifesto. Of course, some of them probably also think that it is OK to take all of the peons back to the stone age, but they will be cruising in corporate jets between their multiple mansions.
There’s an issue I see as the “interface problem” where the owner of a system that interfaces to another system will claim all is good even if the interface isn’t working. The owner of the other system does likewise, both point fingers but don’t own the problem.
This was a common problem when working on navy ships when starting new systems or troubleshooting existing ones.
Her approach on this seems to be the same, “that’s not my responsibility so it’s not my problem”. Even if she lacks formal authority over water, she still has a voice, and understanding how the water system works and it’s current status is something she would know if she was good at her job.