There’s no shortage of criticism of the leadership of Los Angeles and the state of California in the wake of the Los Angeles fires. One of the biggest topics is the fact that, in Pacific Palisades, the hydrants went dry.
But the situation is more complicated than most people know. For example:
LADWP’s explanation for the shortage comes down to three nearby water tanks, each with a storage capacity of about a million gallons. These tanks help maintain enough pressure for water to travel uphill through pipes to homes and fire hydrants — but the pressure had decreased due to heavy water use, and officials knew the tanks couldn’t keep up the drain forever.
“We pushed the system to the extreme,” LADWP CEO Janisse Quiñones said in a news conference. “Four times the normal demand was seen for 15 hours straight, which lowered our water pressure.”
According to LADWP, the tanks’ water supply needed to be replenished in order to provide enough pressure for the water to travel to fire hydrants uphill. But officials said as firefighters drew more and more water from the trunk line, or main supply, they used water that would have refilled the tanks, eventually depleting them.
That decreased the water pressure, which is needed for the water to travel uphill. …
… [F]ire hydrants have also run dry in the case of other wildfires that spread to urban areas, including the 2017 Tubbs Fire, 2024’s Mountain Fire and 2023’s Maui wildfires.
In these cases, firefighters have to rely on other water sources. For the Palisades Fire, LADWP brought in 19 water trucks, each with capacities of 4,000 gallons.
In LA and other parts of California, large fires are often fought with the addition of firefighting helicopters, but in the present fire the winds have been too high and the visibility too poor to use them.
Then there’s the topic of why California doesn’t have more reservoirs. If you read this article from 2023, you’ll learn a lot on that score. An excerpt:
Last century, California built dozens of large dams, creating the elaborate reservoir system that supplies the bulk of the state’s drinking and irrigation water. Now state officials and supporters are ready to build the next one.
The Sites Reservoir — planned in a remote corner of the western Sacramento Valley for at least 40 years — has been gaining steam and support since 2014, when voters approved Prop. 1, a water bond that authorized $2.7 billion for new storage projects.
Still, Sites Reservoir remains almost a decade away: Acquisition of water rights, permitting and environmental review are still in the works. Kickoff of construction, which includes two large dams, had been scheduled for 2024, but likely will be delayed another year. Completion is expected in 2030 or 2031.
That’s quite a time frame. And the dam would only help the situation about 3%.
More:
Jerry Brown (not the former governor of the same name) of the Sites Project Authority, which represents local water districts pursuing the project, said it takes many years to develop and plan projects of this scale.
“My personal rule of thumb is that for every year of construction you spend about three years in the planning-permitting-engineering stage,” he said. Since Sites’ construction takes six years, the process would be expected to take 18 years.
California is a state with too many people for its water supply, some special geological and climate challenges which present the possibility of disasters, environmentalists eager to block most potential solutions, and one-party Democrat rule. It’s a situation rife with possibilities for incompetence and corruption.
