Firefighters’ hoses battling the fire still burning in Pacific Palisades, the largest of several simultaneous fires devastating the Los Angeles area, ran dry early Wednesday. At three in the morning, local time, the last of three one-million-gallon (about 3.7 million liters) tanks serving the area ran out of water. Janisse Quiñones, chief engineer and CEO of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, explained the cause at a press conference a few hours later. “We took the system to the extreme. There was four times the normal demand for 15 hours straight, which reduced our water pressure,” he said.
Although the 114 water tanks that supply all of Los Angeles were full before the fire started, the unprecedented need to fight what is already the most catastrophic fire in the city’s history took its toll. When Palisades’ three huge tanks, located high in the area’s hills, were emptied, refilling them with reserves from lower elevations was a task complicated by simple gravity. But also due to the enormous demand that diverted the available water in different directions: consumption was faster than the replenishment capacity. A domino effect was then created that affected the pressure of the fire hydrants that firefighters depended on to fight the flames, which have not yet been controlled and continue to expand.
The explanation from Quiñones and other city officials, however, has not been enough to silence hoaxes that have spread through social networks and some media outlets as uncontrollably as the fires themselves.
On Wednesday morning, before expressing solidarity with those affected, President-elect Donald Trump blamed California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, in a post on Truth, his own social network. “Governor Gavin Newscum [el insultante apodo que le ha dado al californiano y que es un juego con su apellido y la palabra “scum”, una manera de llamarle basura] refused to sign the water restoration declaration presented to him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snowmelt from the north, to flow daily to many parts of California, including areas currently burning in a practically apocalyptic way. He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called “smelt”, giving him less water (didn’t work!), but he didn’t care about the people of California. Now the final price is being paid. I will demand that this incompetent governor allows fresh, clean, beautiful water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA. He is to blame for this. On top of everything, there is no water for fire hydrants, nor firefighting planes. A real disaster!”
Trump’s message alludes to a situation that actually has nothing to do with the problem of supplying water tanks. In 2019, when he was president, his Administration presented a plan to divert water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, in the north of the State, near San Francisco, to the endless farms of the productive Central Valley, but not to the city of Los Angeles. , which is even further south. That plan did not go ahead because both environmentalists and state officials warned that it put populations of salmon, smelt (the “smelt” to which Trump refers) and trout.
Peter Gleick, a senior fellow at the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on global water sustainability, also rejected Trump’s criticism. “Those fights have been going on for a long time and have not in any way affected the water supply for firefighting in Southern California,” he told the Associated Press. Although around 40% of the city’s water comes from the north of the State, the southern reservoirs, which are partly filled with resources from there, are at higher levels than average for this time of year. In other words, there was no shortage, but rather the existing systems could not cope with an unprecedented situation.
Another line of false accusations or misinformation has been directed against the so-called Los Angeles Aqueduct system, which supplies water from the Owens River to the city. On social networks, fingers point to the municipal water department and other city officials. One of the loudest voices has been that of Rick Caruso, a real estate businessman who owns a shopping center in Palisades, former commissioner of the water department and recent candidate for mayor, an election he lost against the current councilor, Democrat Karen Bass. The main argument is the lack of maintenance and investment in the system that transports water to the city.
Quiñones has also referred to this. “We are fighting a forest fire with urban water supply systems, and that is really difficult,” said the chief engineer of the city’s aqueduct. Mark Pestrella, the director of the Los Angeles County public works department, told the AP something similar, adding: “This is why air support is so critical to fighting fires. And, unfortunately, the wind and the visibility of the air have prevented this.” Only late Wednesday afternoon did the winds die down enough to allow helicopters and planes to take off and dump water on the massive fires.
Experts point out that, although it is possible that the state of the water system – which is known to have not received the necessary investment over the years – has played a role in the shortage and lack of pressure in the fire hydrants. in the most crucial hours, as Caruso and many others suggest on social media, it is too early to know now. Further studies and analyzes will be needed, they point out.
But, they say, the situation is not particular to Los Angeles. In places prone to wildfires, public water supply systems are being affected by the increasing demand on firefighters, as climate change is aggravating these episodes. Additionally, large urban fires can also melt or damage pipes, causing leaks and reducing system pressure. In Hawaii, the 2023 fire that devastated the historic city of Lahaina and killed more than 100 people burned so quickly in such a dense area that pipes burst, making it difficult to maintain sufficient water pressure for firefighting efforts. It is still early to know if something similar has happened in Los Angeles.
