<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Janisse Qui\u00f1ones, head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said later at a news conference that 3 million gallons of water were available when the Palisades fire started but the demand was four times greater than \u201cwe\u2019ve ever seen in the system.\u201d <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fire crews battle the Eaton Fire Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025 in Altadena, Calif. (AP Photo\/Ethan Swope)<\/p>\n Fire crews battle the Eaton Fire Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025 in Altadena, Calif. (AP Photo\/Ethan Swope)<\/p>\n Add AP News on Google <\/p>\n Add AP News as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Read More<\/p>\n Hydrants are designed for fighting fires at one or two houses at a time, not hundreds, Qui\u00f1ones said, and refilling the tanks also requires asking fire departments to pause firefighting efforts. Mayor Bass said 20% of hydrants went dry.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are literally fleeing. People have lost their lives. Kids lost their schools. Families completely torn asunder. Churches burned down. And this guy wanted to politicize it,\u201d Newsom said of Trump on CNN. He contrasted the former president\u2019s accusations with President Joe Biden standing by the devastated communities.<\/p>\n Peter Gleick, senior fellow at the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on global water sustainability, dismissed Trump\u2019s criticism as well. <\/p>\n \u201cThose fights have been going on for a long time, and they have not affected in any way water supply for firefighting in southern California,\u201d Gleick said.<\/p>\n About 40 percent of Los Angeles city water comes from state-controlled projects connected to northern California, where the Delta smelt live, and the state has limited the water it delivers<\/a> this year. Yet the southern California reservoirs these canals help feed are at above-average levels<\/a> for this time of year. <\/p>\n Rick Caruso, a real estate developer and former Los Angeles Department of Water and Power commissioner who lost to Bass in the last mayoral race, said officials needed to answer for the system\u2019s failures.<\/p>\n \u201cYou got thousands of homes destroyed, families destroyed, businesses destroyed,\u201d he said. \u201cI think you can figure out a way to get more water in the hydrants. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s room for excuses here.\u201d<\/p>\n A widening problem<\/p>\n Los Angeles isn\u2019t the only city to see its public water system stressed by firefighting demand as human-caused climate change makes wildfires worse, experts say<\/a>. <\/p>\n Large urban fires can also melt or otherwise damage pipes, causing them to leak large amounts of water, draining pressure from the system, said Andrew Whelton, an engineering professor at Purdue University. Individual homes with water meters that have a remote shutoff can help utilities quickly stem such losses, Whelton said. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Firefighters battle the Eaton Fire Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025 in Altadena, Calif. (AP Photo\/Ethan Swope)<\/p>\n Firefighters battle the Eaton Fire Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025 in Altadena, Calif. (AP Photo\/Ethan Swope)<\/p>\n Add AP News on Google <\/p>\n Add AP News as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Read More<\/p>\n In Hawaii the 2023 fire that ripped through the historic town of Lahaina and killed more than 100 people burned so quickly in a dense area that pipes burst<\/a>, making it hard to maintain enough water pressure for firefighting efforts. In the 2021 Marshall Fire in Colorado, the city of Louisville\u2019s water department had workers manually open valves<\/a> to let untreated water from the Colorado River and Boulder Creek into pipes to restore pressure. That helped firefighters but also led to water contamination. <\/p>\n Greg Pierce, professor of urban environmental policy at the University of California who had a family member lose a house in one of the blazes, pushed back on Caruso\u2019s assertion that the loss of water pressure was a clear sign of mismanagement.<\/p>\n Providing enough water could amount to a subsidy for very high-income areas, he said. \u201cI think the conversation has to be more about whether these areas are habitable.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 staffing to put out big fires.<\/p>\n \u201cWe get it done. We pre-position resources, we staff up reserve engines,\u201d he said. \u201cYesterday, there (was) a lot more fire than there is firefighters. That will start to change as the wind dies out and additional firefighters arrive and we\u2019ll get the upper hand on it.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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