Los Angeles fire hydrant damage follows a pattern seen in other fires

from Rachel BeckerCalMatters

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As firefighters battled catastrophic fires in Los Angeles last January, one question reverberated across the country: Where was the water?

The question came from wealthy developer Rick Caruso and then-President-elect Donald Trumpby reporters and residents. This prompted executive orders and condition and federal investigations. After the fires were more ash than flame, the Trump administration used the water shortage to justify its confusion moves to release vital summer irrigation supplies from two reservoirs that do not feed Los Angeles.

“I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW IN CALIFORNIA!” Trump posted on social mediaciting Gov. Gavin Newsom as the fires raged in Los Angeles “On top of that, there’s no water for the fire hydrants, no (sic) fire fighting aircraft. A real disaster!”

A team of researchers led by Gregory Pearcedirector of UCLA’s Water Resources Group, set out to uncover whether the intense focus on water supply meant that dry hydrants uniquely prevented the Palisades shooting, or if it was a common occurrence.

c policy brief released Mondayresearchers have used media reports to confirm that when fires burn urban areas, hydrant streams often fail — the result of a loss of pressure as burned homes bleed water and too many hoses simultaneously draw on a limited supply.

“Fire hydrant performance in the Palisades appears to be the rule rather than the exception,” the report said. “The only obvious, factual difference between the Palisades fire and its counterparts is that the hydrant operation did not make the headlines of the news stories covering the other fires.”

“More the rule than the exception”

The policy brief reflects the findings of a recent state investigation in the water supply during the Palisades fire.

“Although there was plenty of water available in the system,” state investigators wrote, “it was not possible to pump enough water to the fire area at one time to meet the flow demand created by runoff from already destroyed structures and high water demand from hydrants.”

Even if the empty Santa Ynez Reservoir were full, “the hydrants would not be able to maintain pressure,” the state report said.

Together, on Ethan and Palisade fires destroyed thousands of structures, caused dozens billions of dollars in damagekilled at least 31 people and may have contributed to hundreds more deaths.

With smoke still in the air, expertscondition officials, reporters and on Los Angeles Department of Water and Power raced to verify claims that water management leading to dry hydrants was solely responsible for the devastation. The recurring refrain: urban water systems are not built to put out wildfires.

But the spark ignited. And as residents reeled from the devastating losses of entire communities and grasped for explanations, there was a sense of betrayal — that water and their hydrants had failed to save Los Angeles from the flames.

By the end of March, nearly a third of the 2,000 Los Angeles County residents surveyed by the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research blamed poor water management as the biggest contributor to wildfires. Only slightly more — 36% — said arson.

Another survey by Probolsky Research reported that more than a quarter of 1,000 likely voters in California’s primary election were surprised to hear — or flat out didn’t believe — that fire hydrants were not designed to fight large wildfires.

“Sometimes all you need is an idea to catch on a little bit and start spreading. And then once it starts going viral, it’s adopted by a lot of people,” said Lisa Fazioassociate professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University, who studies how people learn information.

During disasters, she said, “people are looking for that understanding and sense of control.”

It has happened before – many times.

In fire after fire, investigators found reports of loss of water pressure.

Paul Lowenthal, division chief firefighter for the Santa Rosa Fire Department, remembers when the Tubbs Fire ripped through Santa Rosa in 2017, destroying thousands of homes and killing 22 people.

“When we had a loss of pressure in Fountaingrove, there was this immediate feeling that, ‘The firefighters didn’t have the water they needed to fight the fire,'” he said. “And I think we’ve seen some of the same concerns come out of Los Angeles.”

But Lowenthal said the real picture was much more complicated: In the hills, as the fire swept into town, firefighters were too busy getting people out to even use hydrants.

“It was all pure life saving,” he said. By the time the winds died down in the valley floor enough to push the flames away, he said, the city’s water system had restored enough pressure to the hydrants.

Kevin Phillipsdistrict manager of the Paradise Irrigation District, said some hydrants in the town of Paradise lost pressure during the 2018 Camp Fire, which remains deadly and most destructive wildfire in California history.

When a wildfire destroys a city, such as the Paradise or Palisades fires, Phillips said, each burned home drains water from the system — reducing its pressure.

“Every single one of these homes that are burned is an open wound on the outside,” Phillips said. “Your system is essentially dying as each one of these homes is destroyed.”

William Sapetta, fire chief of Lake County Fire Protection, agreed. “The Eaton and Palisades fires really brought a lot of attention to the firefighting capabilities of water,” he said. “Yet we survived in Campfirethe fire of the valley Car Fire — all of these fires have exceeded the municipalities’ ability to provide firefighting water.

New requirements

Hydrants and water mains have been pulled public control in Ventura County, where two major wildfires in less than a decade have prompted reports of hydrant outages and loss of water pressure.

The fires in Assemblyman Steve Bennett home county, one of which burned down homes on its own street, prompted new legislation. Signed into law this yearBennett’s bill sets new requirements for certain water providers in fire-prone parts of Ventura County to harden their systems and obtain sufficient backup power or alternate water supplies to maintain water pumps work 24 hours.

“You’ve got to have a system that can at least help you put out the little ember, the bush that’s on fire — so you can get it before the house catches on fire,” the Oxnard Democrat said. Having enough to do so, he added, should be the minimum requirement.

But some water suppliers fear they won’t be able to sustain the financial costs of complying with the law’s requirements and worry about the potential liability if they can’t.

“You have smaller water systems that don’t even have the capacity or the funding to handle all of these things,” said Daryl Osbyformer Los Angeles County Fire Chief and now vice president of emergency preparedness, safety and security for California Water Service, an investor-owned water utility.

A new frontier

ASU Faith Cairnsco-author of the political memo, described the convergence of fire and water supply beforeand said the growing scale and devastation of these fires is reshaping public expectations about urban water systems.

“This seems like the new frontier that we’re discussing around wildfire, but (it’s) just part and parcel of the really complex, ongoing wildfire issues in California,” Kearns said.

Climate change-fueled extreme conditions further limit the ability of water and water systems to respond to a fire — like in Santa Rosa, where Lowenthal said firefighters are too focused on saving lives to tap hydrants in the hills.

“You can have the best water system in the world and still not have conditions that are safe for firefighters,” Kearns said.

UCLA’s new policy statement doesn’t question why hydrants have become such a flashpoint in the Palisade Fire, but Pierce has some hypotheses. Preliminary data from an upcoming study suggests it’s political — that support for Trump leads to a belief that water management is to blame for the fires.

“Local influencers, political voices — all the way up to the president and many people in between — quickly picked up on the fact that some of the Palisades Fire hydrants were out of water,” Pierce said.

This created a snowball effect. “The same thing kept repeating itself and then people just thought it was true.”

Fazio, the Vanderbilt psychology professor who was not involved in the policy report, said the desire to pin the blame may even run deeper: People often look for simple answers in times of crisis.

“You can think of it all as part of a cause-and-effect story — like, ‘What caused my house to burn down?’ Why wasn’t it safe?” Fazio said. “The really simple model is, ‘The firefighters and the hydrants should have prevented it, but they didn’t, therefore it’s their fault.’ While I’m sure the actual causal story is much more complex.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.