In Southern California, fire hydrants ran dry as flames ripped through the Los Angeles area. Some critics blamed the municipal system for not meeting the demands for water. But the systems that house fire hydrants were not designed to battle major wildfires. Kylie Mohr is a freelance journalist and correspondent for High Country News. She reported on this issue for the outlet and joins us with details.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.- checked for spelling and pronouns
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. “Fire hydrants ran dry as Pacific Palisades burned,” wrote the LA Times last week. “‘Completely Dry’: How Los Angeles Firefighters Ran Out of Water,” wrote The New York Times. It was a striking detail, this lack of water when firefighters needed it most. But it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Kylie Mohr is a freelance journalist and correspondent for High Country News. She talked to wildfire experts for a recent article in High Country News. She joins us now to talk about what she learned. Kylie, welcome back.
Kylie Mohr: Hi, thanks for having me.
Miller: What are the various draws on a municipal water supply or water pressure in a wildfire?
Mohr: So during wildfires like the ones in LA right now, it isn’t just vegetation that’s on fire. It’s thousands of homes. And as homes burn, water pipes inside of them break or melt, which releases water. People leave on sprinkler systems trying to protect their homes. And then all at the same time, firefighters are rushing to hydrants all over the place trying to pull water out of them. The Palisades, for example, saw four times the usual water demand on its system for 15 hours straight. All of this leads to both a loss of water, and a loss of water pressure.
Miller: In the end, how widespread were fire hydrant outages for the Palisades Fire?
Mohr: The mayor of LA, Karen Bass, said that about 20% of the hydrant’s firefighters were attempting to use ran dry. That’s about one in five relevant hydrants in the area, totally out of water.
Miller: And that’s just the Palisades Fire. What happened with water supplies in Pasadena or Altadena?
Mohr: The same thing happened in those fires. There were some hydrants losing water pressure, but not quite as bad as in the Palisades. Part of what complicated the Palisades situation is the neighborhood’s topography. Hydrants at the top of hills need even more water pressure to get the water all the way up to them, which proved to be another problem here.
Miller: A bunch of experts that you talked to said that what happened with the municipal water supplies in these fires was neither surprising nor unique. Why? What’s the mismatch between city water systems and massive wildfires?
Mohr: Simply put, city water systems just aren’t designed to fight massive wildfires. They’re designed to fight a structure fire in a house or in an apartment complex, with some extra water left over to spare. But they’re completely outmatched when thousands of structures are all burning at the same time, driven by hurricane force winds. They aren’t designed to tackle multiple buildings at once, or an approaching wildfire. And here, we saw both of those things happening at the same time. Plus, to kind of make matters worse, the same winds that were fanning flames on the ground also made it so the aircraft couldn’t fly over the areas and drop water and retardant, which are much more commonly used tools to try to extinguish fires at this kind of large scale.
Miller: Would any municipal water system have been robust enough to provide sufficient pressure, sufficient water?
Mohr: In a word, no. An expert I talked to from UCLA said he doesn’t know of a water system anywhere that could have actually stopped fires like these. I found that pretty sobering.
Miller: What are the implications of all of this, as climate change and more houses in the urban-wildlife interface make wildfires in places where we’ve built homes more likely?
Mohr: I think it’s a wake up call of sorts. The LA fires really put a fine point on how our community’s infrastructure isn’t meant to handle the kind of wild and urban conflagrations that we’re seeing more and more of in recent years. Think about the Lahaina Fire, think about the Marshall Fire in Colorado.
We can talk about water capacity and water systems design all day long, but one expert pointed out to me that that’s actually kind of missing the point. We need to be talking about how to keep houses from catching on fire and spreading embers to each other in the first place, along with land management, planning, a whole bunch of other things. And we also need to be addressing one of the numerous causes of wildfire spreading, which is of course, climate change.
Miller: Just briefly, your reporting also notes that water systems can suffer longer term impacts from wildfires, pollution in particular. What kind of pollution are experts talking about right now?
Mohr: So first off, you can have ash and soot from the wildfires themselves get into pipes. But also when plastic pipes burn, it’s much more insidious. They release a whole slew of toxic pollutants like volatile organic compounds, which are harmful to human health. And this has already happened in several urban wildfires, really starting with the Tubbs Fire in California in 2017. This kind of contamination can be really costly to fully address. And in the meantime, you absolutely cannot drink the water. So far, numerous utilities across LA County have told people in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, and part of Pasadena, not to drink their tap water until future notice.
And it’s worth noting, you can’t filter this kind of pollution out with something like a Brita filter in your fridge.
Miller: Kylie, thanks very much.
Mohr: Thanks for having me.
Miller: Kylie Mohr is a freelance journalist and correspondent for High Country News. Her latest article for that site focuses on the challenges of fighting wildfires with water from municipal systems.
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