Fire hydrants run out of water as Los Angeles fires rage

Fires in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood burnt freely after dozens of fire hydrants ran out of water, when the city’s infrastructure became overwhelmed by the scale of the blazes in Los Angeles.

As the fires gathered pace, claiming at least five lives and more than 1500 homes and businesses, hydrants located in higher elevations in the hilly city went dry even as hydrants at lower levels remained functional, the Los Angeles Times reported.

A firefighter asks for more water as his hose goes dry along Highland Avenue in Los Angeles.Credit: AP

The demand for water at lower elevations hampered efforts to refill the tanks in Los Angeles’ higher elevations, leading to scenes of homes burning with firefighters unable to douse them with water.

The Times reported Rick Caruso, a former commissioner for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, saying: “The firefighters are there [in the neighbourhood], and there’s nothing they can do.”

The widespread fires also prevented the city crews from accessing pump stations, which are used to move water uphill towards the tanks located there.

Before the fire, all 114 tanks that supply the city water infrastructure were full, the outlet reported.

A home on fire in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles.Credit: AP

Janisse Quinones, chief executive and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said that hydrants in the Palisades relied on three large water tanks with about 3.8 million litres each. As the fires spread, the first tank ran dry at 4.45pm on Tuesday, the second at 8.30pm and the third at 3am on Wednesday (LA time).

“We had a tremendous demand on our system in the Palisades. We pushed the system to the extreme,” Quinones told the Los Angeles Times. “Four times the normal demand was seen for 15 hours straight, which lowered our water pressure.”

University of California, Davis professor Jay Lund from the Centre for Watershed Sciences, quoted in Newsweek, suggested the water supply had been overwhelmed by the growing size of the fires.

“Urban water distribution systems and their local storage [water tanks] within the service area are designed for firefighting.

“But these have been unusually large fires that might have exceeded the initial design standards for fire flows.

“Designing to supply water for a few house fires or even one or two major fires is one thing, but these fires seem much more extensive.”

Reports of water running out appeared to trigger comments by President-elect Donald Trump. He criticised the lack of what he labelled a “water restoration declaration”.

This may be related to new rules governing two pieces of California water infrastructure, the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project, which were announced in December.

The rule change was designed to supply more water to farmers and residents in Southern California.

Most of the state’s water comes from Northern California, which receives more rain and snow each year than Southern California, as has been the case so far this winter.

But most of that water is used by Central Valley farmers and Southern California residents.

The main supplier of Los Angeles water comes from the city’s 112-year-old aqueduct that runs east from the Owens Valley to the Sierra Nevada mountains, which are north-east of the coastal city.

“The Los Angeles Aqueducts, local groundwater, and supplemental water purchased from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California are the primary sources of water supply for the City of Los Angeles,” the LA DWP website says.

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