Why hydrants ran dry as firefighters battled California’s deadly fires

As crews have fought the fast-spreading fires across the Los Angeles area, they have repeatedly been hampered by low water pressure and fire hydrants that have gone dry. “Local water systems are usually designed to fight local, small-scale fires over a limited time period,” said Kathryn Sorensen, director of research at Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy. “At least the way we’ve always built systems and wanted to pay for systems, you can’t really expect systems, even like DWP’s, to be prepared for this.” When the fire broke out in Pacific Palisades, a nearby DWP reservoir was also out of commission and empty for repairs, and officials said they are analyzing how this might have affected water supplies in the area. “It’s very common in a city when you have that big of a fire with that many resources, we’re going to tax our water supply and water system,” Augustin said. In the L.A. area, she said, it would have been very expensive to develop additional storage “adequate to mitigate or even fight the wildfires in these higher-elevation pressure zones, but right now I’d imagine most people in L.A. would say it would’ve been worth the cost.” Business How the devastating Los Angeles fires could deepen California’s home insurance crisis The massive fires that have destroyed much of Pacific Palisades and demolished thousands of homes and structures in Los Angeles County threaten an effort to fix California’s troubled home insurance market.