Why doesn't California have the tools, people, means to put out these fires even though they know there will be fires every year?
08.06.2025 12:34
If you need to know why the Pacific Palisades fire and other fires around Los Angeles were so horrendous, you have to start with the weather.
While it’s useful to make fire breaks close to homes, remember that the Santa Ana winds were gusting up to 100 mph and they can blow burning embers for miles, rendering fire breaks ineffective. You cannot create mile-wide fire breaks on the hillsides.
The reservoirs around California are full. That includes the lakes around LA like these two.
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Then you had the Santa Ana Winds that gusted up to 100 mph.
The fire hydrants went dry because there was so much demand on the system that the water storage tanks were drained.
The dam removals? Look at a map. See where the Klamath River dams were compared to Los Angeles.
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Bottom line - it reminds me of the line from Obi Wan Kenobi to Luke after he discovers his uncle and aunt have been killed. “There’s nothing you could have done had you been there.”
As for controlled burns, that’s probably not a good idea in much of Southern California. They work fine in the Sierra Nevada where there’s a lot of sparsely populated backcountry and there might be snow on the ground or still have relative moisture. Southern California hills are much drier and closer to a lot of buildings. A controlled burn could turn into an uncontrolled burn very easily. There’s no way you could have a controlled burn within a mile of Pacific Palisades.
Because sometimes there are calamities that are beyond the capability of even the most well-prepared agencies. Why wasn’t Louisiana better prepared for Katrina? Why weren’t states along the East Coast better prepared for Hurricane Sandy after seeing what Katrina did? Why was there so much damage in Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina from Hurricanes Helene and Milton - did nobody learn from Katrina and Sandy?
The Santa Ynez Reservoir was dry.
But you can’t just stick firehoses into lakes and send water 30–40 miles away by turning on a spigot.
Castaic Lake.
But that was followed by seven months of record dry when less than 1/5 of an inch of rain fell from June-January.
Casitas Lake.
Could the state and the city of Los Angeles change their preparation? Sure, they could plan for the next confluence of historic events occurring simultaneously - but it’s likely impractical. They could put up bigger water storage tanks on top of hills. They should probably require homes to be built with less flammable material though that won’t stop the interior from burning. It’s likely not feasible to increase the volume of water that could move through the LA plumbing system. That would mean digging up a lot of streets and replacing hundreds of miles of water pipes.
Last February was historically wet in LA.
Now some people ask “Why don’t they clear the brush or have controlled burns?”
Now there are a whole lot of people like Donald Trump gloating over the suffering of the fire victims and using this tragedy to rather tastelessly proclaim that Governor Gavin Newsom, LA Mayor Karen Bass, environmentalists, and Democrats are to blame because of water policies intended to protect endangered salmon. They claim that reservoirs were drained dry and that the removal of dams left LA without water to fight fires. And it’s a giant pile of bovine feces spewed out by people who no sense of character, integrity, compassion, decency, class, and taste.
All that heavy rainfall resulted in heavy growth in vegetation all over the hills around Los Angeles.
The LA water system can’t refill those tanks fast enough to fight the kind of fire that engulfed Pacific Palisades. No city has that. They’d have need 10–20 times as many water tanks to do that.
Those fed and spread the fires while making it unsafe to fly planes to drop fire retardant.
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No fire department in the world was designed to fight conflagrations covering entire neighborhoods. Fire departments fight building fires with 2–3 trucks, not wildfires that engulf city blocks.
Note that the wind blew the fire downhill. Most people know that fires burn uphill normally.
In 2022–23, there was so much rain in Southern California that the normally trickling Los Angeles River looked like this.
Last February, the reservoir was drained for maintenance and it was discovered that its covering suffered serious damage that could lead to contaminated drinking water. The work to fix that was put out to bid. Nobody envisioned the current issue - this is normally the rainy season when fire risk is low. Even if Santa Ynez Reservoir had been full, it wouldn’t have made a difference.
Look how much brush there is. How do you intend to clear it all? If you denuded the hillsides, the next rainstorm is going to produce giant mudslides.
It’s 650 miles from the nearest dam site to Los Angeles and there are no pipes, canals, or aqueducts linking Klamath River water to Los Angeles. Those dams could have been filled to the brim and done nothing for LA. Also, the dams came down because they’re antiquated and the ownership - Berkshire-Hathaway - determined that retrofitting costs greatly exceeded any economic returns.
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A lot of brush and grass. The seven months of rainless weather turned all that vegetation into tinder dry fire fuel. So now you not only have tinder dry fuel but a much bigger supply of it. And it took very little to set it off - it’s as flammable as gasoline. Anything from a discarded cigarette, a lawn mower spark, a hot car tailpipe next to grass, or a downed power line could set off a fire. New Year’s fireworks set off a fire above Pacific Palisades on New Year’s Day and although fire crews thought it was extinguished, it may have smoldered underground.