As firefighters battled three wildfires raging across Los Angeles in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the water tanks supplying Pacific Palisades – where the largest of the fires broke out – ran dry.
Janisse Quiñones, chief engineer and CEO of the Los Angeles department of water and power, told reporters that by 3am Wednesday, the three 1m-gallon tanks serving the Palisades had been depleted.
“We had a tremendous demand on our system in the Palisades. We pushed the system to the extreme,” Quiñones said during an early Wednesday morning press conference. “Four times the normal demand was seen for 15 hours straight, which lowered our water pressure.”
Although all 114 water tanks serving the city of Los Angeles were completely filled before the fire, water use in the Palisades caused the first of three tanks to run dry at 4.45pm on Tuesday, followed by the second at 8.30pm and the third at 3am Wednesday. As those tanks – located in the high-elevation Palisades – emptied, it became more difficult to refill them from lower-elevation reserves.
“Those tanks help with the pressure on the fire hydrants in the hills of Palisades,” Quiñones said. “Because we were pushing so much water in our trunk line, and so much water was being used before it [went] to the tanks, we were not able to fill the tanks fast enough. So the consumption of water was faster than we can provide water in our trunk line.”
She urged Los Angeles residents “across the entire system to conserve water so the fire department can use the urban water system to fight this fire” while the utility sends 20 water tanks to support firefighters.
“We’re fighting a wildfire with urban water systems, and that is really challenging,” Quiñones said.
Urban water systems are not designed to fight wildfires, Mark Pestrella, director of the Los Angeles county department of public works, told the Associated Press. “That’s why air support is so critical to the firefight. And unfortunately, wind and air visibility have prevented that support.”
All firefighting aircraft were grounded by 7pm Tuesday due to high winds that evening, according to the Los Angeles fire department chief, Kristin Crowley, who said she had never seen such high winds as when the Palisades fire broke out on Tuesday morning.
Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, announced that air operations had resumed by Wednesday afternoon, allowing LAFD helicopters to drop water on the fire. With wind conditions slightly improving, Joe Biden directed the defense department to provide air support to the state of California.
On Truth Social, Donald Trump criticized California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom for the water-supply issues in the Palisades.
“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Trump wrote. “I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is to blame for this.”
When Trump was president in 2019, his administration presented a plan to pump water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta to Central valley farms – but the plan fell through after environmentalists and state officials noted that it threatened endangered salmon, smelt and steelhead species.
In a press release Wednesday, Newsom’s office shared on X: “There is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction. The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”