Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday demanded an independent investigation into water supply issues as multiple fires continue to burn in southern California.
Newsom directed state water and fire officials to examine the causes of lost water supply and water pressure during the fires.
Questions have been raised over the region’s water supply as firefighters struggled to contain the blazes.
“The ongoing reports of loss of water pressure to some local fire hydrants during the fires and the reported unavailability of water supplies from the Santa Ynez Reservoir are deeply troubling to me and to the community,” Newsom wrote in the letter to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) CEO and the Los Angeles County Public Works Director.
The governor noted that the issue is “water mobility” during the initial response, rather than the overall water supply in southern California.
He also cited multiple reports that the Santa Ynez Reservoir in the Pacific Palisades was closed for repairs and empty as wildfires ripped through the region.
“While water supplies from local fire hydrants are not designed to extinguish wildfires over large areas, losing supplies from fire hydrants likely impaired the effort to protect some homes and evacuation corridors,” Newsom added.
Newsom concluded in his letter to water and power officials that he hopes to learn from the lessons of this tragedy.
“We need answers to how that happened,” the governor wrote.
Many hydrants in the Pacific Palisades ran dry during the onset of the wildfires. The LADWP was pumping from aqueducts and groundwater into the system, but the demand was so high that it was not sufficient to refill three, 1 million gallon tanks that help pressurize hydrants in the neighborhood.
President Joe Biden on Thursday said he spoke to Newsom and weighed in on the water issues.
“What I know from talking to the governor, there are concerns out there that there’s also been a water shortage,” Biden said. “The fact is the utilities, understandably, shut off power because they are worried the lines that carried energy were going to be blown down and spark additional fires. When it did that, it cut off the ability to generate pumping the water, that’s what caused the lack of water in these hydrants.”
Meanwhile, Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley on Friday pointed to budget cuts that she says have impacted firefighters’ abilities to battle the blazes.
The department is “understaffed, underresourced and underfunded,” according to the fire chief.
“My message is the fire department needs to be properly funded,” Crowley told local media outlet KTTV. “It’s not.
Mayor Karen Bass previously said that cuts to the LAFD’s budget did not impact the city’s response to the deadly wildfires.
In a Jan. 9 update, the Eaton and Palisades fires have been added to the state’s list of most destructive wildfires, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
