As Los Angeles firefighters battled the most catastrophic blaze in the city’s history, they were left without sufficient water.
“The hydrants are down,” a firefighter reported via radio, as cited by the Los Angeles Times.
Another added, “Water supply just dropped.”
The fire crews helplessly watched as vast sections of the Pacific Palisades — one of LA’s most picturesque and celebrity-filled neighborhoods — were reduced to ash within hours late Tuesday into Wednesday.
“There’s no water in the fire hydrants,” Rick Caruso, the owner of the Palisades Village mall at the heart of the destroyed area, expressed angrily to local media. “The firefighters are there, and there’s nothing they can do — we’ve got neighborhoods burning, homes burning, and businesses burning. … It should never happen.”

The water shortage resulted from years of poor management of LA’s water infrastructure — which included a federal indictment of a key figure and several high-profile resignations — compounded by significant operational failures that drained the water reserves too rapidly.
The fire in Pacific Palisades, driven by hurricane-strength Santa Ana winds, obliterated over 1,000 homes and businesses. By Wednesday evening, it had expanded across 16,000 acres, a size larger than Manhattan, and no part of it had been contained.
Residents of Los Angeles expressed their anger over the series of failures that allowed this fire — along with two other fires in Los Angeles County — to burn uncontrollably. Five individuals had perished by Wednesday night, numerous others were injured, and at least 70,000 people were evacuated from their homes across the region.
Adding to the frustration, Democratic Mayor Karen Bass was 7,400 miles away in Africa, and earlier that year, she had approved an $18 million budget cut to the fire department.
“RESIGN! WHY ARE YOU IN GHANA?!,” one person posted in response to an update about the wildfires from Bass’ office on X.
A frustrated LA resident told Fox News: “I’m born and raised in Los Angeles, I spend my life worrying about when the earthquakes come, when the Santa Ana Winds come. I plan my trips around this. For someone to be in charge of my town… where were you?”
The disastrous fire management legacy under California’s state leadership and Governor Gavin Newsom was also a factor hanging over the smoke-filled skies of Los Angeles.
LA’s water system was simply unprepared to handle the demand of the multiple fires — a demand that was four times the usual amount and lasted for 15 hours, as Janisse Quiñones, head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, told the LA Times.
The city maintains 114 large water tanks to store water and help provide a steady flow. When the fire started on Tuesday, all of them were full. Three of these tanks, each holding 1 million gallons, supply the Pacific Palisades hydrants.
The first tank ran dry before 5 p.m. The final tank was exhausted by 3 a.m. Wednesday, according to Quiñones.
Without these water tanks, the city’s system could not maintain sufficient pressure to feed the hydrants.
This issue wasn’t limited to Los Angeles alone.
Malcom Stewart, living near Pasadena, watched helplessly as the Eaton fire — a massive blaze east of Los Angeles — consumed his neighbors’ homes one by one, getting ever closer to his childhood house. Despite his proximity to the flames, he hadn’t seen a single fire truck pass by his street.
The water supply to his house had been shut off, leaving Stewart and his brother with no resources but dirt and a shovel to try and prevent the fire from reaching their property.
“The county did nothing. He’s literally out there with dirt and a shovel and hope,” Stewart’s wife, Charlene, told The Post, after losing contact with him for hours.
When a similar incident occurred in Ventura County last November, officials pointed to damaged pumps and a lack of water — even though backup systems and procedures are in place to let firefighters draw water from alternate sources, according to the LA Times.
In Los Angeles, however, these safety systems should have functioned, and the hydrants should have remained filled. “A water shortage on this scale should never happen,” said Caruso, a former head of the utility commission and an ex-mayoral candidate, to the LA Times.
The failure of LA’s water system occurred after years of criticism, particularly from President-Elect Donald Trump and others who have blamed California’s leadership for failing to properly manage its water resources and fire risks.
Trump placed the blame for the water shortage squarely on Democratic Governor Newsom, who had blocked a 2020 Trump administration directive to divert water from Northern California to Southern California’s drier areas.
Newsom’s justification for blocking the move was to protect an endangered fish species, the smelt, which Trump argued was essentially worthless.
“He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt… but didn’t care about the people of California,” Trump vented on Truth Social.
Trump has also criticized Newsom for neglecting to address the underbrush and dead trees that fuel forest fires, although it remains unclear whether these factors contributed to the current fires.
“I told him from the first day we met that he must ‘clean’ his forest floors regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire stoppers,” Trump posted to X in 2019.
Trump was referencing fire-prevention techniques like prescribed burns and firebreaks that help stop wildfires from spreading.
Despite Newsom’s claims of success in managing California’s forests, a 2021 investigation by CapRadio and NPR’s California Newsroom revealed that he exaggerated the scale of his efforts by an astounding 690%.
However, LA’s utility system faces its own deep-seated issues.
Mayor Bass, who has championed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) appointments, ousted Cynthia Ruiz, the department’s first Native American commissioner, after only a year in office.
Two of the last three general managers of the utility resigned in disgrace: one for allegedly mismanaging $40 million in funds, and another, David Wright, who was sentenced to six years in prison for taking bribes.
Much of the public outcry has focused on Mayor Bass, who returned quickly from attending Ghana’s presidential inauguration when the fire broke out on Tuesday night. She was overseas despite advanced warnings about the Santa Ana winds.
The city’s fire chief, Kristin Crowley, also found herself under fire, particularly from former Fox News host Meghan Kelly, who criticized Crowley for prioritizing diversity and branding over the primary duty of firefighting.
“In recent years LA’s fire chief has made not filling the fire hydrants top priority, but diversity,” Kelly remarked on her show.
{Matzav.com}