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| - Los Angeles officials said on Jan. 8 that some fire hydrants in the Pacific Palisades area lost water supply due to high demand on the system from the Palisades fire. Water remained available to firefighters in this area by other means. Fire hydrants do not generally have the capacity to be used in large-scale firefighting, officials also said.
On Jan. 8, as residents in the Los Angeles area fled destructive wildfires, claims (archived) circulated that fire hydrants had run out of water.
(X user @kgarciadumont)
Popular (archived) claims (archived) that there was "no water in the fire hydrants" abounded on social media and were also picked up by local and national news sources like the Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press.
Los Angeles officials addressed the claim during news conferences on Jan. 8. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) CEO Janisse Quiñones told reporters that 20% of fire hydrants in the Pacific Palisades area — around 200 out of 1,000 — lost water supply due to "tremendous" pressure on the system during firefighting efforts for the Palisades fire. Water remained available in the Pacific Palisades area, Bass said. Therefore, we rate this claim as true with the caveat that only a small number of fire hydrants were affected.
The LADWP said in an email on Jan. 9: "There is no lack of water flowing through our pipes or flowing to the Palisades area. Water remains available in Palisades, but is limited in areas at elevation, impacting fire hydrants."
According to Quiñones, the department followed emergency procedures ahead of the windstorm that exacerbated the Los Angeles wildfires on Jan. 7. She told reporters on Jan. 8 (at the 27:30 time stamp):
In preparation for the windstorm LADWP activated its emergency preparation plans and filled all 114 available water reservoirs and storage facilities throughout the city including the three 1 million-gallon tanks in the Palisades area. We also fueled all our generators serving our pump stations to ensure water will flow out through the emergency.
Quiñones added that the pressure on the water system in Los Angeles, particularly in the Pacific Palisades area, reached unprecedented levels as firefighters battled the wildfire there. She said (at the 40:56 time stamp):
We saw four times the demand of water than we've ever seen in the system. We opened every valve available to push as much water into the Palisades area. This fire was different and unprecedented because they didn't have air resources to fight it. So you're fighting a wildfire with a fire hydrant system. Fire hydrants are not made to fight multiple houses, hundreds of houses at a time. They're made to fight one or two houses when they come in.
On the specific number of fire hydrants out of service, Quiñones said (at the 42:35 time stamp):
There's about 1,000 hydrants in that Palisades area. About 20% of those were without water so less than 200 hydrants were without water, the rest we were supplying water to.
The shortage in the Pacific Palisades happened, Quiñones said at an earlier news conference (time stamp 52:17), because the three, full, million-gallon tanks supplying the area ran dry overnight into Jan. 9. After the tanks were depleted, pressure in some hydrants also fell. However, Quiñones said that water was flowing through the main system in the Pacific Palisades. She later said (time stamp 28:45) that 19 water tankers with a capacity of around 4,000 gallons each were ferrying water to the areas where firefighters needed it.
The Palisades fire had burned more than 17,000 acres by Jan. 9, according to Cal Fire. No fatalities were reported, but at least 300 structures had been destroyed and a further 13,000 were threatened. Cal Fire reported that at least two people had died in the Eaton fire, also burning in the Los Angeles area, while other officials said five had died.
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