The Eaton Fire, which burned through parts of Altadena and Pasadena, east of Los Angeles, last month, also saw fire hydrants lose water pressure — even though, unlike Pacific Palisades, there was no empty reservoir to blame.
Rabbi Zushe Rivkin, who runs the local Chabad center, rushed to put out a fire at a congregant’s home in Altadena. He found her garage on fire, with flames licking at the corners of her backyard deck.
And there was no water.
Altadena had the same problem that Palisades did: a sudden drop of water pressure in the system, thanks to thousands of users trying to access the water at once: firefighters at hydrants, homeowners with garden hoses.
One firefighter told Breitbart News that while having a full 117-million-gallon reservoir atop the Palisades might have helped, the simple principles of hydraulics would have deprived at least some users of the needed water pressure.
As LAist noted: “The water systems used to fight the Palisades and Eaton fires couldn’t maintain the continuous high water pressures needed, meaning water stopped flowing in some hydrants.” Instead, air and sediment moved into the water system, which is why officials are still telling local residents not to drink the water yet (if they still have homes).
Local authorities are flushing the pipes in the system to clear them of contaminants, a process that could take weeks.
In future, some residents argue, neighborhoods and even streets should have their own water storage tanks, above ground or underground, to use in emergencies, so that they are not reliant on water pressure in the system as a whole.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
