As multiple fires rage around the Los Angeles basin, the 7,500 fire and emergency personnel on the ground are facing unprecedented conditions.
At least five LA residents have been killed, and the death count is expected to rise as responders search burned areas. At least 10,000 structures have been destroyed, and several of the five blazes are still burning out of control.
“This is what our crews train for,” Capt Adam VanGerpen of the Los Angeles fire department told local news. “We’re used to keeping long hours. What’s keeping us going is there’s work to do. There are still homes on fire, there are people being evacuated. We’re just at the beginning stages of this.”
Fire crews are facing dire challenges, hurdles that have intensified the fires and are complicating the response.
Whipping winds
Hurricane-force winds peaked at 100mph in some areas of the LA basin during the week. Most of the mountain areas remain under a red-flag warning, indicating that any fires that start will spread rapidly. High winds stopped scooper planes and helicopters from dropping water on the fires on Tuesday night, and may do so in the future. But they can also disperse dropped water in all directions, instead of allowing it to drop on flames.
In addition, winds blow embers into new areas. Dry desert air from the east – which is not normal this time of year – has been fanning the flames while blowing over hilltops and down through the canyons. That makes the job of containing a fire much harder.
“This wildfire was the most chaotic winds I’ve experienced in 20 years,” Capt Erik Scott, a Los Angeles fire department spokesperson, said about the Palisades blaze, the largest of the fires.
“These were the chaotic winds that we were absolutely worried would create the explosive fire behavior that we do have,” Scott said. “It’s not just the flame fronts that take out houses. It’s the ember cast that can fly a mile or two in front and will land on a property or go in somebody’s attic and burn homes from the top down.”
In addition, low humidity sucks water from grasses and trees, making them more susceptible to fire.
Dry hydrants
When firefighters turned on hydrant valves in parts of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood to fight blazes on Tuesday night, they found low water pressure – or, in some cases, dry hydrants. The Los Angeles department of water and power (LADWP) was pumping from aqueducts and groundwater, but demand outpaced supply in the 1m-gallon tanks, leading to low water pressure.
LA mayor Karen Bass estimated that 20% of hydrants ran dry in the Pacific Palisades, where more than 1,000 structures have been lost. Hydrants are designed for fighting one or two fires at a time – not hundreds of buildings and homes on fire.
Three million gallons of water were available when the Palisades fire started, said Janisse Quiñones, head of LADWP, later at a news conference. But the demand had been four times greater than “we’ve ever seen in the system”.
Personnel
There are 9,000 firefighters in Los Angeles county between the county’s fire department and other fire agencies, which is not sufficient to address all the fires in the region, according to fire officials. With local firefighting capacity close to the maximum, authorities are calling on outside help to battle the blazes.
Anthony Marrone, the LA county fire department chief, said on Wednesday that all 29 county fire departments are at “a drawdown, with no fire apparatus or additional personnel to spare.”
LAFD put out notice of a “recall operation”, asking all off-duty crews to report their availability to assist in firefighting – the first time in 19 years the department has had to turn to this protocol.
Other parts of the region are stepping in to help. Crews from Alameda county, Oakland, Hayward and Fremont fire departments were sent to help. Arizona, Nevada, Washington and Oregon sent teams to assist as well.
Roadblocks
Hundreds of cars were left blocking Palisades Drive and Sunset Boulevard, two of the main corridors in and out of Pacific Palisades. As people abandoned their cars and fled on foot, first responders were forced to push more than 200 cars aside with bulldozers so firefighting crews could drive up the hill to houses in danger.
