(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Fire Hydrants Can't Stop Wildland Urban Interface Fires [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-08
The latest idiocy out of the Musk and wannabe-Musk cabal is to suggest is that a lack of water at fire hydrants allowed the fire to get out of control in Pacific Palisades. I am not a firefighter, but I worked for western elected officials for long enough to have been on tours of active fire zones with Mayors of major cities facing down firestorms and I have a basic understanding of how wildland urban interface firefighting works from that.
Simply put, you can't stop a wildland fire with water if there isn't running water in the undeveloped lands it is growing on. And, by the time it reaches developments, it is usually so big that it cannot be stopped with water. The problem is that every homeowner with a garden hose tries to water down their house. This spike in demand appears to be the root cause of the hydrants in Pacific Palisades running dry.
There are several types of equipment that are vital for Wildland/urban interface firefighting: bulldozers that cut broad swaths in vegetation; helicopter, hot shot, engine crews and hand crews, who work in unison to starve fires of the fuel they need to grow; the only time water is effective is at the beginning of a fire or when fire behavior has calmed due to the establishment of lines. Fires are contained and stopped by crews building clearings of vegetation called lines that starve the fire of fuel. Effectively building lines when there's an out of control fire and 90 mile per hour winds is effectively impossible because strong winds can carry embers over the lines and ignite new spot fires.
Most Wildland firefighting is not done by local fire departments. The two largest firefighting groups in California are the The US Forest Service and Cal Fire, a State of California firefighting agency. Local governments do provide supplemental firefighters as part of interagency teams, but incident commands on urban interface wildfires in the West are generally led by the Forest Service or Cal Fire.
Both the Forest Service and Cal Fire have large aircraft fleets that can, in the right conditions, be used to suppress the fire and buy ground crews time to establish lines. Unfortunately, 90 mile per hour winds are well outside their parameters of safe and effective operations. An aircraft crashing and igniting another fire could make the situation infinitely worse. Despite California's significant budget deficit, Governor Newsom was investing in fire prevention and aircraft acquisition well before this firestorm. Newsom has also been addressing the root cause of the problem, that California has built out and not up for a century, by supporting things like transit oriented, dense development.
When I worked for elected officials, fires would bring communities and politicians together. I have a fond memory of being in the room with a Republican State Senator and a Democratic Mayor who both represented an area being impacted by fires. The conversation had no electoral positioning or insults, it was two people with different philosophies talking to each other to figure out how to work together for the betterment of their community.
For Rick Caruso, a defeated billionaire candidate for Mayor to try and salvage the fortune he lost at the ballot box by grandstanding and talking about a subject, Wildland urban interface firefighting, that he knows nothing about is particularly shameful and disqualifying. It's clear to me that Caruso and his consultants think they can launch a recall and defeat Mayor Karen Bass because she was out of the country when the fire started (she's since returned).
Finally, I am glad Joe Biden is still the President and doing what Presidents should do in times of crisis: leading . Let us remember that this is how a President should act the next time there is a massive fire and we hear out soon to be President rant about how the fire could've been prevented if we raked more leaves and had fewer wind mills.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/8/2295917/-Fire-Hydrants-Can-t-Stop-Wildland-Urban-Interface-Fires?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
