Strain on water supply hindered LA wildfires response, expert says

Bangkok Post Group

As firefighters begin to gain control of the California wildfires, water specialist Edith de Guzman tells Reuters a trifecta of conditions from dry hydrants, low water pressure and lack of recent rainfall hindered the emergency response. - REUTERS

Transcript

00:00We have much more of this climate whiplash sort of phenomenon where we have very, very

00:14wet years followed by very dry years.

00:18And that is in and of itself very problematic because it creates more susceptibility in

00:24places that didn't used to be quite so high risk.

00:32Well the reality is that we have urban water systems that are not designed to fight wildfires

00:40or put out entire sort of, you know, mountainsides that are on fire and we are having, you know,

00:47very high severity events that are unprecedented.

00:53We had extremely wet winters in 2023 and 24, which encouraged a lot of vegetative growth

01:02and then followed by an unprecedentedly dry few months.

01:08And then the third component, of course, was these ferocious winds.

01:14And so literally sort of a perfect firestorm of factors that came together to create an

01:20extreme demand for water in a very short amount of time.

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