As Los Angeles firefighters faced down the most destructive blaze in the city’s history, they ran out of water.
“The hydrants are down,” a firefighter said over the radio, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Another chipped in: “Water supply just dropped.”
Fire crews were forced to watch as entire blocks of the Pacific Palisades — one of the most scenic and celeb-packed neighborhoods in LA — were incinerated in a matter of hours late Tuesday and early Wednesday.
“There’s no water in the fire hydrants,” Rick Caruso, who owns the Palisades Village mall in the heart of the devastated area, fumed to local media. “The firefighters are there, and there’s nothing they can do — we’ve got neighborhoods burning, homes burning, and businesses burning. … It should never happen.”
The water shortage was the result of years of mismanagement of LA’s water system — including a federal indictment of a leader and high-profile resignations — as well as major operational problems that drained reserves too quickly.
The Pacific Palisades fire, whipped up by hurricane-force Santa Ana winds, destroyed more than 1,000 homes and businesses. By Wednesday night, it had spread to 16,000 acres (25 square miles), bigger than the island of Manhattan in New York — and crews had not managed to contain any of it.
LA residents voiced their outrage over the conditions that allowed the fire — and two other blazes in Los Angeles County — to rage out of control. Five people had died as of Wednesday night, several others were injured and at least 70,000 were told to evacuate their homes across the LA area.
Adding insult, Democratic Mayor Karen Bass was 7,400 miles away in Africa, and months earlier she had approved an $18 million cut to the fire department.
“RESIGN! WHY ARE YOU IN GHANA?!,” one person commented on an X post by Bass’ office giving an update on the wildfires.
Hellbound and Down 