Why did fire hydrants run dry across Los Angeles?
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Critics have erroneously blamed California environmental policies and empty reservoirs for lack of water. As Los Angeles battles multiple fast-moving wildfires, emergency officials have faced a nightmare sitaution: fire hydrants that have run out of water.
![[Trump argued Gavin Newsom could’ve opened a water main to allow more water to reach Los Angeles, those experts say the state’s reservoirs weren’t to blame for the shortage]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/10/13/UCRANIA-GUERRA_77497.jpg)
Critics have sounded off on the situation from near and far. Rachel Darvish, a resident of the scorched Pacific Palisades neighborhood, went viral after she confronted California Governor Newsom over the tapped-out hydrants, insisting she would “fill up the hydrants myself.”.
According to experts and government officials, the water shortage issue is much more complex. Faced with a series of fires moving as fast as five football fields per minute, this system buckled. By Wednesday, three 1 million gallon, high-elevation water tanks supplying the hard-hit Pacific Palisades went dry. High demand not only drained the tanks, and drew from water that would’ve been used to replenish them, but it also lowered pressure within the overall hydrant system, further straining the ability of firefighters to quickly get water.
Some of that demand would’ve been met by a 117 million gallon reservoir complex in the Pacific Palisades, but it sat out of use for repairs as the fires in the Palisades began. Officials estimate that had the Santa Ynez Reservoir been online, it would’ve cut demand on the area’s water system from four times to three times as high as normal.
