The Western Journal By
After nearly two weeks, firefighters in Los Angeles announced Friday that they were seeing the “light at the end of the tunnel” in fighting the blazes that have consumed much of Southern California.
What does this entail? Well, according to The Wall Street Journal, the two biggest fires haven’t grown in the past few days; while the Palisades fire was only 31 percent contained early on Friday, the Altadena fire was 65 percent contained. Over 12,000 structures and 40,000 acres have burned; according to the New York Post, 27 are dead and 31 are still missing.
As the fires are being contained, it’s worth assessing what went wrong here: How was so much political and professional incompetence allowed to fester and metastasize?
Among a litany of other causes, one stands out as particularly dumb in the light of what’s happened — a refusal to use seawater to fight the fires.
Early in the crisis, Janisse Quiñones, CEO of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, noted that low pressure in three million-gallon tanks was hampering their ability to fight the Palisades blaze.
According to the Los Angeles Daily News, she said “that the first water tank in Pacific Palisades that was tapped by firefighters held about 1 million gallons of water but it ran out of water at 4:45 p.m. Tuesday, and the second tank of 1 million gallons of water ran out of water at about 8:30 p.m., followed by the third tank early Wednesday” of last week.
Quiñones said the blazes “pushed the system to the extreme,” and she urged residents to conserve “because the fire department needs the water to fight fires and we’re fighting a wildfire with urban water systems, and that is really challenging.”
OK, but if you’ve looked at a map recently, you may have noticed that the Palisades fire is right by the Pacific Ocean. Why not use saltwater?
There is a reason — but it’s not a terribly good one under the circumstances…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (westernjournal.com)
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