Firefighters battled desperately to save homes and lives as wildfires raged through a Pacific Palisades canyon.

At the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Emergency Operations Center, 17 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, dozens of employees were huddled around computers at long tables in a conference room. The system’s water pressure from remote sensors installed throughout the city was projected onto a screen.

By the afternoon of January 7, as more firefighters rushed to put out the fire, it became increasingly clear that the Palisades urgently needed more water.

The water in the tank that regulates the pressure upstream of the canyon was beginning to decrease. DWP officials needed to find a way to increase pressure on the western part of the grid. There, a 36-inch pipeline would carry water from the Bel Air Reservoir to the Westside, then uphill into the Palisades Highlands.

They grappled with a high-stakes choice: cut off water to neighborhoods like Brentwood or face reduced water pressure on the front lines.

Without water, dialysis centers and other medical facilities would not be able to function. How long does it take to safely close the valve? Will the pipes be able to handle such a change or could it burst?

As the inferno spread, flames invaded some areas where water cuts were being considered.

Anselmo Collins, DWP’s director of water operations, said in his first interview on DWP’s water practices that cutting off water to adjacent areas would put them at risk and slow efforts to extinguish the growing fire. He said he ultimately decided he was going to ruin it. flows to fight devastating wildfires.

“We had a plan, but we didn’t execute that plan,” Collins said. The nearby enclave “needed water for fire protection.”

DWP’s decisions years before the Palisades fire and in the hours after the explosion drew harsh criticism and Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered an investigation. On Tuesday, the LA City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling on DWP to publicly present an analysis of its actions during the Palisades fire.

Water officials and experts interviewed by the Times said municipal water systems in places like Los Angeles are generally better able to withstand firestorms that sweep through neighborhoods, even in areas where wildfire risk is higher. Said it wasn’t designed. Collins’ remarks are the first detailed explanation of DWP’s response to the most destructive fire in LA history.

Headquarters of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

(Los Angeles Times)

As the fire spread rapidly in extremely strong winds, the use of so much water caused a sudden drop in air pressure at high altitudes, leaving firefighters to contend with empty hydrants. Another issue is that the 117 million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir in the upper Palisades was emptied in February 2024 for repairs, reducing available water.

Collins said the reservoir’s lid was ruptured and water regulations required it to be emptied. The repairs, which were bid out to a contractor for about $130,000, have not yet been completed, and Collins doesn’t expect the reservoir to reopen until April or May. Collins said DWP is still assessing the impact of taking the reservoir offline.

“I think it helped, but I don’t know how much of a help it helped at this point,” Collins said.

Asked what he would have done differently, Collins said it was too early to say. They said they would evaluate the overall response later.

“I’m focused right now on getting the system back. That’s the number one priority,” he said.

Los Angeles residents get their water from a grid of pipelines that crisscross the city.

In the Palisades, houses dot the sloping canyon landscape, drawing water from tanks on the hillsides above.

The 36-inch pipeline along Sunset Boulevard will provide water to Brentwood and Palisades Village, then wind along Palisades Drive toward the Highland community hundreds of feet above sea level. There, water is pumped upwards into three tanks, each with a capacity of 1 million gallons of water.

The tanks are installed high up in the neighborhood to maintain water pressure for the homes and fire hydrants below. When someone takes a bath, fills a pool, or opens a fire hydrant, gravity causes water to drop down from the tank.

Typically, more water is pumped from the pipeline to refill the tank, offsetting the shower or glass of water.

On Tuesday, inside the DWP’s modernist headquarters, Collins and his colleagues complained that water levels were getting lower and lower, and pumps could refill tanks faster than they could siphon water into fire hydrants and homes below. I watched it become impossible.

DWP water storage tank above Via La Costa in Pacific Palisades.

(Myung Jay Chun/Los Angeles Times)

The first system failure, just before 5 p.m., occurred on the tank Marquez Nords, which was wedged into a cul-de-sac north of the village of Palisades.

“When the tank was empty, we realized the demand was that great,” Collins said.

DWP wanted to send a team to the nearby area and install equipment to regulate pressure in and below the area. But as crews got to work, flames consumed a neighbor’s house.

“The fire department immediately told members to evacuate for their own safety,” Collins said. “They were surrounded by fire.”

Mr Collins defended the DWP’s decision not to pre-emptively bring in additional water crews before severe wind warnings were issued. He said employees are on “high alert” and ready to alert yards across the city in the event of an emergency.

“You don’t want to make assumptions and put your staff in the wrong place when you don’t know what the emergency will be like,” he says.

By 2:30 p.m., the water level in the next-highest aquarium, the trailer, installed inside a small Mediterranean mansion in Palisades Highlands, began to plummet, Collins said. By 8:30pm the tank was dry. As the night progressed, dozens of fire hydrants lost pressure.

The Palisades system soon resembled a hose that had been pricked a thousand times, and its flow weakened significantly. Scores of firefighters were drawing water from fire hydrants as many homes burned. If the structure collapsed and the pipes melted or bent, water could have spewed out, further reducing pressure.

“Especially when you have a large-scale housing loss, you start draining the system,” said Tom Kennedy, a water consultant and former general manager of San Diego County’s Rainbow City Water District. “So it is very difficult to maintain system pressure and volume within the tank.”

At one point, DWP called in a water tanker to directly supply water to the fire engine. Nine tankers arrived Tuesday, and six more the next day, each carrying 52,000 gallons. The state sent additional tankers.

Around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, the water level in the region’s highest tank, a squat steel cylinder located in the Temescal Valley, began to drop. By 3 a.m. Wednesday, the tank was empty.

“The fire department was using dozens of hydrants,” Collins said. “Despite having the tank pumped, the level in the tank was still dropping.”

Meanwhile, Collins and his team channeled as much water as possible, quadrupling the normal flow rate to nearly 45,000 gallons per minute, enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every 15 minutes. did.

Kennedy, a former San Diego County Water Department employee, agreed with DWP’s decision not to shut off water to nearby areas.

“If they had turned off the water to other areas, I think it’s likely that ignition would have occurred in some of the other areas and that would have become a major fire in itself,” Kennedy said. . If a large fire breaks out, firefighters knock down scattered embers to limit the spread, he said.

By 9 p.m., helicopters were grounded due to wind gusts of up to 90 mph, leaving the city unable to pump water from Bel Air, Encino and Hollywood reservoirs, a pillar of the city’s wildfire response strategy.

DWP currently estimates that 20% of the approximately 1,100 fire hydrants in the Palisades have lost pressure, but Collins said that figure is based on calculating the number of high-rise homes served by three water tanks. It is said that it is based on The rest, he claimed, was under pressure from the water mains.

Elsewhere in Southern California, large amounts of water are stored in reservoirs and underground, and Los Angeles has access to it when needed. But transferring water from these locations would require coordination between the city and the regional water wholesaler, the Southern California Metropolitan Water District.

As the Palisades Fire intensified, DWP called MWD for help, and water soon began flowing into a backup connector road near the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Highway 405, which had not been used since 2019.

“We wanted to try a lot of things,” says MWD interim general manager Devn Upadhyay. Over the next 48 hours, officials activated a pumping station next to the Burbank airport and urged state officials to halt repairs to the Castaic Lake reservoir to increase flow to the West Side, Upadhyay said. He said he asked for it.

The fire has since spread to 23,713 acres and nine people are confirmed dead. About 5,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed in the Palisades fire, according to aerial maps, with authorities so far confirming 2,869 destroyed and 508 damaged.

Collins and other DWP officials emphasized that the current focus is on restoring the Palisades water system.

Over the weekend, hundreds of DWP officers fanned out across the burnt area, visiting destroyed homes and businesses.

LADWP contractors removed trees around power lines in Mandeville Canyon on Tuesday.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

By Tuesday morning, water had been shut off to more than 4,700 sites, allowing DWP workers to refill water tanks and restore pressure. By Wednesday night, both the Marquez Nord and trailer tanks were fully filled.

MWD leader Upadhyay said it will take time to analyze the cause of the drop in water pressure and measures to prevent it from happening again. He echoed comments from other water managers that the design of the city’s water system created “significant challenges” in large-scale firefighting.

Collins said he is open to overhauling the system to deal with “weather extremes,” but that DWP’s customers, Los Angeles residents and businesses, need to be willing to pay for it.