Los Angeles County officials missed dozens of opportunities for water infrastructure improvements that experts say likely would have allowed firefighters to save more homes during the Palisade fire, public records show. According to.

Some fire hydrants went dry as crews battled the blaze, which has burned a huge swath of L.A. County and killed at least 11 people.

Water shortages have been under scrutiny since wildfires broke out on Jan. 7, with officials rushing to explain why the 117 million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir was left empty for maintenance. I’m here.

But thousands of pages of state, county and city records reviewed by the Times show the disaster was years in the making. Red tape, budget shortfalls, and government inaction repeatedly thwarted plans to improve water systems, including one that specifically cited the need to increase firefighting capacity.

Many projects on a list of about 30 “highest priority” upgrades compiled by county officials in 2013 have yet to break ground in communities ravaged by fire.

The county wrote that the upgrades will accomplish “important goals,” including ensuring there is enough water to meet “fire flow needs.” The estimated cost was less than $57 million and construction took approximately seven years.

Plans remained on the drawing board to build tanks that would have provided more than 1 million gallons of additional water storage in fire-stricken Malibu and Topanga. Replacement of “aging and severely degraded” water tanks, along with upgrades to pumping stations and “leaky” water lines in two communities operated by the county’s Department of Public Works, will replace water tanks that are “ageing and severely degraded,” according to county records. Water lines have been postponed. D.P.W.

Plans to build new connections to draw water from adjacent water systems in emergencies have also been delayed for years.

Mark Pestrala, the county’s public works director, said in an interview that Malibu and Topanga’s water systems “performed like they were designed” during the Palisade fire. He said it was built to provide enough water to fight individual home and structure fires, rather than large-scale wildfires.

“Can you do more? It’s good for every engineer, every firefighter to tell you more,” Pestrala said. “When a firefighter says if he had more water, he might be able to do more, that’s not necessarily true.”

He claimed the proposed upgrades had only a minor impact. “It’s just giving us a chance to save relatively few homes. … Wouldn’t it be better if there was more water here and there? Maybe they could have had more of a chance.”

Residents in the fire area said they were furious to learn the county failed to complete projects that could have helped limit damage.

“I’m disappointed in the leaders of my community,” said Kathy King, one of the only people whose Malibu home remained standing in her neighborhood after the 2018 Woolsey Fire. I did. “Money, but I think if you live in a community like this, it’s an obligation you have. With water issues you have to have a better system. ”

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Long stretches of very dry weather combined with powerful wind gusts already created a recipe for disaster when Palisade erupted. But experts said the projects L.A. County was unable to complete would make a difference in emergency response.

“The impact of water availability on L.A. County’s water system and wildfires has been studied by UCLA urban planning professor Gregory Pierce.

Edith de Guzman, another UCLA professor and water expert, agreed with that assessment. “Some homes could have been saved. It’s absolutely possible that it could have helped a little bit.”

Pestrella said the county’s 2013 list is “a capital improvement master plan, not a promise to build.” However, cost became an issue and contributed to repeated delays.

In 2019, the county compiled a new “Priority Projects List” that includes several action items left over from six years ago. The 13 upgrades would cost approximately $59.3 million, and all but one were scheduled to be completed by September 2024.

One of the projects considered the most important was a planned connection to the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, which the county estimated in 2019 to cost about $4.1 million, according to Malibu city records.

A 2015 county planning document said the Las Virgenes connection could be used “in case of a catastrophe… to prevent water shortages.”

Three months ago, Malibu’s Planning Commission gave the project its stamp of approval. Construction is expected to begin in summer 2026, according to county records.

The lack of progress on many plans has been driven in part by residents’ opposition to potential increases to what is already the highest level of increase in the county. Ensuring compliance with environmental regulations can also take years, according to Pestrella, the county’s public works director.

Anti-development sentiment is a particularly limiting factor in Malibu, and Pestrella said the city is using inadequate water access as an excuse to limit new construction.

“The community isn’t demanding it,” he said when asked why so many projects haven’t moved forward.

“They’re not developers. They’re still using the water system as a way to limit development in Malibu. That’s the bottom line. So it’s happening at the rate it can happen. There is no reason.”

Jorge Rodriguez, a spokesperson for Malibu’s Palisades Fire Emergency Operations Center, provided a brief statement via email. Certain aspects of our operations. ”

The long-delayed action would have been a drop in the bucket compared to the billions of dollars in estimated damage from the fires.

The county’s 2013 project list includes a proposed $186,000 “fire flow enhancement” for about a half-mile of unconsolidated L.A. County Road Shoreline Drive that begins at the Pacific Coast Highway and burnishes the Pacific Palisades border. I am. The same stretch was flagged again in 2019, and “more than 2,000 feet of leak-prone, aging, and severely degraded” water lines were replaced at a cost of $2.8 million.

The project “will improve the fire flow and reliability of the system,” according to county public works records. Last year, the county was expected to start this spring with $6 million.

It’s not clear if the fire hydrant on Shoreline Drive is in the dry. However, firefighters reported others in the area were lacking water.

On Jan. 8, after the Palisade fire broke out, 41-year-old Jessica McIntyre returned to her apartment on a stretch of Shoreline Drive where the water line is set to be upgraded. Most buildings nearby had been reduced to rubble. She escaped the flames.

“We thought we were homeless,” she said as she packed her belongings into her ash-covered sedan.

As she packed in, firefighters worked to extinguish the burning house in the street. Firefighters drew water from a tanker truck instead of a nearby fire hydrant.

“I know all emergency services are doing everything they can,” McIntyre said. “This could get worse and that’s really scary. I certainly hope it doesn’t.”

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One of the storage tanks that supplies water for firefighting purposes in Malibu stands behind a “trespassing” sign and a padlocked chain-link gate topped with barbed wire.

The impressive concrete structure, known as the Lower Bushtank, shows signs of age, with cracks latticeworked across its façade and splintered timbers ringing at the upper edges.

A few years ago, county documents described a $4 million plan to replace an “aging and severely deteriorated 300,000-gallon concrete tank” with a larger steel one. One goal of the proposed modifications was to “improve fire flow.”

The upgrade, which the county identified as a “priority” project in 2019, never happened.

Records show multiple other plans to build or upgrade regional water storage tanks, described by Pestrella as part of the county’s push to create a “more resilient fire system,” have been repeatedly halted.

A proposal to increase water capacity one mile west of Malibu’s Palisade fire zone has been delayed for more than a decade.

Darian Wong, a public works environmental engineering specialist, said in a November webinar that the $13 million project will build a 1.1 million-gallon water tank and “replace old water and smaller water infiltration.” I said it was planned. Pipe Infrastructure in Summer 2027”.

A utility study released last fall found that existing infrastructure “does not provide sufficient capacity to provide fire flow protection to the service area.”

Malibu isn’t the only city with a long wait for water system upgrades.

Ryan Ulyate, co-chairman of the Topanga Canyon Fire Safe Council, an organization that educates area residents on wildfires, said it’s a way to fortify their homes. Canyon.

A $2.7 million project “to improve fire and reliability” by replacing Fernwood’s two “aging and severely degraded 50,000-gallon” tanks with one 200,000-gallon tank in 2020 and 2021. It was included in county planning documents. The plan never came to fruition. Instead, one of the existing tanks was refurbished, according to county records.

Ulyate acknowledges that water system upgrades alone wouldn’t have stopped the wildfires, but he said they may have helped the community weather it.

“We have to do our best to make sure our water infrastructure is as good as it can be,” he said. “They’re going to learn a lesson from this.”