Seven months before the fire was swept by the Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, the water managers of the city formulated a plan to breathe new life into an old reservoir to temporarily increase the limited water capacity of the area.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was examining the option because the most important reservoir of the neighborhood – the Santa Ynez reservoir – had been taken offline as a result of a torn coverage, which officials had started preparing to repair early in 2024. The repair project was still for months from the completion of the start of the rudder of the blaze.
E -mails released to the New York Times under Public Records Law show that the city had searched for solutions to remedy the Montale shortage of the offer, but despite long discussions and provisional preparations, the problem could not be resolved on time.
At the beginning of June 2024, crews spent a few days cleaning the Pacific Palisades reservoir, a facility about three miles away from the larger Santa Ynez site that had retired in 2013. The work, civil servants wrote, were “in preparation for the temporary to reduce the Pacific Palisades reservoir while the Santa Ynez -Reservoir is out of service.”
After the cleansing was completed, the crews had planned more work, including disinfection of the area and the installation of new pipes.
But the plan to reduce the old reservoir online has never been completed. Ellen Cheng, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said in an e -mail on Friday that the city ultimately established that bringing the reservoir online could have a risk for employees and residents of nearby houses due to structural and other safety problems.
By the time the fire started at the beginning of January, the Pacific Palisades reservoir remained out of service and the Santa Ynez -Reservoir was still two months away from operable.
The inability to bring one of the two reservoir back online seriously undermined the potential water supply in the area. The Santa Ynez -Reservoir can retain tens of millions of liters of water. The Pacific Palisades reservoir can contain more than six million gallons.
Instead, when predictions showed a high fire hazard before the Inferno broke out, city officials said they trusted in a much smaller storage supply – three tanks in the area with a capacity of about one million gallons each. Hours after the eruption of the fire on the morning of January 7, at 4.45 pm, one of those tanks was exhausted. Another was emptied that night. The third was drained the next day at 3 o’clock, while the fire was still burning. Firefighters reported that hydrants were dry in some areas.
It is not certain how much difference the extra offer could have made. But it seems clear that the second reservoir, if activated, could have helped to maintain the total water capacity, partly by supporting the water pressure in the area.
Matthew Stumpf, a lawyer who is part of a legal team that represents more than 750 wildfire victims, said they had tried to get records and answers from the city about how both reservoirs were managed. He said that problems with the water supply were central in some of the legal claims around the fire.
“We believe it played a role in the destruction,” he said, adding that the victims of the fire brigade had not been informed that the city had considered restoring the Pacific Palisades Reservoir site.
That site has long been considered a fire fighting supplement. Before the city worked to add a floating coverage to the Santa Ynez reserve to improve water quality and security, city officials added a reservoir to the Pacific Palisades Reservoir where firefighters could land a helicopter to refill their stock.
Mrs Cheng said that the reservoir, built in 1929, was retired because the low height meant that water was there longer than ideal, causing quality problems. She said that cracks also caused leaks and the roof of the reservoir was affected.
In recent weeks, crews completed the repair project in the Santa Ynez -Reservoir and the city began to fill the reservoir, hoping to restore it this week. But in the process, said city officials, more leaks were discovered and it had to be removed again.
City officials say they now hope to employ the Santa Ynez reserve by the end of June.
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