Michelle So, Contributing Photographer

Let’s paint a picture of the Los Angeles wildfires.

Climate change-induced extreme and near-record dryness settles into southern and central California and Nevada. By April 2024, climatologists begin taking note of the below-average precipitation. In the U.S. Drought Monitor’s September 2024 report, parts of the region receive a moderate, D1 drought designation. 

A grueling summer passes by. The urban valley breaks records with all-around temperatures of above 100 °F. Hundreds die, many more are hospitalized — heat exhaustion and heat strokes are to blame. 

All the while, in this nine-month period, vegetation in the coastal chaparral dries, withers and browns. 

In early January 2025, just a week after New Year, furious 80 mph Santa Ana winds swept through SoCal. The winds are natural, occurring when cool, pressurized desert air heats and picks up speed as it races down a mountainside. 

Blustery and mildly irritating to those with dust-sensitivities, Santa Ana wind episodes only last a few days. Angelenos are used to the late-fall windstorms.

This time, things are different.

Fires start and spread. First in the Pacific Palisades, then Eaton Canyon of Altadena, Kenneth, Hollywood Hills.

Climate patterns had irrevocably shifted as a result of anthropogenic activity. Drought, fuel and a single spark was all it took for the urban metropolis to go up in flames.

“Climate change has lots of cascading effects on water systems,” Shimon Anisfeld, a Yale researcher of water resources and environmental chemistry, wrote to the News. “But probably the three biggest categories are: increased hydrologic variability, which leads to more droughts and floods; increased evaporation, which leads to overall drier conditions in many places; and loss of natural water storage in the form of snow and ice, which leads to less water available during the summer.” 

Water in the desert

By 3 a.m. of Jan. 8, the firefighters in the Pacific Palisades came across an unthinkable problem: the hydrants had gone dry.

It didn’t take long for rumors to leak. Misinformation spread like hopping embers. 

Social media users speculated that billionaires controlling the Kern Water Bank had refused to lend water to firefighting efforts. This was proven false; the Kern Water Bank is over 100 miles north of the fires, and has played no part in ever contributing to the fires.

The more plausible explanation, however, remained: the reservoir had been emptied. 

This second explanation was closer to, though not entirely, the truth. The Santa Ynez Reservoir, located near the Pacific Palisades, holds up to 117 million gallons of water. It was strategically placed in the region so that water resources could be used to fight fires in the event of one.

The LA Department of Water and Power, LADWP, declined to further comment on the issue with the News. Instead, LADWP referred the News to a previously issued statement from early January.

According to the statement, “water pressure in the system was lost due to unprecedented and extreme water demand to fight the wildfire without aerial support. This impacted our ability to refill the three water tanks supplying the Palisades and a low percentage of hydrants in the area, mostly in the higher elevations. As soon as LADWP identified the risk of losing water in the tanks and water pressure in the system, we immediately deployed potable water tankers to sustain support for firefighting efforts.”

This contrasted with a more recent LA Times article that claimed tear-related repairs had taken the reservoir out of commission. 

According to the LA Times, the reservoir had been emptied to deal with repairs. When the fires snuck up on the region, the reservoir could not be filled fast enough.

“The fire hydrants ran dry because water was being pulled from them faster than it could be replaced, not because the system as a whole didn’t have enough water,” Anisfeld wrote to the News. “In the hilly landscape of Pacific Palisades, water pressure is dependent on high-elevation water tanks, which have limited capacity, about 3 million gallons – when they ran dry, there was trouble refilling them quickly because of power limitations and leaks caused by the fires themselves.”

According to Anisfeld, urban water systems like the Santa Ynez Reservoir were designed to fight fires in which a few structures are burning at once, not these kinds of massive conflagrations at the wildland-urban interface. 

Additionally, air support, usually a key component of fighting wildfires, was nearly impossible given the high winds during the critical time periods.

“The water systems in California are fundamentally different from those in Connecticut because of the differences in climate, hydrology, and water uses. For example, California, with its Mediterranean climate and multi-year droughts, needs much more water storage than Connecticut,” Anisfeld said. “And the demand side is quite different too: in California, agriculture is a huge part of the picture, while in Connecticut, most water use is for cities and households.”

Anisfeld recently published a water management textbook explaining these issues and others in detail titled, “Water Management: Prioritizing Justice and Sustainability.”

Unsafe and Undrinkable

But further issues have plagued the Palisades preexisting water crisis; LADWP has been under further backlash due to “Do Not Drink” alerts regarding the reservoir’s contaminated water. 

On Jan. 10, LADWP released a statement saying the water surrounding the Palisades was unsafe to drink. 

Residents in Pasadena and Altadena, around the Eaton Fire, also received similar alerts, but from Pasadena Water and Power. 

David Backer Peral ’28, a first year at Yale, attended La Cañada High School, roughly five miles from the epicenter of the Eaton Fire. While he wasn’t in the area at the time, friends and family in the area were notified of unsafe tap water.

He said that his friends received water “alerts from Pasadena when going on the highway” near the Eaton Fire. 

“My friends in La Cañada ignored the [Do Not Drink] warnings once they made sure the water was safe to drink,” Backer Peral said. “And then my family in Altadena, I think, just bought bottled water at the stores when they were in the area.”

Volatile organic compounds, a toxic contaminant introduced by the fires, had entered the reservoir. Low water pressure made it impossible to simply flush out these toxins, leaving the undrinkable water stagnant. Still water also poses a problem — it becomes a breeding ground for pathogens like bacteria and viruses.

The Do Not Drink alert for Pasadena was lifted on Jan. 24, 2025.  

Future concerns

Oct. 1 marks the start of a new Water Year. Water management is a costly endeavor, especially when there’s less of it to manage. 

The Getty Center and Museum went aflame early in the Palisades Fire episode. Unlike the less fortunate residential abodes, the facility had been well equipped with anti-fire engineering.

Vegetation was regularly pruned. Galleries containing multi-million dollar works of art were sealed when the fire ran up the hillside. 

Crucially, rather than rely on the faulty Santa Ynez Reservoir, the Getty relied on its own supply of water — stored conveniently on-site.

“There is a one-million-gallon water storage tank on site as an alternate or additional water supply that can support fire sprinklers and hydrants as necessary,” the Getty Center explained on the website. 

However, most of the fire zones remain outside the philanthropic, foundational support of the Getty. 

The Arroyo Seco Foundation, a conservation organization that manages the Arroyo Seco and Hahamongna watershed, posted a picture of the spreading basins, small man-made ponds to prevent runoff into the ocean. Noticeably missing from the image: water.

“One year ago, the spreading basins in the Arroyo Seco were filled with water which was slowly recharging the aquifer,” the caption read. “Today these spreading basins are all bone dry. There’s no water for the aquifer. And there’s barely any water upstream for the rainbow trout that inhabit the Arroyo.”

Luckily for the Arroyo, and its rainbow trout, Southern California had its first rain this week. In some ways, it was a respite from the dry ashiness that had fueled the fire. There was also cause for concern.

These hillsides, no longer held up by vegetation, will lose integrity at the soonest rain. When they slip, mounds and rivers of mud, boulders, house foundations will come down. A scorched slope sets the blueprint for mudslides.

“With rain ahead this weekend, we are swiftly installing concrete barriers in the burn zone, laying down sandbags and clearing debris to shore up burn areas and stem the flow of toxins,” Mayor Karen Bass wrote on X.com earlier this week. 

Flood runoff can carry municipal toxins to the sea, where the water problem, once a burden to terrestrial human life, becomes a concern to the hundreds of miles of coastline and the trillions of organisms that live in its salty depths.

Water, once a lifeline, remains a betrayer.