“With those very calm winds this morning, I think we can really make some progress, turn a corner and start to build some containment for these fires,” said Cal Fire Battalion Chief Brent Pascua. said Today’s program on Thursday.
The response to the disaster has so far been marred by misinformation and controversy. After some fire hydrants ran dry, President-elect Donald Trump baselessly accused California Governor Gavin Newsom of mismanaging the state’s water supplies to save an endangered fish.
City employees have now been able to reach three water tanks on hills near the Palisades Fire to boost pressure. That allows the tanks to refill more quickly so they can continue supplying the hydrants, Stewart says. Each tank holds 1 million gallons. “We have full-flow hydrants,” he says.
More firefighters have begun arriving from Utah, Oregon, Arizona, Washington and New Mexico. According to Stewart, several dozen task forces are en route, each with five fire trucks and a command vehicle.
The planes began flying again on Wednesday. Twelve helicopters fill huge buckets of water hanging from cables and suck seawater through snorkels. Six planes are also working the fires, including a pair of “super primitive” planes that have been flying over the surface of the Pacific to collect water. Helicopters and pickup planes drop water on spot fires, allowing firefighters to approach and extinguish them.
Meanwhile, other planes are dropping fire retardants before the inferno, covering the potential fuel with a layer of nonflammable chemicals and slowing its progress. A C-130 cargo plane that Cal Fire acquired from the Coast Guard and retrofitted this summer can deliver 4,000 gallons of retardant. That gives firefighters time to dig and knock down fire breaks in the bare ground.
Since the ocean limits the Palisades Fire to the south, responders will try to prevent it from spreading to the east or west. “The real differential will be on the flank,” says Pimlott.
A red flag warning for increased fire risk will remain in place through Friday, with humidity at just 8 to 12 percent. California has been suffering an abnormally dry winter, with 40 percent of the state under drought conditions.
“Fuels remain critically dry,” Cal Fire’s James Magana saying at a briefing Thursday morning. “Critical rates of spread can be expected, especially on ridge tops or in drainages that are aligned with the wind.”
On Saturday the winds are expected to change direction. If firefighters are not prepared, the central part of the fire could become the front and spread north.
Even once they are able to contain the conflagration within a circle of firebreaks and natural barriers, that will not be the end of the task. Firefighters will have to extinguish smaller fires within that footprint.
“That’s a critical stage, to clear out these hot spots or anything that might reignite if the winds pick up again,” Upton says.
In the future, the city will need to clean up debris, restore public services and analyze damage to the environment before allowing people to return. With the canyons devoid of trees and vegetation holding up the soil, landslides could become a threat once rains return.
Los Angeles will face the prospect of rebuilding destroyed communities. That’s an opportunity to make them less vulnerable to the next fire, says Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension.
Although in many cases houses must be built with fire-resistant materials, California law is silent on how they should be laid out. Techniques such as grouping houses together instead of scattering them among trees can make them easier to defend against fire and evacuate, he says.
“That’s part of the hope here: that we can make some of this better, smarter and safer,” Moritz says.