From the PLaybook
‘No Water in the Hydrants’: Communities Left Defenseless Against Chile’s Deadliest Wildfire
By Brent McDonald, Miguel Soffia and Kristen Williamson•March 16, 2024
Weeks after Chile’s deadliest wildfire, some firefighters and residents said a lack of water to fire hydrants had hampered efforts to combat the inferno that destroyed thousands of homes and killed 134.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/americas/100000009306678/chile-fires-water-access.html
>From the PLaybook
Trial Run or Failed Attempt
Firefighters faced low water pressure when battling Mountain fire. Here's what happened
LA Times
Grace Toohey
November 15, 2024 at 3:00 PM
In a matter of hours, the Mountain fire charged rapidly across the Santa Susana Mountains and into nearby foothill neighborhoods, forcing widespread evacuations and demanding intense firefights from crews showered in red-hot embers.
Even as hundreds of firefighters around the region immediately kicked into action, the wind-driven blaze grew in unpredictable and dangerous ways, razing homes, tearing through orchards and threatening thousands living in and around Camarillo, Moorpark and Santa Paula.
But officials made an early decision that would pay off: by prioritizing life-saving missions over property protection, no one died in the otherwise devastating wildfire. Only a few minor injuries were reported.
But not everything went off without a hitch. About five hours after the fire ignited near Somis around 9 a.m. on Nov. 6, some firefighters hit a snag in their response efforts.
"We are having some water issues up here where we've got low water pressure," one firefighter could be heard saying in recordings of radio traffic that day. He asked command staff to check with the water providers and sort out any problems.
Then, hours later in the hills around Camarillo, Santa Barbara County Fire Capt. Hugh Montgomery — responding to Ventura County's call for aid — said that his engine had hit a roadblock after successfully salvaging about a dozen burning homes.
"We were inside of a structure fire and starting to make good headway when the hydrants went dry,” he said.
That evening at a news conference, Ventura County Fire Capt. Trevor Johnson addressed a question about water issues, saying that water availability remained a challenge, and a dangerous one.
"Just to locate fire hydrants when the water system is failing — everything is dangerous out there," Johnson said.
Reports about water pressure issues and dry hydrants splashed across the evening news that night with images of smoldering homes in the background.
Specifics on the extent of the problem weren't immediately available, but two water pumps in the Camarillo foothills — the area hit hardest by fire losses — became inactive during the firefight, halting or slowing the process to refill hillside water tanks that fuel high-elevation fire hydrants, officials confirmed this week. One pump was completely destroyed in the blaze while another lost power during Southern California Edison's planned electricity shutoffs, and it took hours to bring it back online with a generator, according to officials at the Calleguas Municipal Water District.
However, water and firefighting authorities maintain the disruptions are expected and planned for during major wildfires, asserting that it simply shifts firefighting operations. They were adamant that water remained available at other sources nearby.
On the first day of the Mountain fire, a man sprays water on a home in Camarillo.
>Trial Run or Failed Attempt
“Did water run out? Yes," Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner saidat a community meeting this week. "We had adequate firefighting water for a long time and [firefighters] used it, and then when those hydrants — on the west side or in the [Camarillo] Estates — wherever they went dry, firefighters adjust to that. … We’re used to that. …. The fact is we never quit fighting fire."
It's still unclear exactly how widespread the water disruptions were, if they could have been avoided or if any more homes could have been saved with uninterrupted water flow, given the erratic inferno that was feeding on parched vegetation and exploding amid hurricane-force winds. Gardner said all of that will be part of a review of the Mountain fire. In total, more than 240 structures, many of which were primary residences, have been confirmed destroyed and an additional 127 damaged. The almost 20,000-acre fire was 91% contained Friday.
Read more:Mountain fire is the most destructive in years. It could have been much worse
“If you think of the hundreds of firefighters and the hundreds of firetrucks we had in the [Camarillo] Heights and Estates, every one of them was hooked up to a hydrant at one point and they were flowing a lot of water and those waters are held in tanks — so those tanks are going to lower," Gardner said. “I know we suffered great damage, but thousands of homes were saved.”
Even in the best of circumstances, this wildfire was extremely volatile, putting firefighters on defense as embers jumped up to two miles ahead of the main fire and intense winds pushed streams of water sideways and grounded some retardant-dropping aircraft, according to Ventura County Fire Deputy Chief Chad Cook.
“Gusting over 80 mph is something that does structural damage to homes,” Cook said. “You add the element of fire to the wind, you have a different animal — you have an animal that is not controllable."
Still, residents in the area have continued to ask about the water supply issues, especially given that the National Weather Service had issued dire alerts about fire-friendly conditions in the area and Southern California Edison warned that shutoffs were likely.
“At some point in time, somebody didn’t have water and that’s not good in a fire situation for all the obvious reasons — from safety on to saving a house," said Steve Bennett, a state Assembly member representing Ventura. "It’s something that you just don’t want to have when these fires break out."
The water pump issue has haunted Bennett since the 2017 Thomas fire, when it took Ventura officials hours to get pumps on backup generators so water could resume flowing to fire hydrants. After getting few answers about what occurred then, Bennett sued, but said the details he was later provided were still inadequate. He doesn't want that to play out again.
https://www.aol.com/news/firefighters-faced-low-water-pressure-200007874.html?guccounter=1
>From the PLaybook
>‘No Water in the Hydrants’: Communities Left Defenseless Against Chile’s Deadliest Wildfire
>Trial Run or Failed Attempt
As Inferno Grew, Lahaina’s Water System Collapsed
Firefighters who rushed to contain the Maui wildfire found thathydrants were running dry, forcing crews to embark instead on a perilous rescue mission.
By Mike BakerKellen Browning and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Reporting from Lahaina, Hawaii, and New York
Published Aug. 13, 2023Updated Aug. 22, 2023
During the frantic moments on Tuesday after a wildfire jumped containment near a residential neighborhood in Lahaina, Hawaii, firefighters rushing to slow the spread were distressed to find that their hydrants were starting to run dry.
Hoping to control the blaze as it took root among homes along the hillside nearly a mile above the center of town, fire crews encountered water pressure that was increasingly feeble, with the wind turning the streams into mist. Then, as the inferno stoked by hurricane-force gusts grew, roaring further toward the historic center of town on the island of Maui, the hydrants sputtered and became largely useless.
“There was just no water in the hydrants,” said Keahi Ho, one of the firefighters who was on duty in Lahaina.
The collapse of the town’s water system, described to The New York Times by several people on scene, is yet another disastrous factor in a confluence that ended up producing what is now the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than 100 years. The lack of water forced firefighters into an extraordinary rush to save lives by risking their own, and it has left people searching for answers about how the community can better prepare for a world of fiercer winds and drier lands.
Edwin Lindsey III, who goes by Ekolu, a Lahaina resident who lost his home and also sits on the county’s Board of Water Supply, said he spoke with a firefighter who said it had been demoralizing for crews to watch the advance of the fire with little ability to slow it. He said he hoped that the water issues, one of a number of challenges the community faced — including a struggle to evacuate all residents — would be part of a larger discussion about lessons from the fire.
“What do we learn from this?” he said.
The water system in Lahaina relies on both surface water from a creek and groundwater pumped from wells. Persistent drought conditions combined with population growth have already led officials at the state and local level to explore ways to shore up water supplies, and they broke ground on a new well two months ago to increase capacity.
On the day the fire tore through Lahaina, the fight was complicated by winds in excess of 70 miles per hour, stoked by a hurricane offshore. Not only did the wind fuel the blaze, it made it impossible during much of the day to launch helicopters that could have carried in and dropped water from the ocean.
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Early that day, as winds knocked out power to thousands of people, county officials urged people to conserve water, saying that “power outages are impacting the ability to pump water.”
John Stufflebean, the county’s director of water supply, said backup generators allowed the system to maintain sufficient overall supply throughout the fire. But he said that as the fire began moving down the hillside, turning homes into rubble, many properties were damaged so badly that water was spewing out of their melting pipes, depressurizing the network that also supplies the hydrants.
“The water was leaking out of the system,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/us/lahaina-water-failure.html
Feds say he masterminded an epic California water heist. Some farmers say he’s their Robin Hood
A large canal and smaller irrigation channel run parallel to one another across dusty farmland.
The Delta-Mendota Canal, left, ferries fresh water from Northern California to vast acres of farmland along the arid western edge of the San Joaquin Valley.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
By Jessica GarrisonStaff Writer
April 28, 2024 3 AM PT
LOS BANOS, Calif. — Robert Zavala was fresh out of the Marines and looking to escape dead-end work at a poultry plant in the early 1990s when his old baseball coach — now the head of a local water district — swooped to the rescue with a job offer.
Zavala was grateful for the job, which eventually paid more than $150,000 a year and included perks such as free housing and a new truck. Grateful enough, he later testified in state court, that when he learned the public agency he worked for was stealing water from the federal government he kept his mouth shut. For years.
And then one day in 2016, FBI agents showed up at his house.
“They told me they were investigating my boss for water theft, and they wanted to know if I wanted to go to federal prison with him,” Zavala said in his testimony.
Zavala became one of many employees the FBI would interview about goings-on in the Panoche Water District, a public agency formed in 1951 that supplies irrigation for 38,000 acres of farmland in Fresno and Merced counties on the parched western side of the San Joaquin Valley.
The stories were “unimaginable,” one Panoche official later testified in the same civil case. Public funds were allegedly used to pay for housing and pickup trucks for employees, along with slot machines, illicit home remodels, tickets to Katy Perry concerts, even an employee’s court-ordered restitution for an assault charge, according to testimony in the civil case, court filings in a state criminal case and a related state audit.
Not to mention the alleged theft of 130,000 acre feet of water — enough to supply a small city for several years.
Federal prosecutors would eventually bring felony charges against Zavala’s old boss, the former general manager of the Panoche Water District, accusing him of one of the most audacious and long-running water heists in California history.
In a state with prolonged bouts of drought and unquenching thirst, stolen water is an indelible part of California lore. But this was not Los Angeles’ brazen gambit to take water from the Owens Valley. Or San Francisco’s ploy to flood part of Yosemite National Park for a reservoir. The water grab described in a federal indictment allegedly happened cat burglar-style, siphoned through a secret pipe, often after hours, to avoid detection.
Prosecutors have accused Dennis Falaschi, 77, a gregarious local irrigation official, of masterminding the theft of more than $25 million worth of water out of a federal canal over the course of two decades and selling it to farmers and other local water districts. According to the allegations, proceeds that should have gone to the federal government instead were used to benefit Falaschi, his water district and a small group of co-conspirators, much of it funneled into exorbitant salaries and lavish fringe benefits.
For more than a year, Falaschi maintained his innocence, insisting there had been no theft. Then this spring, his attorneys filed paperwork that said he was prepared to change his plea. Exactly what he will plead guilty to remains unclear: A change-of-plea hearing initially scheduled for April was pushed back at least a month while the two sides continue to wrangle. Attorneys in both camps have declined to discuss their negotiations.
>Feds say he masterminded an epic California water heist. Some farmers say he’s their Robin Hood
LOS BANOS, Calif. — Robert Zavala was fresh out of the Marines and looking to escape dead-end work at a poultry plant in the early 1990s when his old baseball coach — now the head of a local water district — swooped to the rescue with a job offer.
Zavala was grateful for the job, which eventually paid more than $150,000 a year and included perks such as free housing and a new truck. Grateful enough, he later testified in state court, that when he learned the public agency he worked for was stealing water from the federal government he kept his mouth shut. For years.
And then one day in 2016, FBI agents showed up at his house.
“They told me they were investigating my boss for water theft, and they wanted to know if I wanted to go to federal prison with him,” Zavala said in his testimony.
Zavala became one of many employees the FBI would interview about goings-on in the Panoche Water District, a public agency formed in 1951 that supplies irrigation for 38,000 acres of farmland in Fresno and Merced counties on the parched western side of the San Joaquin Valley.
The stories were “unimaginable,” one Panoche official later testified in the same civil case. Public funds were allegedly used to pay for housing and pickup trucks for employees, along with slot machines, illicit home remodels, tickets to Katy Perry concerts, even an employee’s court-ordered restitution for an assault charge, according to testimony in the civil case, court filings in a state criminal case and a related state audit.
Not to mention the alleged theft of 130,000 acre feet of water — enough to supply a small city for several years.
Federal prosecutors would eventually bring felony charges against Zavala’s old boss, the former general manager of the Panoche Water District, accusing him of one of the most audacious and long-running water heists in California history.
In a state with prolonged bouts of drought and unquenching thirst, stolen water is an indelible part of California lore. But this was not Los Angeles’ brazen gambit to take water from the Owens Valley. Or San Francisco’s ploy to flood part of Yosemite National Park for a reservoir. The water grab described in a federal indictment allegedly happened cat burglar-style, siphoned through a secret pipe, often after hours, to avoid detection.
Prosecutors have accused Dennis Falaschi, 77, a gregarious local irrigation official, of masterminding the theft of more than $25 million worth of water out of a federal canal over the course of two decades and selling it to farmers and other local water districts. According to the allegations, proceeds that should have gone to the federal government instead were used to benefit Falaschi, his water district and a small group of co-conspirators, much of it funneled into exorbitant salaries and lavish fringe benefits.
For more than a year, Falaschi maintained his innocence, insisting there had been no theft. Then this spring, his attorneys filed paperwork that said he was prepared to change his plea. Exactly what he will plead guilty to remains unclear: A change-of-plea hearing initially scheduled for April was pushed back at least a month while the two sides continue to wrangle. Attorneys in both camps have declined to discuss their negotiations.
When the federal indictment was handed down in 2022, the allegations riveted this community. And divided it. Because in this dusty and often forgotten part of California, water has never come easy and the quest to transform an arid valley into a hothouse of agricultural bounty has led to environmental catastrophe and decades of strife.
Some farmers who relied on Falaschi and his irrigation district were outraged — at the government. They see him as the Robin Hood of irrigation: Any alleged sins would have been committed with the noble intention of making sure desperate farmers got the water they needed to grow the food that feeds the nation.
Others were furious. San Joaquin Valley farmers are already fighting stricter irrigation limits as the state looks to ensure healthy water flows for wildlife and curb groundwater pumping that is causing portions of the valley to sink. The idea that a water official may have been stealing supplies would only make it more difficult for farmers to secure the water they needed in the years ahead.
The allegations also raised unsettling questions: According to prosecutors, the illicit siphoning stretched from 1992 to 2015, and Falaschi wasn’t the only one who appeared to be living the high life. So who else was in on the alleged scheme? And why did state and federal water officials take so long to notice?
The U.S. attorney’s office, FBI, California Department of Justice, state Department of Toxic Substances Control and the federal Bureau of Reclamation all declined to comment for this article. Falaschi’s attorney, Marc Days, declined to make his client available. This report is based on interviews with former water district employees and Los Banos residents, as well as Bureau of Reclamation records and civil and criminal cases filed in state and federal courts.
“You know the saying, right? Whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting over,” said Mark Walsh, who was employed in the spring of 2015 as a hydrographer for the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, the agency that oversees the federal government’s water operations in the western San Joaquin Valley. “Water is liquid gold” in these parts, he added. “If you got it, you can make a ton of money.”
Walsh, whose family has been in Los Banos for three generations, was tasked with driving miles up and down the Delta-Mendota Canal to make sure the hundreds of pipes and irrigation ditches connected to the canal were functioning — and measuring all the water flowing out. “It’s a little bit of algebra, a whole lotta math,” he said of the various checks he would do, often in the sweltering heat.
He was just past Checkpoint 17 on a bright morning in April 2015 when his eye caught a burst of yellow where it didn’t belong: a straw hat near an irrigation pipe that had been abandoned, a remnant from an old irrigation setup. The hat was spinning in circles, as if caught in a whirlpool. But that made no sense. There wasn’t supposed to be any water flowing through that pipe, certainly not enough to spin a hat.
Walsh stopped to take a closer look.
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