LA Wildfires Magnify Need to Rethink Infrastructure
Wildfires wreaked havoc on the Greater Los Angeles area, leading infrastructure experts to consider how they can build back better. Building specifically by creating water management systems that will show improved performance in the face of future fires.
The perfect cocktail mix of multiple fires, droughtlike conditions and 100 mph Santa Ana winds let the fires storm across the area causing tens of billions of dollars in damage.
Many suggested that a lack of water played a key role in the resulting destruction, but Vice Director at the University of California, Davis’ Center for Watershed Sciences, Jay R. Lund, Ph.D., said that is not the case.
“Southern California has more than a million acre-feet of water in surface water storage,” Lund said. “That’s enough water to take all of the areas on fire and drown them under 20-25 feet of water. But when you have an area that is as thermodynamically unstable as Los Angeles County – that’s been very, very dry because it hasn’t rained – and you add lots of fuel and 100 mph winds, it’s just not something you can fight with water.”
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, Newsha Ajami, Ph.D., chief development officer for research in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said, historically, wildfires tended to stick close to wilderness areas.
“We fought them with water bags and retardants dropped on them from helicopters and aircraft. Firefighters on the ground would work to make space so the fire could slow down and not move toward more developed areas,” she said. “Now, wildfires are encroaching on development. Our emergency water systems simply were designed to fight a small kitchen fire or a building fire – not a fire of this intensity and magnitude.”
Still, she said, there could be improvements in the water distribution system to help get water to where it is most needed in the event of a fire. Porse agreed, saying that waterlines could be upgraded to better address small- and medium-sized fire events.
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