A series of devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area that began on Tuesday continue to wreak havoc on communities there, claiming the lives of at least five people and forcing tens of thousands from their homes. Reporting indicates that officials are quickly running out of water resources to fight the blazes. The Los Angeles Times is reporting that many fire hydrants, when tapped, had “little to no water flowing out.”
Daniel Aldrich, a Northeastern professor, director of the university’s Resilience Studies Program and co-director at the Global Resilience Institute, says it’s possible that local systems simply aren’t equipped to battle such intense fires. “We’ve seen this before in the Kobe earthquake in 1995, when the pipes broke, so firefighters were unable to get enough pressure to be able to spray the water,” Aldrich says. “Those fires destroyed a lot of the area.”
