California governor Gavin Newsom admits he wants to know “what the hell happened” to critical water systems as the Los Angeles wildfires devastated the city amid anger from residents over the state’s response.
Newsom told Pod Save America on Saturday that local leaders in LA had not given him “straight answers” about the devastation caused by the deadly fires, which have left at least 16 dead and more than 12,000 structures turned to ashes.
Newsom has also come under fire from president-elect Donald Trump for the state’s response, which he has rejected as “disinformation.”
Strong winds are expected to return to the region on Sunday fanning the flames, and Newsom was asked on Sunday morning’s Meet the Press on NBC what he hoped to learn from an independent investigation that has been launched.
“The same ones you’re asking. Same ones that people out on the streets are asking, yelling about, ‘What the hell happened? What happened to the water system?’ And, by the way, was it just overwhelmed? That you had so much that was used? We drew it down. Was it pipes? Was it electricity?” he said.
“It was a combination of pipes, electricities, and pumps. Was that drawdown impossible because you lost seven-plus thousand structures right here anyway and every single structure we lost had a pipe that was leaking, and we would’ve lost that water pressure anyway?
“Did it contribute in any way to our inability to fight the fire? Or were 99 mile-an-hour winds determinative and there was really no firefight that could’ve been more meaningful? So all of us want to know those answers, and I just don’t want to wait because people are asking me. I want to know those facts. I want them objectively determined, and let the chips fall where they may. This is not about finger pointing.”
CAL FIRE says the blazes have consumed about 62 square miles of the region, an area larger than San Francisco, with at least 89 percent of the fires in the largest area, the Palisades, still not under control.
Another round of up to 70 mph winds, which have already significantly worsened the fires by fanning flames and transporting dangerous embers, is expected to hit on Monday and later in the week. A lack of any measurable rainfall since April last year and a short supply of water has made extinguishing the flames more difficult. One California Fire official described this lethal combination of factors as “perfect ingredients” for the rapid spread of wildfires.
Asked if this confluence of problems could lead to the wildfires becoming the US’ worst natural disaster, California governor Gavin Newsom said: “I think it will be in terms of just the costs associated with it in terms of the scale and scope.”
Addressing the rising death toll, he added that they have search and rescue teams trying to access the worst affected areas but “there’s likely to be a lot more [fatalities]”.
“The challenge is the winds,” he said. “We’ve got these winds coming back this evening, Sunday night. We’ve got peak winds on Monday.”
The windstorms originating in the Santa Ana mountains to the north of Los Angeles have dramatically worsened the blazes by creating “ember casts” that travel down and ignite spot fires miles from the initial fires. While Santa Ana windstorms are common in the region, they have been unexpectedly powerful over the past week.
Jim Hudson, a California Fire incident commander, said the ember casts of last week were the worst he has ever seen.
“In my career, I’ve never seen an ember cast like we saw that Tuesday and into Wednesday,” he said. “It was something that I don’t know that I’ll witness in my career again.”
The winds expected in the coming days should only be about 60 to 70 percent of the strength of the initial storms, say officials, but a red flag warning remains in place until 6pm local time on Wednesday.
The fire is also threatening to jump over Interstate 405 and into densely populated areas in the Hollywood Hills and San Fernando Valley.
Evacuation orders throughout the Los Angeles area now cover 153,000 residents, putting 57,000 structures at risk. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna says another 166,000 residents have been warned that they may have to evacuate.
More than 14,000 personnel, including newly arrived firefighters from Mexico and aid from Canada, as well as seven neighboring US states, are working to contain the fires.
US president Joe Biden has issued a major disaster declaration, promising to reimburse in full the costs of battling the initial fires.
He said he emphasized to California officials they should “spare no expense to do what they need to do.”
Aircraft have been dropping water and fire retardant on steep hills to stem the eastward spread of the Palisades wildfire to the east of Los Angeles, while crews on the ground are attacking fire lines with hand tools and hoses.
The second largest fire, in Eaton, north of Los Angeles near Pasadena, has killed 11 people and burned through more than 14,000 acres, but it is still only 15 percent contained.
Newsom says they are now “pre-positioning assets” around the state in anticipation of more fires. “And we’re pre-positioning not just here in the theatre, those existing five-plus fires, but now broadening that to a number of other counties and moving farther south with some of those resources in anticipation we could see some flare-ups in new places, new starts,” he said.
He has also called for an independent investigation into a lack of water supply that has left firefighters struggling to tackle the blazes. Numerous fire hydrants in higher-elevation streets in the Palisades ran dry earlier this week as the wildfires tore through the area.
It has also been revealed that a 117 million-gallon water storage complex in the Palisades has also been empty since February for repairs to its cover.
US president-elect Donald Trump has accused Newsom of being “incompetent”, an accusation that he and other California officials have rebuffed. The Democratic California governor has accused Mr Trump of politicizing the disaster.
Mr Newsom issued an executive order on Friday to support the state’s ongoing response. A statement from the governor’s office said the order would add “criticism flexibilities for health care and emergency workers, schools, and child care providers”.
