The fire in the hills above the Pacific Palisades was a monster from the start, spanning the size of 150 football fields within half an hour and an area larger than Manhattan a day after that. It would take four days before firefighters could establish even a short line of containment around it.

And yet, well before the Palisades Fire ignited Tuesday morning, preparations had begun for aggressive firefighting. Based on forecasts of dangerously fierce and dry Santa Ana winds across Southern California, the Los Angeles Fire Department that morning readied more than a dozen extra engines — mostly in high-risk locations to the north, in the San Fernando Valley — along with the 98 it keeps at the ready in its stations.

The blaze quickly outmatched anything they were ready to handle. LAFD took the rare step of recalling all of its off-duty firefighters for service, while also gathering crews from departments across Southern California. When hurricane-force wind gusts prevented firefighting by air on Tuesday and early Wednesday, crews worked from the ground by the hundreds, helping people escape and scrambling to protect whatever property they could. But they could do nothing to stop the flames.

Some frightened and angry Angelenos have criticized the firefighting response after reports that overtaxed fire hydrants ran dry and homes stood burning with seemingly few firefighters in sight. Mayor Karen Bass (D) responded Thursday with a pledge to evaluate what may have gone wrong once the fire crisis ends, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Friday called for an independent investigation into the water shortages. But it's not clear how soon any failures may come to light: Though winds were easing Friday, dangerous Santa Ana gusts are forecast to pick up again early next week.

The consequences already stand as the costliest series of blazes in U.S. history. Four days into the harrowing episode, neither the Palisades Fire nor the massive Eaton Fire — which together have killed at least 11 people, officials have said, and destroyed thousands of structures across 34,000 acres — was more than 10 per cent contained.

City leaders, fire officials and firefighting experts describe this as a disaster no amount of additional firefighting or stores of water could have prevented. The combination of a historic windstorm and a fast-developing drought during what is normally California's rainy season produced fire weather so extreme, that it stoked what LAFD Fire Chief Kristin Crowley called "one of the most destructive natural disasters in the history of Los Angeles."

For some fire officials, the situation was so extraordinary that they quickly dismissed any second-guessing — instead emphasizing the impossibility of fighting so many fires in such extreme conditions, even in fire-savvy Southern California. It demonstrated what climate scientists call a compound disaster when the effects of human-caused climate change — including record global heat and an increasing whiplash between floods and drought — amplify the convergence of otherwise ordinary natural and man-made factors to create an overwhelming crisis.

At a Wednesday news conference providing updates on the Eaton Fire, one fire chief stressed that little could have made a difference to keep the disaster from becoming such a historic one.

"I'll be clear: We could have had much more water. With those wind gusts, we were not stopping that fire," Pasadena Fire Chief Chad Augustin said.

When winds are as strong as they were Tuesday and Wednesday — reaching 100 mph on mountaintops and surpassing 60 mph along the coast — firefighters are severely limited in their tactics, experts said. They make it too dangerous and all but impossible to establish any fire perimeter. They blow flames as tall as 200 feet horizontally and send balls of red-hot embers flying at speeds that can carry them a mile or two away, where they start what are known as spot fires.

"Instead of having a line of fire, you have a fire that spreads everywhere all at once," said Arnaud Trouve, chair of the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at the University of Maryland.

In extreme winds, it is also unsafe for helicopters to fly so low to the ground, said Joe Ten Eyck, wildfire/urban-interface fire programs coordinator for the International Association of Fire Fighters. Even if firefighters could attack by air, such strong winds make water drops ineffective at extinguishing flames, he said.

The lack of firefighting by air was a critical deficiency that persisted from Tuesday night through early Wednesday, fire officials said, and one that has allowed other devastating Southern California fires to spread in the past, including the Woolsey Fire, which burned across a footprint just to the west of the Palisades Fire in 2018.

"Without helicopters, this kind of a brush fire, we cannot stop it on the ground," said Margaret Stewart, an LAFD spokeswoman.

Perhaps demonstrating what a difference aircraft can make, a fire that threatened the Hollywood Hills late Wednesday was quickly contained and limited to 43 acres. Calmer winds allowed aircraft to douse flames with water from nearby reservoirs.

"This fire was rapidly and aggressively attacked," Crowley said Thursday morning.

It was perhaps the first reprieve from conditions that had otherwise rendered firefighting efforts futile — and dramatically limited any progress crews hoped to make. As the Eaton Fire burned through the Altadena community on Wednesday, one team of exhausted firefighters spent 28 hours battling fires at 15 separate homes, said Augustin, the Pasadena fire chief.

"They didn't save any of them," he said. "But they prevented two or three blocks away from burning down."

There have been allegations shared on social media that L.A. fire crews were less prepared to battle the blazes because of cuts to the city fire department's budget. Budget documents show a $17.6 million reduction for the fire department, putting its 2024-2025 budget at about $820 million.

Bass dismissed concerns as "confusion," saying the cuts did not include money that was being allocated separately for salaries and other fire department expenses. Any reductions did not affect the response to the fire, she said.

But in an interview with local TV station Fox 11, when a reporter repeatedly asked Crowley whether the city government failed its fire department, she said: "Yes."

Fire officials also sought to downplay suggestions that with more firefighters or equipment, they could have contained the massive Palisades and Eaton fires, along with the Hurst and Lidia fires farther north.

"There are not enough firefighters in L.A. County to address four separate fires of this magnitude," county Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said. "We were prepared."

Firefighting teams from across California and the West have poured into the Los Angeles region in recent days to help relieve and reinforce local crews. By Friday, more than 200 fire engines from outside the state, from as far away as Utah, Idaho, and New Mexico, were helping to fight active fires, according to Cal Fire.

Such assistance, known as mutual aid, comes first from nearby communities, and then, as needs grow, from farther away.

But the LAFD does not make such requests ahead of time, said Stewart, the department spokeswoman — even though weather forecasts days in advance warned that extreme fire conditions were likely.

That is because of the logistics involved in ensuring other fire departments remain prepared to cover any activity in their own jurisdictions, said Nate Armstrong, communications chief for Cal Fire. Some resources from outside Los Angeles were put in place ahead of the fires, based on the forecast. But Armstrong said departments don’t pull in from elsewhere across the state — or outside of California — for "an unknown event" until it becomes a true emergency. The more resources that are needed, the farther away they search for aid.

Even if many more crews had been in place before the fire outbreaks began, said the University of Maryland's Trouve, they still may have been limited in their ability to slow or stop such fast-moving flames.

While there are developing technologies using drones to attack fires, he said, "With the tools we have today, I don't think having more firefighters would have made much difference."

Instead, the hope is that firefighters can take advantage of calming winds Friday and Saturday to contain the ongoing blazes so they pose less danger when the Santa Anas inevitably kick back up. Winds are forecast to change direction late Friday, blowing in from the ocean and providing humidity that may briefly decrease fire risks.

That provides a short window to get fires under control before drier winds resume Saturday afternoon, and another period of strong Santa Ana winds hits Monday.

"It's important to get as much done as possible before that," Ten Eyck said.

Source: WP