The LA wildfires are still ongoing, having started almost a week ago last Tuesday. With a number of theories circulating on why the fires broke out, many people were shocked to discover that the fire hydrants across Los Angeles actually ran out of water whilst firefighters attempt to tackle the blaze.

At one point during the past week, up to 20 per cent of the city’s hydrants went dry, and firefighters actually stopped tapping into them completely on Thursday night.

With more than 180,000 evacuations in order and fires tearing through 40,306 acres of land, which is equivalent to the size of the city of Paris, all focus is on the management of the remaining fires.

Here’s how and why the fire hydrants ran empty during the LA fires

via SWNS

The reason the fire hydrants ran out of water during the LA fires wasn’t due to lack of preparation, as some theories online suggest. Despite a lot of online discourse, the issue of water shortage was much more complex than it seems.

Instead, the reason fire hydrants were empty during the LA fires was actually due to the water systems being designed for much smaller fires.

The patchwork of municipal water systems which feed LA draw water from 200 different utilities, and support a system designed to fight lower level fires. Fire hydrants are installed to tackle urban fires, rather than the multiple large scale fires which rolled across the city from the hills.

Former general manager and chief engineer at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, told The New York Times: “We are looking at a situation that is just completely not part of any domestic water system design. If this is going to be a norm, there is going to have to be some new thinking about how systems are designed.”

Faith Kearns, a wildfire and water expert, explained that LA fire hydrants were not implemented for this type of scenario: “It was like a worst-case scenario, but I think we should be planning for those worst-case scenarios. You can’t predict everything, but also, I do think this is where we’re headed.”

Featured image via SWNS