Posted on 01/11/2025 2:56:11 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
Los Angeles' municipal utility lacks a common safety procedure that may have kept water pumping to fire hydrants during an intentional power shutoff, though President Biden said the outage caused the problem.
Republicans, including President-elect Trump, have blamed Democratic officials — at least in part — for the water shortage, which has hampered efforts to fight devastating wildfires in Los Angeles County. Democrats have rebuked these claims, and on Thursday, Biden suggested the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) bore responsibility for shutting off power to pumps that fuel the hydrants.
"What I know from talking to the governor, there are concerns out there that there’s also been a water shortage," Biden told reporters. "The fact is the utilities shut off power because they are worried the lines that carried energy were going to be blown down and spark additional fires. When it did that, it cut off the ability to generate pumping the water — that’s what caused the lack of water in these hydrants."
Biden noted that generators were being deployed following the shutdown to get power back to the pumps and ensure there is no longer a shortage of water to fight the fire.
But a report from The Wall Street Journal unveiled Friday highlighted how LADWP is the only major utility company in California without an intentional shut-off protocol, known as a "Public Safety Power Shut Off" procedure. The protocol lays out plans for how to proactively shut down certain electricity lines during dangerous windstorms and limit the impact to public safety.
"Being prepared for a power shutoff takes careful planning, which begins by designing our water systems the right way and working with local fire agencies and energy companies to ensure community safety," California Water Service, a private utility provider in the state...
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I have no doubt that Brib’em has never heard of underground electrical cables.
LADWP needs pumps backed by by Yuge Batteries....
And, why don’t these critical pumping stations have independent diesel engines?
Oh, it’s California. Maybe they were planning on windmills and solar panels. They were going to get on that right after they finished they high speed rail system.
Tall buildings should have water towers, in case of power outages during a fire. If you have no tall buildings, just build the damn tower. Gravity doesn’t have outages. Reservoirs should be used to keep the water towers primed. In case the pumps to the towers don’t work, take a helicopter, scoop up humungous buckets of the stuff from the reservoir, and pour it on the damned fire! In case you have no reservoirs, do the same thing to the ocean. The salt in it is not great, but it’s still f##%ing water and can put out most fires. In case your heat is so far up your a@@ that you can’t manage these simple steps, don’t run for public office in California.
Should be “head,” not “heat”. AI strikes again.
BASIC INFRASTRUCTURE!!!
Dems need to be kicked to the curb and adults have to take over.
Some of this was preventable
Can't stop all of them. But you can control the spread.
Wasn’t Chomo Joe suppose to oversee the trillions of dollars from the Obama porkulus infrastructure money?
For once Biden is talking sense. Because it is the policy to cut municipal power during high mph winds, standard procedure should be back-up Generac-type generators to automatically power the fire hydrant water supply pumps.
You can’t fly helicopters in high winds. If there is not enough water in the towers to meet the demand, sea water can be used. There are places that get flooded with sea water. A little fire hose full of sea water isn’t going to grow green crab grass.
Captain Dementia no longer even knows when he’s crapped himself, he just mumbles, burbles and stumbles trough what somebody told him to say.
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