Hydrants in the hills of the Pacific Palisades ran dry amid one of the worst blazes ever seen in Los Angeles County, forcing firefighters to scramble to draw water from pools and ponds or — even worse — watch as homes and businesses burned. On the other side of the county, water pressure in Altadena dropped to a trickle at times as flames from the Eaton Fire destroyed neighborhoods. As stories of firefighters struggling to find water circulated on social media and in the news, residents demanded answers. The response from local officials was consistent: municipal water systems just aren’t designed to fight such intense and prolonged wildfires. But as climate change makes what were once-in-a-lifetime disasters more common and the borders between urban and wildlands further narrow, stakeholders are now questioning if that needs to change.

Related wildfire and water articles:

• ABC 7 News: San Francisco has an underground emergency water supply: How reliable is it?
• Los Angeles Times: Newsom orders probe into why Pacific Palisades reservoir was offline during fires
• The New York Times: ‘Completely dry’: How Los Angeles firefighters ran out of water
• CNN: No ‘water system in the world’ could have handled the LA fires. How the region could have minimized the damage
• The Washington Post: A surprising byproduct of wildfires: Contaminated drinking water
• PolitiFact: Fact-check: Los Angeles fires fuel falsehoods, including by Trump about water management
• Fortune: Claims about a billionaire couple hurting efforts to fight the LA fires via their ‘control’ of the water supply are false
• The Conversation: Blog: Firefighting planes are dumping ocean water on the Los Angeles fires − why using saltwater is typically a last resort