An aerial firefighting fleet of over 50 helicopters and numerous fixed-wing tankers is set to join the battle against at least four major blazes in Los Angeles, after the extreme Santa Ana winds that had fueled the flames’ initial rapid spread began to relent yesterday.
Five people have now been killed by the historic blazes impacting the city and county, with dozens injured, over 100,000 under mandatory evacuation orders, and over 2,000 buildings damaged or destroyed in what has quickly become one of the most destructive wildfires ever to hit Los Angeles.
“What we’re seeing is the result of eight months of negligible rain and winds that have not been seen in L.A. for at least 14 years,” said L.A. Mayor Karen Bass in a press briefing yesterday afternoon. “It’s a deadly combination.”
The blazes began on Jan. 7, and were driven at a frightening speed by winds gusting over 80 miles per hour — which also restricted the ability of firefighting aircraft to get into the air.
By the evening of Jan. 8, the Palisades Fire in the Santa Monica mountains had grown to over 17,200 acres, while the Eaton Fire in Altadena-Pasadena had burned 10,636 acres. Both were at zero percent containment.
“We are prone to wildfires, but nothing like what I witnessed today,” said L.A. County Board of Supervisors chair Kathryn Barger at the briefing. “The Eaton Canyon Fire is ripping through a community like nothing I have ever seen. It is like a third world country out there.”
Fire agencies had begun to make progress in containing two smaller fires — the Hurst Fire (855 acres, 10 percent contained) and Lidia Fire (348 acres, 40 percent contained) — but another major blaze, known as the Sunset Fire, took hold Jan. 8 in the Hollywood Hills.
“This incident is very, very dynamic as we speak,” said L.A. City Fire Chief Kristin Crowley during the Jan. 8 afternoon briefing. “The good news: the winds have subsided a bit, enough to allow our fixed-wing and rotor wing aircraft to provide critical air support to this fire.”
According to numbers provided by the office of California Governor Gavin Newsom, Cal Fire has 31 helicopters available to fight the fires, as well as six air tankers. Among the fleet are 13 Sikorsky S-70i Firehawks, all equipped for night operations.
These will soon be joined by 10 helicopters (Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks) from the California National Guard’s Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, five U.S. Forest Service large air tankers (with another en route), and 10 federal firefighting helicopters.
The Department of Defense is also sending 10 Navy helicopters from San Diego. Sabrina Singh, deputy Pentagon press secretary, said the federal government was ready to supply more support, but that the restricted ability to get aircraft in the air in L.A. was a factor in the decision to send just 10 aircraft.
One of Coulson Aviation’s CH-47 Chinooks was among the aircraft working through the night in Los Angeles. The aircraft is able to onboard 3,000 U.S. gal (11,300 liters) of water in 90 seconds with its retractable snorkel, and is one of three Chinooks (along with a Sikorsky S-76 reconnaissance aircraft) Coulson supplies as part of a contract to support Southern California’s Quick Reaction Force.
Also seen flying through the night on firefighting operations were an L.A. (City) Fire Department Leonardo AW139, an L.A. County Fire Department Sikorsky S-70i Firehawk, and a Helicopter Express Bell 205A-1.
A stretched water supply
Janisse Quiñones, L.A. Department of Water and Power (DWP) CEO and chief engineer, said the company had seen four times more demand for water in the Palisades Fire area than it had ever recorded before — and that this stretched the available water supply in the area.
“This fire was different and unprecedented because they didn’t have air resources to fight it,” she explained during the afternoon briefing on Jan. 8. “So, you’re fighting a wildfire with a fire hydrant system. Fire hydrants are not made to fight multiple houses, hundreds of houses at a time — they’re made to fight one or two house [fires].”
As a result, three one-million-gallon tanks that had been filled with water ahead of the fire to help combat flames in the area were rapidly depleted, leaving only 80 percent of the hydrants in the region fully functional. Three contingency plans to bolster the supply of water failed, but Quiñones said DWP was engineering a solution — and adding ground water tankers to the fleet.
Community leaders urged the public to stay informed and be prepared to evacuate “without delay” if needed, with strong winds forecast to continue through Friday (Jan. 10).
“As we head into tonight, we are still facing strong and erratic winds, and in Palisades and [Eaton] we are very much in an active firefight,” warned Mayor Bass. “Finally, air operations have resumed — and that is a big deal — but it is up to the winds as to how long the air support can continue.”