However, the fires have also become another reason to litigate a long list of grievances with California’s decisions around water: taking down dams, not building enough reservoirs, protecting a tiny fish. It’s important to understand that these factors have little relevance to the ongoing fire response. “I think some of the conversation is so unrelated to fire hydrants in LA it’s hard to know where to start,” said Faith Kearns, a water and wildfire researcher at the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.

“Extreme wind conditions did not allow for a common wildland firefighting approach, which is water dropped by air,” Faith Kearns, a water and wildfire expert with the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University, told Al Jazeera. “Helicopters, for example, were not able to fly under those conditions early on in the fires, so the demand on hydrants and other urban water infrastructure was intense.”

Kathryn Sorensen, Director of Research at Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy, said, “Local water systems are usually designed to fight local, small-scale fires over a limited time period.”

Residents in affected areas have been placed under unsafe water advisories, being instructed not to drink the tap water until further notice. How long drinking water will remain unsafe for residents is still unclear, says Faith Kearns, scientist and director of research communications with the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative at Arizona State University. 

“We know the value of water when we don't have it,” says Kathryn Sorensen. “It's relatively easy to look back and say it would have been beneficial to increase storage but there's usually pushback whenever these utilities try to increase rates to pay for aging infrastructure. It’s important to support these systems all the time so they can be in a position to perform when it’s needed.”

"The county's 200 water utilities rely on multiple power companies to run water pumps and other machinery that can be damaged by fires, so it's difficult to immediately identify what went wrong," said Faith Kearns, the Arizona State water and wildfire expert. "Finding out who's responsible will be really complex."

“Local water systems are usually designed to fight local, small-scale fires over a limited time period,” said Kathryn Sorensen, director of research at Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy. “They are not generally designed to fight large, long-lasting wildfires.”

Taking steps such as building more defensible space around homes will help, but the state’s 2,800 water systems will also need upgrades. Because they “have vastly different planning and operational capacities,” there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, according to a 2021 report co-authored by Faith Kearns and Greg Pierce.

Faith Kearns, a wildfire and water expert with the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University, said understanding the impacts of wildfires on water systems is a relatively new area of study, particularly when it comes to urban areas like Los Angeles. Kearns co-authored a 2021 brief on this intersection, focusing on California and inspired by incidents like the 2017 Tubbs Fire, which burned into the city of Santa Rosa.

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