Adam Schiff: My Initial Understanding Is the Reservoirs the Palisades Were Drawing on Were Full at the Initiation of Fires

KARL: “In your talk with local — with first responders, with local officials, what’s your understanding? Why did some of those — or so many of those fire hydrants simply run dry? Was there something to do with that 117 million-gallon reservoir in the Palisades that was out of operation? What’s your understanding? What’s your initial read on this?”
Schiff: “Well, my initial take, and I certainly want a full review of this so that I can form a more complete understanding of the matter, but my initial understanding is the reservoirs that the Palisades were drawing on, these 3 million-gallon reservoirs, were full at the initiation of these fires. But they’re intended — frankly, they have the capacity to put out homes that maybe house multiple houses, not if the whole town is up in flames. And more particularly, not if the winds are so strong that aircraft can’t fly. And this was the problem in the very beginning. The winds were hurricane force, up to 100 miles-an-hour winds. You can’t fly in that, and you depend on being able to do water drops to put down those kind of flames. I have to think there are probably hundreds of towns in California, thousands and thousands across the country that are in equally the same position that if they had 100-mile-an-hour winds and a lot of dry fuel, they wouldn’t have any more water than this community did. We also had the problem that pipes were melting. And so, you had houses burning down, the pipes in those houses melting, water coming out of those pipes, reducing pressure. I think this was an issue in the Altadena fire. And so, we’re going to have to get to the bottom of this and, frankly, a lot of other things.”