As wildfires continue to wreak havoc on Greater Los Angeles, infrastructure experts are already considering how they can build back better, specifically by creating water management systems that will show improved performance in the face of future fires.
In the past, wildfire season in California, which typically affected the region’s wildlands and development at the wildland-urban interface, ran from June through October, facilitated by dry conditions. Yet, as a result of climate change, that season is growing longer. With fires increasing in frequency and moving closer to urban areas, it’s a good time to reassess infrastructure needs.
Further reading:
- Devastating wildfires hit close to home for LA civil engineers
- What happens when a wildfire rips through your neighborhood
- As wildfires rage in LA area, infrastructure – including roadways – under threat
The confluence of multiple fires, droughtlike conditions, and 100 mph Santa Ana winds created a perfect storm of conditions to allow the flames to quickly move across the area and cause tens of billions of dollars in damage.
Many have suggested that a lack of water played a key role in the resulting destruction, but Jay R. Lund, Ph.D., vice director at the University of California, Davis’ Center for Watershed Sciences, said that is not the case.
“Southern California has more than a million acre-feet of water in surface water storage,” Lund said. “That’s enough water to take all of the areas on fire and drown them under 20-25 feet of water. But when you have an area that is as thermodynamically unstable as Los Angeles County – that’s been very, very dry because it hasn’t rained – and you add lots of fuel and 100 mph winds, it’s just not something you can fight with water.”
That said, thanks to reservoir construction and power outages affecting pumping stations, firefighters reported dry hydrants in some areas. Such scenarios have those in the know considering ways to improve the situation.
“We’re seeing a significant increase in the number of large disaster events in Los Angeles County,” said Erik Porse, Ph.D., director of the California Institute of Water Resources. “While it’s becoming more and more clear that the conditions surrounding these fires made fighting them nearly impossible, it’s important that we start to rethink some of our systems from an engineering perspective, as well as the codes and standards we have, so we can understand the level of protection they can provide against fire events.”
Improving water distribution
Newsha Ajami, Ph.D., chief development officer for research in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said, historically, wildfires tended to stick close to wilderness areas.
“We fought them with water bags and retardants dropped on them from helicopters and aircraft. Firefighters on the ground would work to make space so the fire could slow down and not move toward more developed areas,” she said. “Now, wildfires are encroaching on development. Our emergency water systems simply were designed to fight a small kitchen fire or a building fire – not a fire of this intensity and magnitude.”
Still, she said, there could be improvements in the water distribution system to help get water to where it is most needed in the event of a fire. Porse agreed, saying that waterlines could be upgraded to better address small- and medium-sized fire events.
“Some of the actions we could take is to make sure that fire hydrants have compatibility to hook up with lines from other fire departments and groups (that) come out to assist,” he said. “We could potentially provide backup power systems that would help ensure continuity of pump operations in areas that have a higher fire risk. And there could also be value in making sure there is some additional water supply in those areas.”
He cautioned, however, that any improvements need to be considered with a thorough cost-benefit analysis. Bigger pipes or battery systems would not have been sufficient to combat the Palisades fire – one of the four big ones affecting Southern California – but they may help in other situations. There’s plenty of analysis that will need to be done before future investments are made.
“We need to always think about infrastructure that aligns with our ability to finance it – and the true mitigation of risks those changes can offer us,” he said. “We’re going to have to do the math and understand the set of economic benefits and outcomes that any system changes will give us.”
Gregory Pierce, Ph.D., director of the UCLA Water Resources Group, adds that there are limits to what engineers can do to move water quickly, but he believes we can do better. He is hopeful that future “cutting-edge, breakthrough innovations” from engineers can help.
“Engineers can step up to this challenge and find the new things that we can – and the things we should – do,” Pierce said. “We welcome all folks who can work in this space and come up with the fairly simple new things or intermediately more complex things that are affordable and implementable to improve our distribution capabilities.”
Collaborating for resilience
Beyond water management systems, Ajami said, engineers must also consider urban design, land use design, land use planning, and landscape management to help make wildfire-prone areas more resilient to future events. But that requires more communication and collaboration between those different infrastructure stakeholders.
“We need to take more time to understand how much space we need to leave for water to flow to help contain fires and how we can best use nature to help block or mitigate damage,” she said. “We’ve put too many people in silos, and they only know how to do one thing. But if we can get more multidimensional, interdisciplinary thinkers together to bridge these gaps, we can bring the right pieces together.”
Lund concurred. He said targeted changes to building codes is how the state has become more resilient in the face of earthquakes. Similar work could also help decrease fire’s ability to spread and consume. While some changes have been put in place as a result of the 1991 Oakland Hills tunnel fire – and research suggests that they are protective – they have not been implemented in older homes in most areas.
“Unfortunately, it often takes disasters for us to make big improvements,” Lund said. “But we can work together so we can get better (at managing) the disasters we will face in the future. Because wildfire events, as well as earthquakes, droughts, and floods, are going to keep happening.”
Fighting misinformation
Another challenging byproduct of the Los Angeles fires has been the sheer amount of misinformation about the city’s water resource management at the state and national levels. And that, these experts agree, will require education as much as new innovations and improvements. Porse said that water utilities have active education programs, but they mainly focus on promoting efficiency.
“They talk about how not to overirrigate; they don’t tell consumers how the water system works to get your water up this hill,” he said. “We should probably do more to acclimatize residents about how the water system works so they can understand what could happen when disaster strikes.”
Pierce added that the volume of misinformation about the city’s water resources may be unique to the gravity of this particular situation. Still, he maintained it’s important that engineers understand how misinformation spreads and find ways to provide better education to local home and business owners.
“Just having the materials prepared to talk about how things work can be helpful,” he said.
Lund said that while civil engineers, as a whole, tend to be more interested in “making sure things work,” providing that kind of on-the-ground education will help increase not only understanding but also trust. And that is crucial when infrastructure partners are looking for investments to implement new technologies or system designs.
He recommends that engineers work on ways to better communicate at the local level – with the communities they directly serve – before it’s time to ask for funding.
“People may not be interested in how things work until they fail,” Lund said. “But we can do more to ensure that we are believable. We need to make sure that there is high-quality information available about how things work now and how we can improve them in the future. Because, without trust and understanding, it ultimately doesn’t matter how good our designs are. They won’t be implemented.”