Remarks by Janisse Quiñones, LADWP CEO & Chief Engineer:
Good morning, Board President Katz and Commissioners.
The firestorm that began in Pacific Palisades three weeks ago today has devastated the lives of thousands of Angelenos whose homes have been destroyed or damaged. There are no words that can take away their pain and their profound loss, but first and foremost I want to express on behalf of the entire Department of Water and Power that our hearts go out to all whose lives have been forever changed by this tragedy.
The Palisades wildfire has also deeply affected each of us as we have witnessed the impact on our city, our neighbors, our loved ones and our employees – some of whom have lost their homes as well.
We have surveyed our own employees and found that many have been directly impacted, many evacuated including some sitting around this table, and some who are sitting in the Board room right now who have lost their homes entirely.
Our employees have been working around the clock with our Mutual Aid partners to restore service to our customers in the affected areas as quickly and safely as possible.
As of today, our power system crews have restored power to over 360,000 customers since hurricane force winds began on January 7th.
There are approximately 8400 customers whose homes and businesses we cannot restore service to because they are located in fire damaged areas of the Palisades. For these customers we are unable to access these areas until cleared by Unified Command, or they are located in areas where rebuilding must occur.
Water pressure in the Palisades area of our water distribution system was fully restored Friday January 17th following work by our crews to shut off over 4,800 service connections that had been damaged or destroyed by fire. They have also fully refilled our three water tanks and the entire water distribution system in this area.
I would like next for Dave Hanson and Anselmo Collins – head of our Power and Water Systems to provide you with an overview of our preparations and response to this unprecedented disaster.
But before I turn it over to Dave and Anselmo….
I want to say that for over 100 years, the men and women of LADWP have been providing safe and reliable water and electric service to our customers. We are from LA and we are for LA.
Our employees’ work often goes unseen, but it is critical to keeping our city running and for the vitality of the 4 million Angelenos we serve.
Customer safety and the safety of our employees must always remain our highest priority.
As you know, I have been at the Department as CEO & Chief Engineer for less than eight months. In that relatively short time I have made key leadership changes including:
- Bringing in an experienced Chief Resiliency and Emergency Management Officer who has run our emergency response continuously since the morning of January 7th.
- We have a new Chief Risk and Compliance Officer who began January 6th.
- A new deeply experienced Power System leadership team, led by Dave Hanson.
- And a new Chief Customer Officer.
I can tell you that after having been at the helm of LADWP’s emergency response since January 7th and based on my experience serving in the military and managing multiple incidents, including the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, that LADWP’s crews, grid managers, engineers, scientists, staff and our executive team are among the best in the nation.
I want to make it clear that there is no amount of analysis that will take away the pain and heartbreak felt by those who lost their homes and businesses and lives in this tragic fire. But we are committed to doing that work and supporting our customers and the community.
Initially, this will consist of:
- Conducting our own investigation, which we started two weeks ago, and review and fully supporting outside agencies as part of the State of California’s investigation into our water system.
- We have already cut the red tape and have worked around the clock with Mutual Aid partners to temporarily rebuild the electrical distribution system in the Palisades to restore power to customers whose homes and businesses were saved. Dave Hanson will tell us more about this in his report.
- We stood up a joint Utility Restoration Center in the Palisades to coordinate permanent rebuilding of our infrastructure in the Palisades using the most advanced technology available, including undergrounding our utilities, and to serve as a one-stop center to better serve our customers.
- Contributing our deep expertise as we participate in efforts to assess current municipal fire codes and the needs of our communities to better protect against urban wildfires and other extreme weather events.
We will seize this opportunity to improve how we meet the needs of our communities as we continue to adapt to our changing climate, in partnership with our regulators and policy makers, including this Board, the City Council, our Mayor and legislators.
You have my personal commitment and that of my entire team.
I would now like to turn it over to David Hanson, head of our power system to discuss our windstorm preparedness and overall response. Dave will be followed by Anselmo Collins who will address water system issues.
Remarks by David Hanson, Senior Assistant General Manager of the Power System:
Today, I’m going to brief you on what we have learned to date about how our power system operated during the Palisades Fire.
Let me start with what we know about our power facilities.
LADWP has no reason to believe its facilities caused the ignition of the Palisades Fire.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is leading the investigation into the cause of the fire. But no investigating authority has indicated that LADWP facilities were involved in the ignition of the Palisades Fire.
And no lawsuit has alleged that LADWP facilities ignited the Palisades fire.
LADWP’s distribution circuits—the lines that supply electricity to homes and businesses—in the Pacific Palisades area are entirely underground.
LADWP has one overhead line in the area, an overhead 34.5 kV sub-transmission line—the Royal-Monte Grande 1 Line—that passes approximately a quarter mile from the reported origin of the Palisades Fire.
Devices monitoring the Royal-Monte Grande 1 Line recorded no faults or anomalies near the reported time of ignition of the Palisades Fire.
Let me say one word about preemptive measures:
Automatic reclosing of the Royal-Monte Grande 1 Line was blocked on January 6, 2025, in advance of the windstorm. With reclosing blocked, if a fault were detected on the line and the line automatically shut off, the line would not attempt to automatically re-energize, significantly reducing its potential to contribute to a wildfire. But, again, this line did not trip offline around the time the fire ignited.
LADWP crews, joined by mutual assistance partners from PG&E and the Navajo Nation, continue working in the Pacific Palisades and surrounding areas, to inspect overhead and underground power lines, cut down damaged wires, and repair broken power poles. Performing the inspections and repairs enables crews to quickly and safely restore power to affected customers once Palisades Fire Unified Command lifts fire holds that are in place on certain power lines, for safety purposes.
The number of customers in the Pacific Palisades without power remains at approximately 8,410. These customers are in, or close to, fire damaged areas that LADWP crews cannot safely access or in areas where it is unsafe to re-energize power lines.
If you are attending the Board meeting today and have questions about your electrical service, LADWP representatives are present here today to assist you.
Remarks from Anselmo Collins, Senior Assistant General Manager of the Water System:
Good morning, Commissioners.
I’d like to provide you with an overview of our operations and our water system and how it performed during the Palisades Fire.
At a high level, the system is designed and was operated in accordance with fire codes, including the requirements for the necessary supply that has to be available in case of an emergency. But during the fire there was a pressure and flow issue, where the extraordinary demand on the system caused water pressure to drop, which then impacted water availability at some hydrants in the Palisades.
I’ll go through this all in a little more detail, including addressing the Santa Ynez reservoir.
First, I want to give you a brief refresher on the water system, and then we’ll focus on the Palisades area.
As you know, the flow of water starts at the north end of the city and moves through the city in trunk lines, which are the bold, red lines on the map.
The zones numbered in blue are at lower elevations, and so water typically flows to these places by gravity.
The zones numbered in red are at higher elevations. For the higher-elevation zones, LADWP has pumping stations that direct water upwards into tanks that hold the water for further local distribution to homes and fire hydrants nearby.
Let’s focus in specifically on the Palisades area.
You’ll see here there’s one trunk line—the Westgate Trunk Line—that brings water from the east to the west into the Palisades.
The Palisades has a mix of low- and high- elevation zones.
You’ll also see three pumping stations that lead to three tanks in the high elevation zones.
- The Marquez Knolls Pumping Station pumps into the Marquez Knolls tank; the Santa Ynez Pumping Station pumps into the Trailer Tank; and the Trailer Pumping Station pumps into the Temescal Tank.
Each of these three tanks holds about 1 million gallons of water.
Every tank must be able to hold a sufficient amount in regulatory storage plus a sufficient amount in fire flow storage.
Regulatory storage is the amount needed for regular customer use in the area.
Fire flow storage is the amount needed for use in a fire, as determined by calculations in the Fire Code.
Each of the three tanks complied with these requirements, and in fact exceeded the required amount of water storage required. [The total regulatory required storage was between 860,000-970,000 gallons per tank, but the tanks were 1 million gallons each.]
In addition, our system has open air reservoirs that are not part of our drinking water system that have billions of gallons of water available to support aerial firefighting. Three of these reservoirs (Encino, Lower Stone Canyon & Hollywood Reservoir) were used to fight the Sunset Fire and the Palisades Fire as it moved toward and threatened Encino and Mandeville Canyon.
With that overview in mind, let’s talk about what happened before and during the fire.
Before the Fire
- When the NWS issued a red-flag warning, before the fire, LADWP filled the tanks in the system, including all three tanks in the Palisades to capacity.
- LADWP also made sure there was backup power for the pump stations in case the power went out.
During the Fire
Here’s what happened during the fire.
As the fire spread, water was being used at extraordinary levels in the lower-elevation zones—both by firefighters at the hydrants, and by people using their hoses on their houses, and turning on sprinklers.
- As homes and businesses burned, water pipes at each property began to spew water at every service connection point. This amounted to thousands of leaks draining water in the system in addition to hundreds of fire hydrants being used at the same time.
- This extraordinary demand meant that pressure was being lost as the water went through the system. By the time it reached the pumping stations, there wasn’t enough pressure to create the suction, and the pumps shut off automatically. Once the pumps shut off, the tanks were eventually depleted, and some hydrants began losing pressure and water flow.
- This was primarily in the higher elevations
When LADWP realized there were pressure issues, LADWP:
- attempted to install additional valves that would have allowed more water to flow into the Marquez Knolls Tank.
- deployed water tankers to support LAFD;
- asked the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) to activate their LA-29 valve;
- drove around the affected areas to shut off water to houses, businesses, etc. whose water was unnecessarily still running—ultimately LADWP turned off about 4800 access points where the water was running but the house or building had already burned (LADWP did not turn off where the house or building was still standing); and
We have seen in the media some reports of broken hydrants. LAFD inspects the hydrants, and we are not aware of any reports from LAFD that any were broken at the time the fire started.
Let me address the Santa Ynez Reservoir, which was empty and offline at the time of the fire.
Under federal regulations, reservoirs attached to the potable water system, such as the Santa Ynez Reservoir, must have a cover to protect against contamination.
In January 2024, the Santa Ynez Reservoir was closed for repairs because of an approximately 100-foot tear in the cover of the reservoir, which created a risk of water contamination.
At the time the Reservoir was closed, there was about 56 million gallons of water inside it. The reservoir is under the jurisdiction of the California Division of Drinking Water.
- The initial plan was to use in house crews to fix the tear, but upon closer inspection the tear was too large and needed outside expertise and equipment to make the needed repairs.
- LADWP proposed reopening the Reservoir for a period of time, letting residents use about 20 million gallons before draining the rest for repairs.
- But DDW was concerned about the size of the tear in the cover, and so informed LADWP that none of the water in the Reservoir could be used in the potable drinking water system.
After this, LADWP drained the Reservoir so that the cover could be repaired.
From March to May 2024, LADWP obtained the appropriate approvals to outsource the repair work to a contractor.
LADWP published the contracting bid on June 20 and closed it in July 10. Over the next several months LADWP finalized the contract with the contractor. By the time everything was ready to go, the contractor indicated they couldn’t start work until the end of January 2025, which would have been after the fire started.
Even if the repairs on the Santa Ynez Reservoir had been completed before the Fire, it is unclear whether the additional water would have made much of a difference. We are engaging experts to attempt to model the impact of additional water from the Reservoir, but it’s a complicated analysis and we may not get clear answers. Ultimately, for wind-driven fires like this one, aerial support is key—and aerial support was not available.
The Do Not Drink Notice remains in effect in the Pacific Palisades zip code 90272, and adjacent communities in the LADWP service area immediately south of the 90272-zip code that are north of San Vicente Blvd. This notice was issued on January 10, 2025. LADWP strongly advises customers within the affected area to not drink or cook with the tap water until further notice. Customers can find more information about this notice, as well as a link to an interactive map to find out if they reside in an affected area at ladwp.com
We have activated a number of bottled water distribution sites to provide bottled water to customers in affected areas. Their locations are available online at ladwp.com.
To restore safe and reliable drinking water to the impacted communities, LADWP is taking the necessary steps in coordination with the State Water Resources Control Board, Division of Drinking Water to methodically and rigorously screen, flush and test the water in the affected areas.
Meanwhile, LADWP’s water quality team continues with the standard operating procedure of testing the quality of drinking water citywide, while intensifying the sampling and testing in the areas impacted by the Do Not Drink Notice. We know that the Do Not Drink notice is very inconvenient for our customers and I want to assure them that our water quality staff are working as quickly as possible, together with the State Division of Drinking Water to follow testing protocols, which are very detailed and required to protect public health and safety.
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