As firefighters begin to gain control of the California wildfires, water specialist Edith de Guzman tells Reuters a trifecta of conditions from dry hydrants, low water pressure and lack of recent rainfall hindered the emergency response. - REUTERS
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00:00We have much more of this climate whiplash sort of phenomenon where we have very, very
00:14wet years followed by very dry years.
00:18And that is in and of itself very problematic because it creates more susceptibility in
00:24places that didn't used to be quite so high risk.
00:32Well the reality is that we have urban water systems that are not designed to fight wildfires
00:40or put out entire sort of, you know, mountainsides that are on fire and we are having, you know,
00:47very high severity events that are unprecedented.
00:53We had extremely wet winters in 2023 and 24, which encouraged a lot of vegetative growth
01:02and then followed by an unprecedentedly dry few months.
01:08And then the third component, of course, was these ferocious winds.
01:14And so literally sort of a perfect firestorm of factors that came together to create an
01:20extreme demand for water in a very short amount of time.