Photo: A firefighter battling the January wildfires that destroyed more than 10,000 homes and businesses in Los Angeles County. We might wonder how effective a fire hose is, in such a situation.
10,000 homes and businesses? Burnt to the ground in Los Angeles County? That equal to the entire stock of buildings here in Pagosa Springs.
As we look out at the bare ground at the end of March, and the relative lack of snow on the surrounding mountains, it’s easy to imagine our community suffering the same type of disaster. And there’s really not much we can do to prevent it.
So a big fuss has been made, lately, about one thing we can do. Make sure our community’s 1,140 fire hydrants are operational.
Who should take on this task? To find out, a Daily Post reader asked three prominent AI apps: “Do water districts or fire districts inspect fire hydrants?” Here are a few short excerpts from these artificially intelligent ‘experts’, following a quick review of millions of websites:
ChatGPT:
“Fire hydrant inspections are typically the responsibility of the local fire department or fire districts, rather than water districts…”
Google AI:
“…Fire departments, guided by standards like NFPA 291, conduct regular inspections to ensure hydrants are in working order and readily accessible…”
Grok:
…Firefighters inspect hydrants to confirm they are operational, accessible, and capable of delivering sufficient water flow for firefighting purposes…
You can download the full AI conversations, here.
Functioning or non-functioning fire hydrants had almost nothing to do with what happened in LA. Yes, the water storage tanks in the Palisades neighborhood were empty by 3am, but fire hydrants are designed to fight a single house fire, not an entire neighborhood on fire.
The suburban homes were not located in the middle of a flammable forest, but the homes themselves provided all the fuel the wildfire needed, once it hit the neighborhoods.
From a January article by journalist Jim Steele, “Assigning Responsibility for the Tragic Los Angeles Fires,” on CO2Coalition.org:
When fires reach neighborhoods with densely packed houses, one burning structure can radiate enough heat to ignite adjacent buildings causing entire neighborhoods to burn to the ground.
Accordingly, ordinances to create a defensible space around homes were enacted in recent decades to keep the height of grass and native brush less than 3 inches within 200 feet of a building. Roofs on new buildings and replacements must be fireproof.
But how well such ordinances have been followed is not clear. Nor is it clear if adequate brush management was maintained in adjacent public lands to slow the spread of fire into populated areas. In any case, the flames reached enough homes to cause entire neighborhoods to be destroyed.
According to Mr. Steele, the disaster in Los Angeles — driven by fierce, seasonal Santa Ana winds — was not the result of ‘climate change’ or dysfunctional fire hydrants. It resulted, in his opinion, from the way we have allowed communities to be built and maintained.
Granted that Mr. Steele was obviously making an effort to deny the dangers of ‘climate change’ — while other writers are happy to blame the Los Angeles fires on global warming — I think he makes some valid points. A wildfire driven by intense winds can easily destroy a neighborhood, no matter how many fire hydrants are available.
The destruction of urban settlements by wildfire is not a new problem. The Peshtigo Fire was a massive wildfire that broke out on October 8, 1871, in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, resulting in between 1,500 to 2,500 deaths. It is often cited as the deadliest fire in American history. In the area, fire was commonly used to clear forest land for agricultural activity. However, on this day, a strong wind fanned the fire out of control, creating firestorms. By the time the fire was brought under control, 1.2 million acres of the forest had been consumed.
The Peshtigo Fire occurred on the same day as the Great Chicago Fire, which killed approximately 300 people, destroyed roughly 3.5 square miles of the city, including over 17,000 structures, and left more than 100,000 residents homeless.
It’s not clear to me whether Peshtigo or Chicago had a system of fire hydrants in place in 1871. I seriously doubt they did. But would it have made any difference? Not likely.
Hydrants hardly mattered in Los Angeles.
I have always assumed — as I imagine nearly all of us have assumed — that the fire hydrant on the corner of my street would operate properly if my house, or my neighbors’ house, caught fire. I’ve also assumed that, if Pagosa Springs were ever caught up in an uncontrollable wildfire during a hot, windy summer — like, for example, the 2002 Missionary Ridge Fire near Bayfield — we would be incapable of controlling the damage, despite our best and most valiant efforts.
I also understand that the coming summer in Pagosa may be unusually dry, like the summer of 2002. All the more reason to begin addressing the condition of our fire hydrants.
But who should be addressing them? And who should be footing the bill? At the March 24 joint meeting of the Town Council and the County Commissioners, several elected officials acted as if it was the sole responsibility of PAWSD customers to foot the bill, because the hydrants “belong” to, and are repaired or replaced by, PAWSD.
Some acted like “money was no object” for the PAWSD customers, and that testing 1,140 hydrants was all in a day’s work for the PAWSD staff.
The Pagosa Fire Protection District did not participate in the discussion, nor did they send a representative.
Disclosure: I currently serve as a volunteer member of the PAWSD Board, but this editorial reflects only my own opinions and not necessarily the opinions of other PAWSD Board members nor of the PAWSD staff.
The PAWSD Board will be meeting this week, for a special meeting, to discuss options for testing the community’s fire hydrants. Some of my fellow Board members have the impression that no other government agency has any interest in contributing to this massive effort, and we will simply have to stick our customers with the bill.
I disagree.
In 2015, the PAWSD property tax income was $795,000.
By 2023, the PAWSD property tax income had increased to $1.7 million. Slightly more than double.
In 2015, the Pagosa Fire Protection District’s property tax income was $995,000. Call it $1 million.
By 2023, the Pagosa Fire Protection District’s property tax income had increased to $4.2 million. More than quadruple.
Maybe I’m out of line in suggesting that the Fire District — for whose benefit the fire hydrants were installed — ought to have a vested interest in making sure they work properly?