‘This is as bad as I’ve ever seen’: Crews struggle to stop fires fueled by historic winds

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• Geoff Bennett:

  Let's turn now to Pasadena Fire Chief Chad Augustin.

  Thanks for being with us.

  And we should say that you are primarily focused on fighting the Eaton Fire. What's the situation the ground?

• Chad Augustin, Pasadena, California, Fire Chief:

  Yes, the last about 18 hours have been really dynamic.

  We were preparing for a widespread wind event, but the devastating wildfires that broke out last night were incredible. And we had really a wind-driven fire with 70-to-80-mile-an-hour wind gusts with spotting embers two-plus miles ahead of the fire. And we quickly were losing potentially hundreds of homes and thousands of acres were burning.

  So it was a really busy night for crews.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Is there enough water to fight these fires? As I understand it, the water systems weren't designed to sustain the kind of usage that's required at the moment.

• Chad Augustin:

  Yes, that's a great question.

  And so a lot of our water systems are old, up to 100 years older or more. And a lot of them rely on gravity feed. We did have a short period of time last night when we had a loss of power, which did impact our water supply. But that was quickly resolved. And, really, we could have had almost unlimited water.

  With 70-mile-an-hour wind gusts and amber spotting ember casts two to three miles, we just — like, you had fires on multiple blocks ahead of where there was dirt and buildings on fire. So it's such a challenge for our firefighting crews.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And how are those wind gusts limiting the air resources available to fight those fires.

• Chad Augustin:

  Thank goodness, this morning — throughout the day, actually, they have been continually to settle down. And so we have been able to put air aircraft, both helicopters and airplanes, in the air and doing water drops over the last two to three hours.

• Geoff Bennett:

  You have got four fires burning all at once. All of L.A. County is under threat. How do you decide to deploy already strained resources?

• Chad Augustin:

  Yes, the great thing about California is our mass mutual aid system. And we are sharing resources up and down the state really all summer and all fall.

  And in this instance, we have about a dozen agencies just within L.A. County assisting each other. And then we ordered up 60 strike teams from all up and down the state and even Arizona, because we recognize that none of us has enough resources.

• Geoff Bennett:

  What more resources do you need?

• Chad Augustin:

  What we needed yesterday was many more fire engines. And what will be helpful today is, as we're getting up to about 10 aircraft overhead doing water drops, retardant, and then we can use hand crews and fire engines to really get a containment line, and we can stop the forward progress of this fire.

  And then equally important is, as that wind starts to die down, we have way less erratic fire behavior and we can actually predict where that fire is going to be spreading.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Have you ever seen a fire this bad in your career?

• Chad Augustin:

  This is as bad as I have ever seen. And, of course, as a fire chief, right, I have the responsibility of overseeing public safety for such a beautiful town.

  Just a week ago, right, we were celebrating the parade and the Rose Bowl game. And so while there was such pride in the city, here we are a week later with mass devastation, so really tough for myself and our — your city leadership, but also proud of the hard work of — that everybody has come together to do.

  And there was — last night, there was some really heroic efforts by our law enforcement and firefighters as they were pulling people out of burning buildings and rescuing them. And those are the things that really — we lost a lot of buildings, but a lot of lives were saved last night.

• Geoff Bennett:

  What's the best-case scenario in terms of getting these fires contained?

• Chad Augustin:

  Yes, the best-case scenario is, over the next 24 to 48 hours, the winds continue to die down and we get more aircraft in here and more fire crews.

  And then we get a good scratch perimeter all around this fire, we contain it and then we start really getting down the hot spots. And then we're in a much better position. But those erratic winds really made a bad situation worse last night with a wind-driven fire.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Pasadena Fire Chief Chad Augustin, thanks for making time to join us. And our best to you, your crew and all the folks in the affected area.

• Chad Augustin:

  Thank you so much.

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