This is my home.

Your home, which isn't here anymore.

Yes.

[sniffles] Sorry.

It burned on January 8th, 2025.

I was right in front of my house when I saw it burning.

Firefighters apparently did not have enough water to protect my home.

It's very sad seeing the house burn right in front of you.

I don't think we had enough water.

Houses that had water were able to save their homes.

I want to learn more about what happened.

How did this happen?

How did the city let us down?

One expert put it to me, these systems are built to deliver drinking water.

They are not built to battle large wildfires.

I've been reporting on the water problems that happened during the January wildfires when people encountered a lack of water from fire hydrants and that made it tougher to fight the fires.

We were hearing about a number of cases where fire hydrants lost pressure and ran dry and the firefighters were left without enough water to fight the fires.

At the same time, a major reservoir was offline for maintenance and it had been a number of months.

There's a lot of frustration in the community.

I've heard from people who say they feel really let down and they don't understand how more preparations weren't made to have water ready, especially when it was such dangerous fire conditions.

The pump was broken on our street.

It was broken for months.

No one fixed it.

The reservoir, which is really close to us, was empty.

It still is empty.

How could you say you're fixing something and it's still empty?

There's still homes in the Highlands, still homes in the area.

You still need to get that filled up.

Saying that you need it to be drinking water is just beyond me.

It's not that hard.

Having water, obviously, stating the obvious, is really, really critical and I appreciate that because the water went off after about three hours.

I tried to save several houses around here with a bucket and shovel and rake and anything I could do.

Not having water doesn't work nearly as well.

I wiped out boots and broke a few shovels just in my ambition to put out fires.

It worked.

It did a little bit better than nothing, but water's key.

The fire department hasn't shown up.

I think we saved the house though.

For sure.

All this whole hillside, I put out.

Greg and I. There's tons of water in the pools all around here.

So that was really an underutilized asset and that was a great thing that I was able to use.

Hence, the gas-powered pool pump.

It would have made a monster difference if we had water, just based on my own experience.

If we had just hoses that worked, I could have saved probably three or four more houses easily.

Easily.

What the experts tell me as far as these water systems is that they are built with fire hydrants that have the capacity to fight one house fire, maybe a group of house fires at the same time, but not enough to battle a wildfire that comes through an entire neighborhood and just levels dozens of homes at once.

There's just not enough water in the system, enough capacity in the pipes.

We had a tremendous demand on our system in the Palisades.

We pushed the system to the extreme.

Four times the normal demand was seen for 15 hours straight, which lowered our water pressure.

If there's a message to take away from me today is I need our customers to really conserve water, not just in the Palisade area, but the whole system, because the fire department needs the water to fight the fires, and we're fighting a wildfire with urban water systems, and that is really challenging.

I've been talking with various experts about what are some of the ideas for water systems that could prevent these types of problems or at least provide more water when it's needed at these critical times.

There's a helicopter there.

He's going to do a drop.

That whole hillside just caught on fire.

I've heard the fire department and the city just say the water infrastructure is not built for that kind of fire.

That's a devastating once-in-60-years, once-in-100-years fire.

Let's just say that's the case.

Then we're left to what we can do ourselves to help ourselves.

This area, the infrastructure just can't be adequate to put out 60 houses that are on fire at the same time.

It's up to individuals and the resources we all have and preparation.

Another potential solution would be building more cisterns or small-scale reservoirs within neighborhoods, especially as they're redesigned.

There may be park spaces or other areas where a little bit of water could be placed.

It wouldn't need to be drinking water, but it could go through pipes when needed, feed sprinklers, feed firehoses, and just have more water in the neighborhood.

Another idea that has come out and is being talked about is to have temporary water pipes that can be laid down like a big fire hose and run for miles between a reservoir to a fire zone when it's needed.

What you have here is a 1,600-gallon tank feeding into an intelligent pump system with a manually and also automatically operated sprinkler up there at the top.

Industry is responding, and they're responding with things such as water cannons and water curtains and fire doors and whatever widget.

These are good products, but they don't replace the basics.

The most successful way to fight a fire is to prevent it in the first place.

Now, these products that are out there are designed to fight the fire.

They're very effective, but something can go wrong with them.

If we eliminate the fire, we eliminate the threat.

Why go to war if you don't have to?

I do hope that we're prepared for the unimaginable, something that we can never imagine.

I do hope that future generations were more prepared and know that natural disasters happen, and we do need to be prepared for it.

We do hope to be back soon.

This is our home.

This is where we live, and we hope to be back soon.