What caused fire hydrants to run dry in Los Angeles?

As Los Angeles battles multiple fast-moving wildfires, emergency officials have faced a nightmare sitaution: fire hydrants that have run out of water.

- JOSH MARCUS

"How do you fight a fire with no water?" Ryan Babroff, a volunteer firefighter battling the Eaton Fire, told The Washington Post.

At some point this week, up to 20 per cent of the city's hydrants went dry, according to LA mayor Karen Bass. And as of Thursday night, firefighters had stopped tapping into hydrants at all.

"Right now, we're not utilising the hydrants," Kristin M Crowley, chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, said.

By Friday, California governor Gavin Newsom called for an independent investigation into the hydrant issue. "We need answers to ensure this does not happen again and we have every resource available to fight these catastrophic fires," he wrote in a statement on X.

Rachel Darvish, a resident of the scorched Pacific Palisades neighbourhood, went viral after she confronted Mr Newsom over the tapped-out hydrants, insisting she would "fill up the hydrants myself".

Meanwhile, real estate developer and former LA mayoral candidate Rick Caruso alleged "absolute mismanagement by the city".

Some on the right, meanwhile, have used the shocking water shortage to attack California's Democratic leadership and policies. Donald Trump claimed the governor's "gross incompetence" and decision not to open up "the water main" in northern California was to blame, while Elon Musk has argued everything from environmental protections for endangered fish to the Los Angeles Fire Department's diversity initiatives were behind the issues with the fire response.

According to experts and government officials, the water shortage issue is much more complex.