As devastating fires in Los Angeles continue to burn, too many politicians and keyboard warriors are making irresponsible assertions about the causes of the fires and the challenges of fighting them. It’s far from the first time that such nonsense has been used to promote political agendas – the 1906 (earthquake and) fire that devastated San Francisco was used to justify damming Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park.
Some of the blame for the fires that have obliterated Pacific Palisades and Altadena has fallen on the endangered Delta smelt. It’s true that exports of water from northern California to farms and cities in the south have been reduced at times to protect smelt and other fisheries. Large reservoirs in southern California, however, have plentiful supplies; there is no regional lack of water to fight the fires. (This Wall Street Journal video explains why some fire hydrants did run dry.)
One of the least obnoxious, but still wholly inaccurate, memes blaming the Delta smelt for fire damage.
A century ago, the lack of water available to fight the devastating fire that erupted following the San Francisco earthquake on April 18,1906 was used to justify damming Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. (Again, local reservoirs had plentiful supplies, but water mains in the city were severed by the earthquake.)
With water mains broken throughout the city, there was little firefighters could do to quell the inferno.
For example, Senator Henry Myers (Montana) read the following before the U.S. Senate on December 1, 1913 as it was debating the Raker Act:
Senator Henry Myers (MT)
“Their fair city has been decimated by earthquake and fire and it has been reported on credible authority that one of the greatest causes of the devastation to that fair city was lack of adequate water supply – they very thing they are trying to get today at a cost of millions of dollars to the taxpayers.”
The broken water mains were operated by the Spring Valley Water Company, a private enterprise that had long frustrated City officials. Had a public water system been in place, there is no indication the pipes would have better endured the powerful earthquake. For more information about how the proposal to dam Hetch Hetchy came to fruition after having been rejected twice by the federal government and abandoned by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, see Hetch Hetchy, the Earthquake and the Boodle.
There are very hard lessons to be learned from yet another year of terrible fires. What could and should have been done differently and more importantly, what must we do moving forward. Blaming fires on red herrings such as Delta smelt won’t help the thoughtful planning that is necessary to help us avoid these catastrophes.