Smell the burn

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First the good news, for those of you worried about her and Puerto Rico’s futures:

$750K-a-year head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Janisse Quiñones, who oversaw the draining of the Santa Ynez reservoir, leaving firefghters high and dry during last year’s Pacific Palisades fires has fled LA for Puerto Rico, where she has been appointed head of PR’s hopelessly corrupt and incompetent electrical grid operator, LUMA.

The reservoir (and a second one) are still empty, as this year’s fire season draws nigh, so on with the rest of the story:

….[I]nterestingly enough, it turns out that one of the main culprits in the Pacific Palisades fire catastrophe is the infamous and EMPTY Santa Ynez reservoir, which was meant to keep the water pressure up for the fire hydrants it provided water to.

As it was sitting EMPTY with LA firefighters none the wiser at the time of the great conflagration that ate the LA hillsides, a number of significant problems were encountered as the embattled first responders tried to save homes and businesses from the raging inferno - hydrants ran dry for lack of both water and the water pressure to feed what water there was to upper parts of the waterlines, and firefighting helicopters with their dump bags had to fly to another site six air minutes away per load, instead of just up over the hillside, about a thirty-second flight.

And the Santa Ynez reservoir is dry. Still.

Santa Ynez Reservoir Dry Again as Palisades Endures Third Fire Season Without Water

Seriously. It's the canvas cover issue again.

The Los Angeles reservoir that was notoriously empty during the 2025 Palisades fire has been drained once again as crews replace its floating cover, to the dismay of area residents who worry that there won’t be water available to fight wildfires.

The Santa Ynez Reservoir stores drinking water for Pacific Palisades, and the $19.5-million project to replace its damaged cover is needed to ensure the water is safe to drink, according to the Department of Water and Power.

But with warm weather and wildfire season ahead, community leaders would prefer to see a full reservoir even if the water isn’t suitable for drinking.

“It’s a failure to recognize that there is value to this community to have the reservoir full,” said Maryam Zar, head of the Palisades Recovery Coalition. “It’s incredible to me that after the experience we went through [with the Palisades fire] there is still no recognition that this reservoir should be filled to the gills, whether or not it’s potable.”

Mayor Bass and her brain trust have come up with a “solution”, one that the man the Democrats cheated off the ballot, Spencer Platt, believes to be unwise:

NOTHING YOU'VE EVER DONE IN YOUR LIFE COULD POSSIBLY BE AS DUMB AS KAREN BASS RUNNING OUR WATER SUPPLY THROUGH A RUBBER HOSE THROUGH SIX MILES OF FLAMMABLE BRUSH

And so on. Read the whole article, if you still own property in Los Angeles or are considering (trying to) live there.

Concluding, I don’t remember whether I posted on this last week but if I didn’t here it is. And if I did, here it is again: