Biden Says Intentional Power Outages Caused Water Shortages During Los

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It comes as fire officials attempt to make progress on containing several fires around the city.

Amid concerns about water supply to put out wildfires that have burned thousands of buildings across Los Angeles, President Joe Biden said that intentional power outages caused shortages.

Biden said Thursday that he spoke with California Gov. Gavin Newsom about water shortages that were reported and that generators are being brought in to deal with the fires. Utilities were shut down out of concern about triggering more fires, the president said.

“What I know from talking to the governor, that there are concerns out there that there’s also been a water shortage. The fact is the utilities, understandably, shut off power because they are worried the lines that carried energy were going to be blown down and spark additional fires,” Biden said at a briefing with White House officials. “When it did that, it cut off the ability to generate pumping the water. That’s what caused the lack of water in these hydrants.”

Biden said that California’s Cal Fire and other state agencies are bringing in generators to deal with the shortage of water in hydrants, which sparked controversy and criticism of local state officials earlier this week.

Roughly 20 percent of hydrants across the city went dry as crews battled blazes, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said. Firefighters in Southern California are accustomed to dealing with the strong Santa Ana winds that blow in the fall and winter, but the gusts earlier in the week took them by surprise. The winds grounded firefighting aircraft that should have been making critical water drops, straining the hydrant system.

Officials told The Epoch Times that water tanks used to supply gravity-fed fire hydrants were drained to the point that there wasn’t enough pressure to fight wildfires in some areas in Los Angeles.

Sam Digiovanna, chief at the Verdugo Fire Academy in Glendale, told The Epoch Times that “due to the amount of fire trucks doing structure protection and tying into so many hydrants, we used that water up very quickly.”

“The water system got low on us—on firefighters—so when they were out fighting the fire, there were times when they had very low water pressure,” he said. He did not make any mention of the assertion that intentional power outages caused the low water pressure.

In statements posted on social media, President-elect Donald Trump has been critical of the state’s response to the wildfires, saying that California officials should “immediately go to Northern California and open up the water main, and let the water flow into his dry, starving, burning State, instead of having it go out into the Pacific Ocean.”

Newsom, a Democrat, responded to the criticism in a CNN interview earlier this week.

“People are literally fleeing. People have lost their lives. Kids lost their schools. Families completely torn asunder. Churches burned down, and this guy wants to politicize it,” Newsom told the outlet. “I have a lot of thoughts and I know what I want to say, but I won’t.”

At least 10 people have died and 153,000 residents are still under evacuation orders as of Friday morning, local time.

The Palisades Fire near the coast was 8 percent contained, the Eaton Fire north of Pasadena was 3 percent contained, the Hurst Fire just south of Santa Clarita was 37 percent contained, and the Kenneth Fire in the San Fernando Valley was 35 percent contained as of Friday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.