Wildfires overtook Los Angeles, firefighters ran out of water, and the political finger-pointing began. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy and Travis Larchuck, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Peter Balonon-Rosen, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members A fire hydrant burning during the Eaton fire in the Altadena area of Los Angeles county. Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Full Episode
It's kind of hard to wrap your head around the scale of the catastrophic fires in Los Angeles. They've burned 40,000 acres throughout the city. That's roughly the size of Washington, D.C. Some estimates are putting the damage upwards of $250 billion. That'll make these the most... economically devastating fires in the history of the United States.
And then one thing people can't seem to get over is that in this wildfire-prone city, in a wildfire-prone state, firefighters battling these blazes somehow ran out of water.
We have no water on these streets, and we have multiple structures taken off.
Why was there no water in the hydrants, Governor? That's all literally... Is it going to be different next time?
They have no water. They had no water in the fire hydrants today in Los Angeles. It was a terrible thing. And we're gonna get that done.
Everyone gets that this is tragic. On Today Explained, we're gonna try to understand why this has to be political.
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