Newsom Now Calling for Investigation into Limited Wildfire Water Supply
Newsom may now be targeting the $750,000-a-year LA water czar, Water and Power (LADWP) CEO Janisse Quiñones, for a spot under the bus..in hopes of saving his political future.
It seems California Gov. Gavin Newsom has taken a break from “Trump-proofing” the state and whining about wildfire disinformation to actually address one of the most critical failures of the ongoing Los Angeles wildfire disaster.
My Legal Insurrection colleague Mary Chastain reported that an important Pacific Palisades water resource, the Santa Ynez Reservoir, was empty and offline when the massive blaze struck the area. This was clearly a factor in the fire hydrants running dry during the fire response.
Now Newsom has ordered an investigation into the Los Angeles Department of Water of Power over this disastrous development.
In the letter addressed to LADWP Chief Executive Officer and Chief Engineer Janisse Quiñones and L.A. County Public Works Director Mark Pestrella, Newsom wrote, “The ongoing reports of loss of water pressure to some local fire hydrants during the fires and the reported unavailability of water supplies from the Santa Ynez Reservoir are deeply troubling to me and to the community.”
“We need answers to how that happened,” Newsom continued, explaining his decision to order an independent investigation from state water and fire officials examining the causes of lost water supplies and water pressure.
It might be worthwhile to note that parts of the greater Los Angeles area encompass portions of two desert regions, the Mojave Desert and the Colorado Desert. While the basin itself has a Mediterranean-type climate, the entire region is quite dry.
Therefore, the water infrastructure should have been expanded to accommodate the growing population and to address the potential for wildfires, which have historically occurred. They were not, and there are now consequences.
“While water supplies from local fire hydrants are not designed to extinguish wildfires over large areas, losing supplies from fire hydrants likely impaired the effort to protect some homes and evacuation corridors,” Newsom wrote. “We need answers to how that happened.
The limitations of local water systems complicated firefighting efforts in Pacific Palisades, where scores of fire hydrants were left with little or no water, and in Altadena and Pasadena, which are served by different utilities and where firefighters say they have grappled with low water pressure.
The problems have exposed what experts say are limitations in city water supply systems not built for wildfires on this scale. Water researchers and experts have said the system that supplies neighborhoods doesn’t have the capacity to deliver such large volumes of water over several hours.
NEW: I am calling for an independent investigation into the loss of water pressure to local fire hydrants and the reported unavailability of water supplies from the Santa Ynez Reservoir.
We need answers to ensure this does not happen again and we have every resource available to… pic.twitter.com/R0vq0wwZph
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) January 10, 2025
At this point, it must be assumed Newsom is looking for someone to throw under the point to salvage his future political career. He may target the $750,000-a-year LA water czar, Water and Power (LADWP) CEO Janisse Quiñones.
Now, Quiñones is being blamed by LA Fire Department (LAFD) insiders for leaving a nearby reservoir disconnected and fire hydrants broken for months, DailyMail.com can reveal, leading to firefighters running out of water as they battled the devastating Palisades Fire this week.
And, Daily Mail.com has learned, Quiñones past employer is also linked to fire scandals. She was previously a top executive at electricity company PG&E, which went bankrupt over liability for several massive wildfires in California.
She served as senior vice president at Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) from 2021 to 2023.
The utility company’s power lines sparked the second-largest wildfire in California history, Dixie, in 2021. Its involvement in the 2018 Camp Fire cost PG&E a $13.5billion legal settlement.
The firm’s liability for allegedly causing fires was estimated at $30billion when it filed for bankruptcy in 2018. It exited bankruptcy in 2020.
Here is LA Department of Water and Power CEO Janisse Quinones, who makes $750,000 a year, explaining how Pacific Palisades ran out of water. Funny – she doesn’t mention anything about the dry reservoir. pic.twitter.com/3brXNvVs1n
— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) January 10, 2025
And while the move may have once worked for Newsom under the old media, I do not think it will be successful. In fact, it is already being mocked.
Another one of our @TheBabylonBee prophecies fulfilled pic.twitter.com/bZgLIgH0eN
— Kyle Mann (@The_Kyle_Mann) January 10, 2025
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Comments
Don’t you just love it when leftists turn on each other? I don’t think it’s going to work either. Which is a beautiful thing. We can watch Gavin Newsom obliterate his 2028 presidential hopes in real time.
There is no loyalty among thieves, as the saying goes.
I used to know a lot of cops. They’d say that when they’d haul a bunch of gangbangers in for questioning while investigating a crime, all that gang code bs and loyalty is out the window. They turn on each other, trying to get the best deal they can for themselves. THIS is what they were talking about.
Literally the Hispanic -Prisoner- Dilemma
Jose and Juan have been arrested for robbing the Hibernia Savings Bank and placed in separate isolation cells. Both care much more about their personal freedom than about the welfare of their accomplice. A clever prosecutor makes the following offer to each: “You may choose to confess or remain silent. If you confess and your accomplice remains silent I will drop all charges against you and use your testimony to ensure that your accomplice does serious time. Likewise, if your accomplice confesses while you remain silent, they will go free while you do the time. If you both confess I get two convictions, but I’ll see to it that you both get early parole. If you both remain silent, I’ll have to settle for token sentences on firearms possession charges. If you wish to confess, you must leave a note with the jailer before my return tomorrow morning.”
Sorry. Fat finger downvoted. Apologies.
Newsom calling for an investigation reminds me of the water softener ad in which a woman calls loudly for the “Culligan Man”.
Leftist cannibalism, I’d love it if the circumstances weren’t so tragic. I lived in SoCal for 63 years before fleeing to Idaho. Winter maintenance of water systems wasn’t unusual. South OC depends on a pipeline from the MWD that runs south from Yorba Linda as I recall. We’d get notifications every few years asking us to reduce water use during a particular week while the pipeline was down for maintenance. It is winter now, and this was apparently an extreme wind event, truly a perfect storm that is in some measure could be just bad luck.
But, where were the contingency plans? I read that they couldn’t pump more water into the other storage tanks because the control station had to be evacuated for the fire. Why wasn’t there a backup for this in another location? Makes no sense to have that infrastructure vulnerability right at the time and place where water will be needed most.
This re.inds me of the NOLA levy breaches. The same party doing the same greedy government was at fault there too.
Keep that example in mind.
Mayor Ray Nagin did absolutely nothing to prepare for a storm that Joe Bastardi was on Fox for a full week before screaming about – every single night. Nagin didn’t bother doing anything, left New Orleaners on their own, literally, and hid for a week in some hotel while New Orleans was flooded and in chaos. He was nowhere to be seen.
And then, after all that and all the devastation and obvious corruption and ineptitude and incompetence and cowardice … they re-elected him!
“NEW: I am calling for an independent investigation into the loss of water pressure to local fire hydrants and the reported unavailability of water supplies from the Santa Ynez Reservoir. We need answers to ensure this does not happen again…”
I’ve seen this behavior before.
We need answers to ensure this does not happen again…”
The real reason Newsom is upset is because this will set back his plans for reparations payments, “Sweet Sister Josephine, we’ll never have enough money for reparations now.”
Uh, wrong, OTHER things may suffer though.
Let’s spend more money doing an investigation when we already know who is at fault.
Newsom calling for an investigation is like Stalin telling Beria, “Hey, we need to find out what happened to all those kulaks.”
I know the answer! Some self inflated egotistical moron with Hair Gel poisoning made a bunch of moronic decisions to satisfy a cult of ungrateful psychos that cause all of this.
Funny, he looks just like you Governor.
The massive cancelations of home insurance for many because of foolish government premium caps will probably be an even bigger problem for Gavin, et al.
It will be interesting to see the insurance companies reaction to Newsome’s pledge to pass a law forcing companies to issue fire insurance in California. Will they jack up the rates to pay for it? Will they leave the state after ruinous claims due to fires or just sue the state for reimbursement and then America will be treated to the delight of discovery.
They can’t jack up the rates. That’s why they canceled the policies in the first place!
I’m sick and tired of lefties ( in this case as well as so many others), particularly lefty females who are incompetent and hired in under “equity,”. Their incompetence affects 1,000s, 10,000s, 100, 000s+ lives Nobody calls them out, holds them accountable or they continue to promote them (fire chief who failed in San Fran and failed in New Orleans)..
Knowledge and competence matter. Stop the stupid “feminist” leftist hiring.
Dear God
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/01/lapd-claims-no-probable-cause-arson-as-suspect/
As others have noted, this is how you get vigilante justice. An entire city is on edge and the LAPD is letting arson suspects free.
And never forget which state had the most notorious (and respected) vigilante groups. It’s not an accident, it’s history rhyming.
First of all they haven’t let anyone free. But are you seriously suggesting that if they have no probable cause to hold someone they should hold him anyway, just because people are on edge?! Because that would be a worse crime than anything that he might have done.
No probable cause means no probable cause, and you simply CANNOT charge someone without it. He’s still in custody, and if probable cause is developed he’ll be charged, but charging him without it would be a monstrous crime, much worse than arson.
Just remember that nobody so far claims to have seen him actually light a fire. Also that not everything people claim to have seen is true. And also that not everything people are reported to have claimed did they actually claim in the first place.
So, just out of curiosity. How did all those fires start in the first place? On other fires out there we know almost immediately but here we are not hearing a thing except denials it was arson, illegal aliens, homeless etc.
Call me suspicious but it almost looks like someone is making the decision to shield Biden in his last weeks as President and Newsome’s future political career by not telling us it was illegal alien gangs or something.
Try to keep up.
Survey says: Global Warming!
Yeah, that’s the ticket!
No, we don’t. Especially when it’s suspected arson, we don’t find out for sure until some time later.
But last I heard they are still saying they believe at least some of the fires are arson. They just don’t know for sure, and it’s way too early to know that for sure.
The scapegoat ought to be the voters. They voted for sensitivity and feelings instead of a working system.
Apparently there are no mirrors in Mr. Newsome’s house.
The buck stops with him.
We can certainly blame Mayor Bass and the Lesbian Leadership Threesome at the LAFD for their part in this conflagration fiasco but Newsome wanted to be governor and now he’s going to find out that being governor isn’t all fun & games.
“Prepare three envelopes.”
Maxine is yelling that we need to get the 1%s to pay their fair share of taxes so that CA can get services on again. So that’s it, problem solv-ed! Way to go Max!
Sorry, Mad Maxie, the 1% went to Texas.
But if you hit up all your homeless and illegals for $10 each, you might squeak through.
It was less than a year ago that Governor Hair-gel was standing in front of the cameras bragging about how his administration had “restored free flow” to 4 different rivers. They did this by destroying the dams, and of course along with them the reservoirs and stored water behind them that had been on these rivers.
He had best remember the adage that when you start pointing fingers, there are three more of them pointing right back at you.
For some reason it appears that a number of writers here on LI feel that I should have sympathy for the people who bought or built in a fire zone and then adamantly refused to take appropriate precautions. Remember that these are people who CHOOSE to live there. My wife and I are political and economic refugees from the Soviet Socialist State of Minnesota and we left as soon as I retired from the job that held us there. We moved to NW Wyoming, and enjoy a culture of liberty and personal responsibility, rather than MN’s culture of parasitism and collectivist/statist/authoritarianism. Anyone can vote with their feet and get the heck out of a Dem-wing dominated state to somewhere that’s a little more freedom-oriented.
Anyone who has made the choice to remain in KKKalifornia will eventually get what they have chosen to deserve.
Choosing to stay in a grossly dysfunctional Blue jurisdiction governed by not just incompetent leaders but leaders who actively obstruct and prevent basic risk mitigation is effectively the acceptance of the dysfunctional status quo and the expectation of eventual catastrophe.
“standing in front of the cameras bragging about how his administration had “restored free flow” to 4 different rivers.”
Later on this year, he’l be bragging about how hundreds of acres of beautiful vacant waterfront property is now ready for exciting new development.
Personally, knowing how many good people live here and how many have tried to make it a better place and are still fighting to do so, I can’t down vote the above comment hard enough.
This will be another case of collective irresponsibility for CA. Everybody is too blame, so nobody gets blamed.
One party rule, dem super majority. Newscum gives himself pat on back and raise. California idiocracy.
A classic example of the often quoted, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
H. L. Mencken
The problem with democrats isn’t incompetence per se, so there’s no point in dwelling on it if you find it, it’s noncomprehension of perverse consequences in everything. Problems don’t respond well to direct action as they believe, as women believe. Men see a system with stuff following from direct action.
DEI is one thing that has perverse consequences like collapse of the system, predictably. But the people who screw up are not the focus of the mistake. It’s the voters.
How quickly can the recall process be initiated and completed?
Gray Davis’s recall effort started on February 5, 2003. They got the OK to start collecting signatures on March 25. The signatures were certified on July 23, and the election was set for October 7.
They’re going to wear out that buck if they keep passing it