Capt. Kevin Easton and his firefighting team had already spent hours battling an out-of-control fire sweeping through Los Angeles’s Pacific Palisades area, leaving gutted homes in its wake. Then, around midnight, their water lines started to sputter. Before long, the hydrants had run dry.

凯文·伊斯顿队长和他的消防队花了几个小时与席卷洛杉矶太平洋帕利塞德地区的失控大火搏斗，大火过后，房屋被烧得面目全非。在午夜左右，他们的水管出水变小。没过多久，消防栓就断水了。

“Completely dry — couldn’t get any water out of it,” said Captain Easton, who was part of a small, roaming patrol of firefighters who were trying to protect the community’s Palisades Highlands neighborhood. Even on Wednesday afternoon — hours after the hydrants had gone dry — there was still no water. Houses in the Highlands burned, becoming part of the more than 5,000 structures destroyed by the Palisades fire so far.

“完全干了，一点水也没有，”伊斯顿说，他的这支小型巡逻消防队正在努力保护帕利塞兹高地社区。直到周三下午，在消防栓干涸几个小时后，仍然没有水。高地的房屋被烧毁，成为迄今为止被帕利塞德大火摧毁的5000多座建筑物的一部分。

Officials now say the storage tanks that hold water for high-elevation areas like the Highlands, and the pumping systems that feed them, could not keep pace with the demand as the fire raced from one neighborhood to another. That was in part because those who designed the system did not account for the stunning speeds at which multiple fires would race through the Los Angeles area this week.

官员们表示，随着大火从一个社区蔓延到另一个社区，为高地等高海拔地区蓄水的储水罐和抽水系统无法满足需求。这在一定程度上是因为，设计该系统的人没有考虑到本周洛杉矶地区多处火灾蔓延的惊人速度。

“We are looking at a situation that is just completely not part of any domestic water system design,” said Marty Adams, a former general manager and chief engineer at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which is responsible for delivering water to nearly four million residents of Los Angeles.

“我们正面临的情况完全不符合任何生活用水系统的设计，”洛杉矶水电局前总经理兼总工程师马蒂·亚当斯说。该局负责向洛杉矶近400万居民供水。

Municipal water systems are designed for firefighters to tap into multiple hydrants at once, allowing them to maintain a steady flow of water for crews who may be trying to protect a large structure or a handful of homes. But these systems can buckle when wildfires, such as those fueled by the dry brush that surrounds Los Angeles’s hillside communities, rage through entire neighborhoods.

市政供水系统是专为消防员同时接入多个消防栓而设计的，以便为试图保护大型建筑物或少数住宅的消防队保持稳定的水流。但是，当野火（例如洛杉矶山坡社区周围的干燥灌木引发的火情）肆虐整个社区时，这些系统就会出现问题。

周二，洛杉矶太平洋帕利塞德社区附近的山上升起火焰。

As urban growth spreads into wilderness areas around the country and climate change brings more challenging fire conditions, an increasing number of cities have confronted a sudden loss of water available for firefighting, most recently in Talent, Ore.; Gatlinburg, Tenn.; and Ventura County, Calif.

随着城市发展向全国各地的荒野地区蔓延，以及气候变化带来更具挑战性的火灾情况，越来越多的城市面临着可用于消防的水突然减少的问题，最近在俄勒冈州的塔兰特、田纳西州的加特林堡以及加州文图拉县都出现了这种情况。

The problem can be especially acute during high-wind conditions, like those Los Angeles experienced this week, when firefighting aircraft could not safely make their usual aerial drops of water and fire retardant.

这个问题在大风条件下尤其严重，本周的洛杉矶就是如此，消防飞机无法安全地进行通常的空中洒水和阻燃剂投放。

In Louisville, Colo., as firefighters were nearing depletion of water supplies in 2022, crews took the extraordinary step of pushing untreated water through the system. In 2023, on the Hawaiian island of Maui, firefighters battling a wildfire found their hydrants running dry as flames churned through the community of Lahaina, killing 102 people in the country’s deadliest wildfire in more than a century.

2022年，在科罗拉多州路易斯维尔，当消防队员的供水即将耗尽时，工作人员采取了非常措施，将未经处理的水引入系统。2023年，与野火搏斗的消防员发现他们的消防栓已经干涸，火焰在拉海纳社区肆虐，造成102人死亡，成为美国一个多世纪以来最致命的野火。

In that case, firefighters were confronted with many homes and pipes being destroyed simultaneously, causing water to gush across yards and streets when firefighters needed it in their hydrants.

在这种情况下，消防员要面对许多房屋和管道同时被毁的情况，在他们正需要使用消防栓时，水却在庭院和街道喷涌。

Municipal water systems like the one in Los Angeles are designed to handle heavy loads, including those from large fires that might require multiple fire trucks to tap into the system at the same time.

像洛杉矶这样的市政供水系统的设计需要处理极大负荷，包括可能需要多辆消防车同时接入系统的大型火灾。

Getting water to the upper reaches of hillside communities like Pacific Palisades can be a challenge. There, water is collected in a reservoir that pumps into three high-elevation storage tanks, each with a capacity of about one million gallons. Water then flows by gravity into homes and fire hydrants.

把水送到太平洋帕利塞兹这样的山坡社区的顶部可能是一个挑战。在那里，水被收集在一个蓄水池中，再通过水泵输送到三个高位储水箱，每个储罐的容量约为100万加仑。然后水在重力作用下流入家庭和消防栓。

But the pump-and-storage system was designed for a fire that might consume several homes, not one that would consume hundreds, said Mr. Adams, the former leader of the city’s water department.

但是，该市水务局前负责人亚当斯说，抽水存蓄系统考虑的是可能烧毁几户人家的火灾，而不是数百户人家。

“If this is going to be a norm, there is going to have to be some new thinking about how systems are designed,” he said.

他说：“如果这将成为一种常态，就必须对如何设计系统有一些新的思考。”

消防员试图拯救太平洋帕利塞德长老会教堂。

Ahead of this week’s dangerous weather conditions, the storage tanks above Pacific Palisades and other hillside communities affected by the fires were filled to capacity, officials said. But as the Palisades fire spread on Tuesday, the first tank there was quickly depleted. Hours later, the second one was empty. The third one was drained by Wednesday morning.

官员们说，在本周危险的天气条件到来之前，太平洋帕利塞兹和其他受火灾影响的山坡社区上方的储水罐是满的。但随着周二帕利塞德大火的蔓延，那里的第一个储水罐很快就用光了。几个小时后，第二个也空了。第三个储水管在周三早上被抽干。

Janisse Quiñones, the chief executive and chief engineer at the city’s water department, said so much water was being pulled from the main water line during the fire that there was less water available to pump up toward the storage tanks.

该市水务局首席执行官兼总工程师亚尼塞·奎诺内斯表示，火灾期间，大量的水从主水管中被抽走，因此可供泵入储水罐的水越来越少。

The supply of water ended up being only one of several challenges, as fire crews across Los Angeles County were overwhelmed by fires on so many fronts. In the Altadena area, where the Eaton fire burned through more than 13,000 acres and as many as 5,000 structures, firefighters also dealt with strains to the water system, but Chad Augustin, the chief of the nearby Pasadena Fire Department, said crews could not have stopped the fire’s early spread even with more water.

水的供应只是诸多挑战中的一个，整个洛杉矶县的消防人员都被众多前线的火灾压得喘不过气来。在阿尔塔迪纳地区，伊顿大火烧毁了超过5200公顷的土地，烧毁多达5000座建筑，那里的消防队员也面临供水系统紧张问题，但附近的帕萨迪纳消防局局长查德·奥古斯丁表示，即使有更多的水，消防人员也无法阻止火势在早期的蔓延。

“Those erratic wind gusts were blowing embers for multiple miles ahead of the fire, and that’s really what caused the rapid spread of this fire,” Chief Augustin said.

“那些不稳定的阵风把余烬吹到了大火前方几公里的地方，这才是导致火势迅速蔓延的真正原因，”奥古斯丁说。

截至周三傍晚，帕利塞德大火已烧毁5000多座建筑。

Rick Caruso, the real estate developer and former candidate for Los Angeles mayor who served two stints as president of the Department of Water and Power, said he had a team of private firefighters deployed in Pacific Palisades on Tuesday night, helping to protect a major outdoor retail space he owns, Palisades Village, as well as some nearby homes.

参选过洛杉矶市长的房地产开发商里克·卡鲁索曾两次担任水电局负责人。他说，周二晚上，他在太平洋帕利塞兹投入了一支私人消防员队伍，帮助保护他拥有的大型户外零售空间“帕利塞兹村”，以及附近的一些住宅。

All night, he said, the team was reporting that water was in short supply. He said it would take time to account for the supply problems, but suggested there appeared to be a shortfall in preparation.

他说，整个晚上，救援队都在报告水供应不足。他表示，解决供应问题需要时间，但他表示，准备工作似乎不足。

“The lack of water in the hydrants — I don’t think there’s an excuse,” he said.

“消防栓缺水——我认为这不是借口，”他说。

Traci Park, the Los Angeles City Council member whose district includes Pacific Palisades, said the city’s water systems were among several pieces of critically underfunded infrastructure.

洛杉矶市议会议员特蕾西·帕克的选区包括太平洋帕利塞兹，她说该市的供水系统是资金严重不足的基础设施之一。

“There are environmental catastrophes waiting to happen everywhere with our water mains,” she said, adding that some were a century old. “As our city has grown, we haven’t upgraded and expanded the infrastructure that we need to support it.”

她说：“我们的水管需要应付到处发生的环境灾难，”她还说，有些水管已经有一个世纪的历史了。“随着城市的发展，我们还没有升级和扩大需要支持的基础设施。”

She also raised the issue of the complexity of battling fires that are inherently wildland blazes, sweeping into urban neighborhoods — with firefighters unable to take advantage of wildland firefighting resources, such as aerial drops, that would normally be available to them.

她还提出了一个复杂的问题，火灾本质上是野外火灾蔓延到城市社区，消防员无法利用空投等通常可以利用的野火灭火资源。

“Our firefighters were out there yesterday fighting a raging wildfire with fire engines and fire hydrants — that’s not how you fight a wildfire,” she said.

“我们的消防队员昨天在用消防车和消防栓扑灭一场肆虐的野火，这不是扑灭野火的方式，”她说。

帕利塞德大火肆虐该地区时，高地社区的消防栓已完全断水。

Greg Pierce, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies water resources and urban planning, echoed the concerns over water systems that are designed for urban fires, not fast-moving wildfires. But redesigning water systems to allow firefighters to take on a broad wildfire would be enormously expensive, he said.

加州大学洛杉矶分校研究水资源和城市规划的研究员格雷格·皮尔斯也表达了对供水系统的担忧，这些系统是为城市火灾设计的，而不是为快速移动的野火设计的。但他说，重新设计供水系统以使消防员能够应对大面积的野火需要巨额资金。

A more fundamental question, he said, is whether it’s a good idea to rebuild neighborhoods adjacent to wildlands, an issue that has been broadly debated across the West as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of fires on what is known as the wildland-urban interface.

他说，一个更根本的问题是，重建邻近野外的社区是否是个好主意。随着气候变化增加了所谓的荒地与城市交界地带发生火灾的频率和强度，这个问题在整个西部都引起了广泛的争论。

Captain Easton, the 19-year fire department veteran who helped battle the Pacific Palisades blaze, said that there were other complications in addition to water supply, such as delays in getting additional support crews from other areas to the scene.

帮助扑灭太平洋帕利塞德大火的伊斯顿在消防部门工作了19年。他说，除了供水之外，还有其他一些复杂的问题，比如从其他地区调来额外的支援人员的工作出现延误。

Los Angeles’s water and power department had sent trucks with additional water tanks to the area, he said, but they were in stationary positions, meaning firefighters had to go retrieve the water and bring it back to the fire.

他说，洛杉矶的供水和电力部门已经派出装有额外水箱的卡车前往该地区，但它们的位置是固定的，这意味着消防员必须去取水并将其带回火场。

“That causes problems too, because you get 500 gallons of water and you’ve got a house that’s on fire, you knock it down a lot and then you’ve got to go back and get refilled,” he said.

“这也会造成问题，因为你有500加仑的水，面前是一座着火的房子，你刚把火压下去不少，然后又得回去重新装水，”他说。