The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power on the evening of Jan. 7 reported that it was all-hands on deck responding to the impacts of the damaging winds in the City of Los Angeles, Calif.
Water System crews were responding to the Pacific Palisades area to ensure availability of water supplies to support firefighting efforts.
Electric crews were actively responding to restore power outages caused by high winds and flying debris.
The communities with the most affected customers were Echo Park, Harbor Gateway, Glassell Park, Sawtelle, Harbor City, Mid-Wilshire, Studio City, Toluca Lake, Valley Village, Panorama City and North Hollywood. Since midday Jan. 7 when the windstorm began, LADWP has restored 24,400 customers.
The public power utility encouraged its customers to sign up to receive outage alerts via text or email, in English or Spanish, report an outage, as well as check the status of any power outage in LADWP‘s service area by going online at www.LADWP.com/Outages.
Water System crews were also responding to the Pacific Palisades area to ensure availability of water supplies to support firefighting efforts. This area is served by water tanks and close coordination is underway to continue supplying the area.
LADWP has crews onsite working alongside LAFD and the Palisades Fire Incident Command to ensure continued availability of water supply in the area.
The LADWP Emergency Center was activated to coordinate the utility’s response across the organization and will operate 24/7 until our response returns to normal conditions. LADWP is also coordinating with City of LA Emergency Operations Center.
In advance of the fire, LADWP activated its emergency preparedness protocols and filled all available water storage facility tanks and reservoirs, including three 1-million-gallon tanks in Palisades area.
Water continues to flow in the Palisades area through its main system, LADWP said on Jan. 8. "The high winds severely limited air operations and the number of fire hoses deployed depleted our tanks in the area, which has affected hydrants at high elevations. We immediately implemented our contingency plan to provide water trucks to support our firefighters, and our crews are working on how to refill the tanks during this very active firestorm," it said.
"We have deployed nineteen 2,000 – 4,000-gallon tanker trucks to further support firefighting efforts and are working right now with our water agency partners to increase water pressure to the area. We are also asking our customers in the Westside to conserve water to make sure we are ready as the winds and dry conditions continue," it said on Jan. 8.
On the morning of Jan. 8, LADWP said its crews continued to face high winds and fire conditions as they worked to restore power to the 135,679 LADWP customers without power.
Burbank Water and Power
Meanwhile, California public power utility Burbank Water and Power said its crews will be on patrol responding to outages and restoring power as quickly as possible.
"We are monitoring outages and dispatching line crews to the trouble spots," it said.
Glendale Water and Power
California public power utility Glendale Water and Power has also been impacted by the unprecedented weather event and associated fires.
GWP on Jan. 8 reported that it anticipates that remaining customer restoration times will range from 12 to 18 hours.
“All crews are working diligently to expedite this process, but the number of system repairs caused by fallen trees and branches requires a safety-conscious approach,” it said.
GWP has reached out to neighboring utilities unaffected by the local windstorms for mutual aid, and they have responded.
Starting Jan. 9, GWP crews will be supplemented by field crews from Anaheim Public Utilities, “which should help us achieve system recovery sooner, depending entirely on the quelling of the current storm.”
