President Biden said Thursday that water shortages are due in part to rolling power outages in the Los Angeles area to prevent further fires as authorities battle historic wildfires near city limits. said.
Biden said at a White House briefing with administration officials that generators are being prepared and that he has discussed water shortages with California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). He said utilities were shut down due to concerns about further fires devastating Southern California and surrounding areas.
“What we learned from talking to the governor is that there are also concerns that water shortages are occurring. In fact, the power companies are understandably concerned about the risk of energy-carrying power lines being blown out and more fires starting. We cut off the power because we were worried that it might happen,” he said. “When that was done, it cut off the generating capacity to pump water, which caused the hydrants to run out of water.”
He added that Cal Fire, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, is deploying generators to compensate for the lack of water from fire hydrants.
President-elect Trump is criticized the water shortage In a statement posted on Truth Social, Newsom earlier Thursday said, “Instead of immediately going to Northern California, opening water mains, and letting that water flow into the Pacific Ocean, we will continue to protect our dry, hungry, burning states. It should be passed on to the public,” he said. ”
President Trump also blamed Newsom for the fire and called for his resignation late Wednesday. Newsom said he was doing everything he could to protect people and make sure firefighters had what they needed, and countered that Trump wanted to “politicize” the fires. .
President Trump also said California's governor should have signed a proclamation pumping additional water to the Golden State to avoid the situation. However, it is unclear what kind of declaration President Trump was referring to.
Even though the first Trump administration said in 2019 that no more water could be pumped to water farms, the amount of water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta The so-called fish face restrictions from federal and state regulations to protect them. puts the fish at risk, according toReport from Cal Mattersat that time.
