San Bernardino County Fire Protection District Chief Dan Munsey spoke with conservative talk show host Charlie Kirk about the raging fires in Los Angeles County.
Chief Munsey told the host of The Charlie Kirk Show on YouTube that the San Bernardino County Fire Department has sent resources to neighboring Los Angeles County and the city to battle the fires.
In a nearly 10-minute-long video, Munsey said firefighters are making every effort to battle the fires and that their acts of bravery have saved “millions of dollars of property and saved countless human lives.”
The San Bernardino County Fire Protection District is working around the clock to support emergency operations battling several fires in Los Angeles County.
Santa Ana winds fuel fires
On Tuesday, Jan. 7, extreme weather conditions in Southern California fueled by powerful Santa Ana winds started wildfires in Los Angeles County.
The initial fires included the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades area, the Eaton Fire near the foothill community of Altadena northeast of Los Angeles, the Hurst Fire near Sylmar, the Lidia Fire near Acton and the Kenneth Fire near the Bell Canyon area on the Ventura and Los Angeles county line.
On Sunday night, Cal Fire reported the Eaton Fire at 14,117 acres, with 27% containment, the Pacific Palisades Fire at 23,713 acres, with 13% containment and the Hurst Fire at 799 acres with 89% containment.
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The wildfires on Sunday had led to the death of 24 people, according to the County of Los Angeles Department of Medical Examiner.
Additionally, multiple individuals have been injured by wildfires that damaged or destroyed over 12,000 structures and consumed about 40,300 acres of total land, according to Cal Fire.
Year-round fire season?
“Our hearts are just our brothers and sisters over there, they got a tough job with what they’re facing,” said Munsey, who remarked to Kirk about seeing an increase in fire activity over nearly 30 years.
It seems like wildfires are becoming more and more commonplace, Munsey told Kirk.
“Over the last 20 years, the fires have just increased in magnitude, frequency,” Munsey said. “It’s double what it was when I first started.”
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After speaking with strike team leaders of several fire agencies, Munsey said one leader in the Palisades told him that he hadn’t slept for 36 hours and his crews were still actively fighting fires.
Munsey explained that long hours battling fires occurs year-round, not just during “fire season.” He added that It’s January, a new year, “This is not supposed to happen, but this is a reality.”
A firefighter cuts tree branches as the Palisades Fire, one of several simultaneous blazes that devoured structures across Los Angeles County, burns in Mandeville Canyon.
Hydrants with no water
Kirk asked Munsey to explain to him “As a layman, how it’s possible that fire hydrants don’t have water” or a lack of water to fight fires.
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The Los Angeles Times reported that during the fast-spreading fires, fire crews were repeatedly hampered by low water pressure.
The water system that supplies neighborhoods doesn’t have the capacity to deliver such large volumes of water over several hours, Martin Adams, former general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power told the Los Angeles Times.
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Chief Munsey echoed Adams and shared an illustration that included living in a small house where he and his wife take back-to-back hot showers.
“If I go too long, she doesn’t have hot water” because of the limited amount of water replenishing the tank and the time it takes for the water to heat up.
“The same thing is occurring here, you have more and more firefighters taking water in the system,” Munsey said. “You need hundreds of thousands of gallons a minute to be able to combat something like this, you essentially have more water flowing out of the system than what’s flowing into the system.”
Munsey said additionally, water systems in urban areas where the fires are occurring, are not gravity-fed and often fed by pumps which may also supply water to tanks on hills.
When a fire moves through an area, it often takes out utilities such as electricity that power water pumps resulting in less pressure.
Urban water flow was never designed to battle fires similar to what is occurring in Los Angeles County, the chief said.
Homes along the canyon’s edge of N. Altadena Drive on Wednesday, January 8, 2025 that were destroyed or badly damaged in the Eaton Fire. Small fires still burned on some properties a day after the fire swept through Altadena.
“With this kind of devastation on this kind of scale, it’s absolutely predictable that your water system is just not going to be able to maintain the fire flow that’s required,” Munsey stated.
Munsey added, “It’s not really even feasible to examine, you know, how do you increase the pressure? How do you increase the diameter of the pipes? We’re talking billions of dollars in infrastructure that would be required for this.”
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Using water tenders
Munsey stated that the state of California did a good thing by sending a lot of water tenders into the fire zones.
He explained that a typical water tender is a truck that’s going to carry 2,500 gallons or larger as the state requested.
Water tender operators will have to find a hydrant that has water and then drive back and supply these fire trucks. Then, they’re going to have to repeat the process, Munsey explained.
“At times, they might find a static water source like a pool or a lake, generally fresh water and they’ll draw water from that but it’s very time-consuming,” Munsey said. “One of the best things we can start doing is restoring the water system utilities as a whole; it’s going to be very impactful in these particular areas until they’re able to do that.”
A DC-10 dumps fire retardant near Mandeville Canyon Road on Jan 11, 2025, during a battle to save homes in the Brentwood community from the Palisades Fire that started on Jan. 7.
Lack of water supply
Kirk asked Munsey to help him understand the water supply issue facing firefighters.
“I mean wouldn’t part of the problem — based on what you’re describing — is a water supply and so just capturing more water from rainfall would definitionally then help the supply and you would have a surplus,” Kirk said. “There’s billions of tons of water that very well could be captured from rainfall that they let go into the ocean.”
Munsey clarified that he’s “not a water manager,” and agreed that “a lot of water” is allowed to flow via storm drains “to the sea” and there’s a wide variety of reasons for why that’s occurring.
Munsey emphasized that having water for firefighting will always be beneficial, however, because of the scale of the fires in Los Angeles County, firefighters can only put so much water on the fire.
“Having an uninterrupted supply of water isn’t going to stop this fire, it may save more structures definitely, it may save human lives definitely, but we’re talking about an absolute natural disaster,” Munsey said.
Munsey further explained how an abundance of water would not stop fires that spread due to high wind speeds, which blew flaming embers up to two miles.
Some of those burning embers ignited vegetation, traveled underneath the eaves of houses and started spot fires, he added.
“As a firefighter, you’re chasing the fire at this point, you’re not making a defensive stand and stopping the fire with any kind of control breaks,” Munsey told Kirk.
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Cause of fires
Kirk asked Munsey how many fires he thought were related to “homelessness” or arson activity.
Munsey said as an industry, fire agencies know that conditions have been hot and dry.
In San Bernardino County, fire personnel have been putting out signage, doing radio announcements, and flying over homeless areas announcing when fire danger is going to occur, he added.
“At the end of the day, unfortunately, a lot of the fire services are in business because people tend to do unsmart things; they’re negligent,” Munsey said. “There are several fires that are caused each year in our jurisdiction and other jurisdictions by homelessness.”
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He continued by saying there are a variety of reasons why homeless individuals have fires, including in January when the homeless often start warming fires.
“Or they may be cooking food or cooking other things they are using to sometimes make money,” said Munsey, who added that fires have also been started by citizens welding outdoors during dangerous fire conditions.
Munsey said that over half of wildfires that his agency responds to are home are caused by human negligence.
“Maybe about 25% could be attributed to some sort of homelessness activity but generally we’re keeping those fires pretty small,” Munsey said. “They don’t tend to just go make a warming fire in an area that they know it’s that’s going to spread a vegetation because they want to really be left alone.”
Fire safety
He added that citizens play a big part in keeping fires small by adhering to fire safety rules.
“We need you to work with your local fire authorities,” Munsey said. “Please go to their websites, look at what fire safety looks like in your particular area.”
The chief added that nearly 80% of Californians live in a wildland-urban interface, which is a huge percentage of the population.
“Start with your house, making sure you’re meeting with contractors, you’re making sure that your house is constructed in a safe manner to prevent wildfire,” he said.
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Additionally, residents should follow fire safety guidelines, removing fuels away from homes, and removing vegetation to create fire breaks around property.
“My heart goes out to the LA city and LA County firefighters that are working so hard, and citizens that have lost their houses,” Munsey said.
Munsey said people can help fire victims by donating to the United Way or the American Red Cross.
Daily Press reporter Rene Ray De La Cruz may be reached at RDeLaCruz@VVDailyPress.com. Follow him on X @DP_ReneDeLaCruz
This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: Charlie Kirk, San Bernardino County fire chief discuss LA fires