Purdue researchers provide assistance to victims of Los Angeles wildfires
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A pair of researchers from Purdue University recently traveled to Los Angeles to provide assistance to residents and business owners affected by the two major wildfires that ravaged the city last month.
Andrew Whelton, a professor of civil engineering and environmental and ecological engineering, and PhD student Cristiane Grossi Ferrarezzi collected data on needs, while also sharing observations and expertise with local groups leading the recovery effort, Purdue said.
“In Los Angeles, after the fires, we were contacted by community groups and asked to help households understand what decisions they’re going to have to make, find pollutants on their property, remove pollutants on their property, and how to live in the area,” Whelton said.
Whelton told Inside INdiana Business they saw many of the same things as the Camp fire in California in 2018, the Marshall fire in Colorado in 2021, and the Maui wildfires in 2023.
“We saw a lot of sadness and anxieties and stress associated with much of the community having to make sense of what happened and how to find their way back to some sort of new normal,” he said. “We saw many destroyed or partially damaged structures. At the time, hazardous materials still remained in many of those properties, so they were unsafe to be at.”
Whelton and Ferrarezzi toured the Palisades fire and Eaton fire zones, where contractors were setting up environmental protection measures due to rain causing debris to move off site into the storm water system and into the ocean.
Restoring drinking water systems after major fire events has been a key focus for Whelton over the past several years. According to Purdue, his research papers have become a go-to resource for disaster response groups, including recently published guidance he authored for the Water Research Foundation.
Whelton said because of past work with utilities around the country, researchers have figured out how to find contamination in drinking water systems and fix it fairly rapidly.
“There were at least eight different drinking water systems [in Los Angeles] that served water to thousands of people that were impacted,” he said. “Three of them are known to have become contaminated with these chemicals called volatile organic compounds, including benzene. The utilities themselves are now working really hard to isolate that contamination, repressurize the water system so it could be used for firefighting purposes again, and also provide their customers water that is safe to use while they rebuild.”
As major wildfire events become more common, Whelton said there are recommendations for communities to try and reduce the potential for wildfires to damage water systems.
“These include setting up certain valves in the meter boxes to basically stop contamination flowing from a burning house into the water system that will protect everybody else on the street,” he said. “We have other recommendations where you can install automatic shut off valves in the system. So if an entire area is burning down, if you shut off that area, then you not only stop losing water so the firefighters can keep fighting, but you also prevent contamination from coming into that area into the system.”
Whelton said one key thing he noticed during his time in Los Angeles is how everyone in the community community—from the victims of the fire to elected leaders—are all asking the same important questions and coming together to accelerate the recovery process.
“What’s really great is to see those two merge together, because then everybody can get on the same bus and move towards recovery in an expeditious way.”