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Water officials said Tuesday that pumps designed to push water to the upper reaches of a hillside Yorba Linda neighborhood failed during a Nov. 15 firestorm, possibly explaining why firefighters were forced to abandon the area and let homes burn after fire hydrants went dry.
The disclosure came four days after Orange County fire officials blamed the loss of as many as five homes in the neighborhood on lack of water from fire hydrants.
More than 180 homes were destroyed or damaged when fire tore through Yorba Linda, 19 of them in the upper Hidden Hills Estates neighborhood where firefighters encountered the dry hydrants. The ridge-top homes border Chino Hills State Park, 14,100 acres of oaks and dry grasslands.
Agency officials had said they believed the dry hydrants were caused by the overwhelming water demands of such an intense and widespread firefighting effort.
But on Tuesday, officials described a frantic afternoon and evening in which, little by little, they learned from media reports, fire authorities and their own inspection crews that neighborhood fire hydrants had gone dry, electronic communications had failed and pumps expected to help deliver the water had shut down.
The problems first surfaced at 1:22 p.m., when the water district's computer...