Rick Caruso says there's no water to fight Pacific Palisades fire: 'Absolute mismanagement'

To the mayor, city council and county representatives, Caruso said the public must ask: "Why didn't you work to mitigate this? What was your brush mitigation program?" 

He argued that the problem is not a lack of rain, but that the brush has been left unkept for potentially decades. 

"Who's paying the price are all of these people and their homes," Caruso added. 

Janisse Quiñones, chief executive and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP), said that by 3 a.m. Wednesday, all fire hydrants in the Palisades "went dry." 

Caruso, a former DWP commissioner and the owner of the Palisades Village mall in the Westside neighborhood, further argued that firefighters are at the scene but "there's nothing they can do" without water supply, as businesses and homes burn. 

"This is a window into a systemic problem of the city - not only of mismanagement, but our infrastructure is old," Caruso said.

Several homes around his shopping center were "fully engulfed" in flames, and the mall itself was damaged, he said.