Homeowners are buying and installing private fire hydrant systems to help protect their homes during wildfires.

The next day, when the hydrant’s water pressure dropped ... got the sprinklers on the roof ready, wet down the house’s exterior and hooked up two fire hoses to the personal hydrant he had ...

“Yesterday, just in California alone, there were about 30 orders,” Barry McConaghey, a former firefighter who owns ...

The Palisades fire first took hold in a neighborhood where many hydrants had only a single small outlet for firefighters to ...

Fire hydrants have been a staple in American neighborhoods for well over a century, usually fed by city or county water systems. Many systems use the force of gravity to create water pressure.

The fire department said establishing a water supply was impossible as the hydrant was frozen. But crews were able to extinguish the fire with the water from their onboard water tanks.

Castaneda thought about those hydrants while watching coverage of the L.A. wildfires. At one point, so many fire hydrants were being used, the system lost water pressure. “The catastrophe was ...