"There were a lot of people who didn't have water for a long time," Mahood said. In fact, much of the drinking water system operated by the San Lorenzo Valley Water District that serves Mahood's neighborhood, along with some 7,100 other households, was damaged or destroyed. Over the past five years or so, hundreds of California drinking water systems have suffered similar fates while struggling with the impacts of the state's increasingly intense climate-driven wildfires. In 2020 alone, 250 water systems were either damaged by fire or were subject to fire-related public safety power shutoffs, according to Stefan Cajina, who leads the Drinking Water Division for the State Water Resources Control Board's North Coast Section.