President Donald Trump said California officials could have stopped the LA wildfires by turning on a water ‘valve’ to release gallons while the city burned. 

Trump, 78, told a press conference on Tuesday that ‘Los Angeles has massive amounts of water available to it’ and ‘all they have to do is turn the valve.’

‘Think of a sink but multiply it by many thousands of times the size of it, it’s massive,’ he said.

‘And you turn it back toward Los Angeles. Why aren’t they doing it? They either have a death wish, they’re stupid or there’s something else going on that we don’t understand.

‘They throw the water into the Pacific Ocean – these people are crazy. So we’re going to be issuing an executive order demanding that they immediately let that water come down through California.’ 

California Governor Gavin Newsom disputed the claims, telling DailyMail.com in a statement that ‘Trump is either unaware of how water is stored in California or is deliberately misleading the public.’

Trump said the ‘valve’ directs water from the Pacific north-west where ‘millions of gallons of water a week and a day even, in many cases, pours into California (and) goes all through California down into Los Angeles’. 

It’s unclear which ‘valve’ Trump is referring to, however, one of the executive actions he issued on his first day in office directed staff to find ways to reroute more water from Northern California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the rest of the state. 

The order is titled Putting People Over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California. 

Meanwhile, the Santa Ynez Reservoir in the Palisades was closed for repairs to its cover when the worst of the wildfires broke out in the wealthy neighborhood, according to the LA Times. 

This meant the 117-gallon water storage complex had been out of action for almost a year when the fires began. 

Trump added that fire hydrants in LA ‘didn’t have any water in them’ and ’40 percent of fire hydrants were dry’ when the wildfires broke out on January 7. 

The president also locked horns with the California state authorities during his first term, claiming they placed limits on the amount of water his administration could move south in order to protect the Delta smelt fish, which live close to the reservoir. 

In the ‘Meet the Press’ interview more recently, Newsom called any connection between the fish and the fire ‘inexcusable because it’s inaccurate.’ 

His office also hit back at Trump directly on X – saying that water supplies in California are the same levels now as they were under his pre-2020 policies. 

‘The only thing fishy are Trump’s facts,’ Newsom’s office said. ‘California pumps as much water now as it could under prior Trump-era policies. And there is no shortage of water in Southern California.’ 

‘Moving more water from Northern California would not have affected the fire response,’ Newsom’s spokesman told DailyMail.com in a statement. 

‘Water operations in the Delta have nothing to do with the local fire response in Los Angeles. 

‘Trump is either unaware of how water is stored in California or is deliberately misleading the public.

‘There is no imaginary spigot to magically make water appear at a wildfire, despite what Trump claims.’ 

Newsom also penned a letter to the California Department of Water and Power on January 10 asking them to investigate the response, including any water supply issues. 

‘While water supplies from local fire hydrants are not designed to extinguish wildfires over large areas, losing supplies from fire hydrants likely impaired the effort to protect some homes and evacuation corridors,’ he wrote in the letter. 

‘We need answers to how that happened.’ 

It comes as the Palisades Fire continues to raze through the ritzy star-studded LA enclave while the Eaton Fire is still burning in Altadena. Fresh fires have also broken out in Riverside and San Diego. 

Trump, who also blasted the response to the fires in his inaugural address, has said he will travel to Los Angeles on Friday during his first week as president. 

He previously said he had not visited before because he ‘thought it would be better if I went as president’. 

Los Angeles residents have also hit out at the city’s mayor Karen Bass for being away in Ghana when the fires broke out, despite ample warnings from meteorologists that the upcoming weather forecast amounted to a recipe for disaster.

Meanwhile, police have arrested two people for allegedly lighting fires amid the carnage, including Ruben Montes, 29, who was detained for arson in Irwindale, roughly 16 miles away from Altadena, where the deadly Eaton Fire continues to rage.

Mexican national Juan Manuel Sierra-Leyva, was taken into custody after allegedly being caught on video walking with a yellow blowtorch before he was confronted by residents in Calabasas, west of Beverly Hills.

Although investigators have yet to determine the cause of the fires, faults along the Los Angeles power grid alarmingly soared in the same areas where major wildfires raged, sparking theories that the faults could also have catalyzed the crisis. 

The damaged structures include dozens of multi-million-dollar mega-mansions owned by celebrities including Sir Anthony Hopkins, Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Bella Hadid and Mel Gibson. 

The Palisades Fire, which has so far razed more than 23,400 acres, is continuing to burn with only 68 percent of the inferno contained by 9.30am on Wednesday, according to CalFire.  

In Altadena, the Eaton Fire has burned through more than 14,000 acres and was 91 percent contained by the same time. 

Two more recent blazes – the Lilac Fire in San Diego and the Clay Fire in Riverside – have also razed through dozens of acres and were only part-contained as of Wednesday morning.