As the largest fire on record in California continued to carve its destructive path through the northern part of the state, firefighters sent a mobile command center to the scene. With thousands of personnel, multiple aircraft and hundreds of fire engines battling the blaze, officials needed the “incident support unit” to help them track and organize all those resources.

But in the midst of the response efforts, fire officials discovered a problem: The data connection for their support unit had been slowed to about one two-hundredth of the speed it had previously enjoyed. Like a teenager who streamed too many YouTube videos and pushed his family’s usage above the limits of its data plan, the Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District was being throttled by its internet service provider, Verizon. But in this case, officials have emphasized, homes and even lives were at stake.

The county fire district had no choice but to to use other agencies’ internet, rely on personal devices to transfer data and ultimately subscribe to a new, more expensive data plan, as Verizon officials urged them to do, according to court documents filed this week.

“In light of our experience, County Fire believes it is likely that Verizon will continue to use the exigent nature of public safety emergencies and catastrophic events to coerce public agencies into higher-cost plans ultimately paying significantly more for mission critical service — even if that means risking harm to public safety during negotiations,” Chief Anthony Bowden said in a sworn declaration.