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Originally Posted by Azure
Why do you assume that the reservoirs only supply a municipal system? They can also be used to provide non-salt water for fire tankers, water bombers, etc.
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Reservoirs are supplying tankers and helicopters though. Maybe you're not familiar with the LA area, but there are dozens of reservoirs throughout the city and they're all basically full. One tiny one is out of service, and unfortunately that was the closest one to where the Palisades fire started. But there are several larger ones within 5-10 km that are being used to supply firefighters.
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Also, properly designed hydrant systems connected back to reservoirs with adequate supply can provide millions of gallons per water in short order if the system is designed properly.
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Not really in that kind of landscape, unless money is no object. If it's shared with the municipal water system, there are hard limits in terms of pipe size. If you size the pipes for fighting a catastrophic forest fire, they're too big for potable use as you'll run into water quality issues.
What you're talking about would require a totally separate system, which means digging up the entire city and spending probably obscene amounts of money, and probably not being much further ahead. The fact is, there aren't hydrants in the mountains where no one lives, which is where these fires start and really get out of control.
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End of the day outside of fire re tar dant being used, the primary source of extinguishing fire is water. A large scale fire like that obviously is very hard to control, but access to abundant water gives the firefighters better options.
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They have abundant water sources for this. The only issue they had with water was a loss of pressure up on the hills as the storage tanks were depleted. But it wouldn't have made any real difference. I haven't heard anything about them losing water pressure or having offline reservoirs in Altadena, yet that fire is basically just as big and destructive.