You know, this finally seems to be on point. The reservoir in Stone Canyon, which supports Bel Air and its surrounds, serves an area which already has good water pressure, unlike the Palisades. Stone Canyon has 3 plus Billion gallons of water, which last time I looked was more water than had been used to fight the Palisades fire so far. The big difference is Stone Canyon was built many decades ago before public spending was rerouted to different priorities. But had the fire been on the other side of the 405, the result would have been far less damage would have been sustained.bearister said:
I have zero expertise in the matter and do not purport to know whose opinion is correct. With that said, I found this opinion by a Furd expert:
" David Freyberg, PhD, a hydrologist and water resources specialist at Stanford University, told CBS News in an email that while a full Santa Ynez would have had benefits, it's not clear how much impact it would have had.
"The reservoirs above Pacific Palisades were not designed to support fire-fighting at the scale of [this] fire," he wrote. "Water supply reservoirs are typically designed to cope with house fires, not wildfires."
He added that the situation has made it clear that larger-scale solutions are necessary.
"It is clear that communities vulnerable to wildfire are going to need to think carefully, i.e., rethink, about design criteria for these systems," Freyberg said. "Not just reservoirs, but pipe sizes [and] pressure management."
….and Newsom, not quantifying anything, said this:
"In his letter to DWP, Newsom wrote, "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."
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/la-fires-santa-ynez-reservoir-pacific-palisades-california/
Unfortunately, journalists have focused on the lack of the reservoir with a 117 million gallon capacity which the LA County fire chief said would have only provided maybe a hour more of water pressure (which admttedly could have saved some homes). The LA Times now is rife with articles with LA officials being told that the LA City west of the 405 was grossly insufficient, and something closer to the Stone Canyon Reservoir was needed.
Officials were warned of failing water system before ...Los Angeles Timeshttps://www.latimes.com california story malibu-w...
While the academic quoted is correct the reservoirs in place were designed to fight small fires, and he is incompetently wrong (or being quoted out of context) about the current water system in SoCal. That system generally is designed to accommodate water suppression for the major wild fires that Los Angles and Orange Counties have encountered over many decades. I have both lived through those fires and personally observed fire suppressant efforts on my family homes, and worked for either as real estate counsel or CFO of the largest water purveyors down here. There exists many reservoirs and underground storage facilities the size of Stone Canyon on the wholesale and retail level. Either the professor was taken out of context, or he simply doesn't understand the infrastructure that exists in other populated areas of the City and LA County outside the Palisades.
The agonizing other problem is that journalists are focused on the tiny 117 million gallon facility because they can show pictures of the empty facility and because LA DWP officials blatantly lied abut the facility being closed temporarily for maintenance. The problem was the entire system in the Palisades had been ignored for many decades as population grew exponentially.
Newsom seems to have this right if you talk with the incidence fire chiefs. When the priority shifted from fighting the fire to saving lives (which is the protocol when the initial crew can't control the fire), the evacuation corridors failed and the ground fire resources had to focus on removing people rather than the fire. This allowed the fire to become out of control for hours. This meant, hours later, when the ground fire resources finally shifted to protecting structure, the fire had to be fought too many fronts without the help of air resources. With insufficient water pressure from the local water system, the fight only lated a few hours. This meant there was no water being retrieved from water mains (plenty of water, but no pressure to get the water through the system to the hydrant), and the ground resources were unable to fight the advancing fire without the water.
