with deciding what get does when. It probably seemed rational at the time to do repairs on the reservoir in January rather than, say, July or August. But as the article says, it may not have made any difference--I understand this.

It is going to be challenging to adapt to a reality in which calamities can happen any hour of any day of the year. Even the hurricanes began early this year. We had two years of flash flooding during monsoon, followed by a year of practically no rain. This is the first winter I can remember in years where we have not had a snowflake fall by mid January.

And let the water quality deteriorate. Or scheduled it for the winter when most of the rain occurs rather than late summer when most of the CA fires occur. Oh, wait...

the stuff has to be maintained

Basically useless. Wouldn't have stopped that guy. The Article above states that the reservoir was down for repairs.

Keep “deferring” maintenance to save money.

The results are predictable.

n/t

is older than our streetview. This streetview is from June 2024, but the overhead was obviously earlier because the overhead does not show the new construction.

Reservoir



Cleared land in satellite view (Obviously before June 2024)

Same spot June 2024


Based on other landmarks in the satellite pics, it was taken either April 2024 or October 2023.

Anyway satellite is only updated every year or so.

That is it in a nutshell...............No matter the amount of water available, No matter what pressure you use, there is a limit of volume of water that you can push thru a pipe of different diameters..........The city mains are not designed, like Iron Lion says to handle a hundred hydrants, fifty hydrants or even ten hydrants.......

Also, pressure at a lower elevation is more than pressure at a higher elevation. The pressure drops a pound for every two feet of elevation. In addition, if all the water is being used at a lower elevation, obviously none will reach the higher pipes.

It boggles my mind, all the mis-information being broadcast by the media, including what is being spewed by Trump. Including by members of the Command of the LAFD.........

In my opinion, the only way to effectively and safely fight a "conflagration" such as this, is by Air........

Another point that no one has mentioned is that each structure has water supplied out of the same water mains as the hydrants.
During the fire and collapse faucets and toilets are broken and just running water continuously......take a single structure's water loss from this situation and multiply it by hundreds, if not thousands of structures........................

exacerbating the situation.

I agree that air is the best way for this widespread level of wildfires. There needs to be more firefighting aircraft involved. our country should probably invest in some and send them wherever they are needed. California is getting help from Canada but we should have them here in America too.

Short of Hurricane Hunters, aircraft are grounded.

was one of 19 that Canada sent us to help out..........

For decades, it has been recommended that we have a fleet of aircraft of all sizes, converted to tankers for fighting wildland fires.

The small planes and helicopters drop 500 gallons, maybe 1,000. The DC-10's drop 10,000 gallons...........

The local governments, state governments, and Federal governments can certainly have them standing by, year round, and staffed year round, not just in the summer months......

It is January! And we here in Colorado have been having RED FLAG warnings this past month. The number of Wildfires across the nation have grown immensely, and are certain to grow to even much higher numbers in the months/years ahead.

At this moment of severe suffering at the hands of climate change and those who refuse to take emergency government action to combat climate change, why post an article like this?

We don't know all of the facts. We don't know whether the facts alleged in the article are true. We don't know, even if they are true, whether this made any difference at all.

There's no need to post articles here on DU that might tend to bring California's excellent government officials into some kind of fake controversy.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

You'd prefer a coverup?

There are a number of things going on with the area's infrastructure outside of climate change.

One of the articles I read earlier in the week was that in some areas, the power was cut in an attempt to avoid wire sparking that could trigger more fires (something that had happened in previous CA fires). However doing that may have also impacted the water pumps to some of the hydrants (and apparently those pumps had no backup power or the backups failed).

All of this is part of assessing fixable weaknesses and "Lessons Learned" in order to plug gaps and improve future outcomes.

None of this has anything to do with the current state/county/municipal government response but would be useful for them for planning purposes.

The one thing I noticed that is rarely mentioned is that the same thing happened in Maui.

there is almost always something under repair in most cities.

It happens. It isn't some nefarious plot. I doubt that someone in the city or state government said "let's fix this reservoir right now because i think there's going to be a fire!"

Shit. Happens.