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Such a move would have reduced demand and helped to increase water pressure elsewhere.

Still, he said, water likely couldn’t flow fast enough to meet firefighters’ incredible demands.

“The limiting factor was the pipe,” Adams said, adding that water infrastructure is designed to allow firefighters to extinguish a few houses or a commercial building, not a wildfire.

“Systems are designed for a typical city-based fire, not an entire city catching on fire,” he said. ”There’s no domestic water system that’s built to this scale.”