Pacific Palisades Fire: Correcting Misinformation About LADWP’s Water System

Pacific Palisades Fire: Correcting Misinformation About LADWP's Water System

this is the city or regional water provider

https://www.ladwpnews.com/pacific-palisades-fire-correcting-misinformation-about-ladwps-water-system/

iirc they filled all 111 reservoirs and tanks before the fire started

electricity was not lost at any of the pumps

iirc the 3 tanks had 1 million gallons each - so the water dept would
pump water up to the 3 tanks - and then it would flow downhill in the
street pipes to the homes and hydrants - it sounds like too much was
coming out of the tanks relative to what could be pumped up into the
tanks - maybe there were only 6 inch mains going up the hills to the
tanks - that might limit the flow to 1000 gpm or 2000 gpm max

try to picture the scenario - first the tank is sitting there full -
nothing is going out and nothing is going in - then the LAFD opens a
few hydrants and the water level starts dropping in the tanks - so the
water dept pumps kick on and start refilling the tanks - and at some
point the LAFD is taking way more out of the tanks than the water dept
can pump back into the tanks - then you have a problem Houston -
especially if there is only 1 pipe filling each tank

one solution could be to grab a hydrant in Santa Monica and get 5
pumpers to relay water up to Palisade Village - but maybe the biggest
hose they have in the area is 3.5 inch hose - and it has high friction
losses so you cant really pump very much water thru it - maybe 500 gpm

other parts of the USA have 4 inch and 5 inch and 6 inch hose to relay
water over long distances - here is over a mile of hose on a Georgia
fire truck in 2014 -
https://statter911.com/2014/10/31/dropping-6000-feet-hose/

another solution could be to pump water out of the ocean - it would be
salt water - so you might destroy some pumpers - maybe not

another solution is to do water shuttles with tanker trucks and drop
tanks - but no one in california seems to use drop tanks - and lafd
only has 2 tanker trucks - tijuana might have 30 of them however - anf
has 5 - la county fd might have 5 also - so of 1000 fire stations in
los angeles county - only about 15 of them have water tanker trucks -
we commented about this many years ago - its weird

if tokyo fd ran lafd - there would be cisterns and volunteer fire
stations every quarter mile throughout the city - but lafd is too
supreme to do that - so yeah - tokyo fd is laughing at lafd right NOW

another solution might have been to open some valves between santa
monica pipes and beverly hills pipes and los angeles city pipes -
unless they are all part of the same system already

another solution could be to pump water from a beverly hills hydrant
into a la city hydrant - that might totally foul your drinking water
supply for a week - but maybe only in the eyes of a health dept nerd