President Donald Trump went off the rails when asked about California wildfires during his first full day in office. He claims city officials are diverting "limitless" water to the ocean through a "massive valve."
Tbf, the crops come to our communities. We love our fresh California produce. It sparks joy.
And the Palisades had enough water to drink and fill pools and grow landscape plants, and several people were hosing down their homes (a few died with hose in hand because the fire was way too strong for that and they should have evacuated but a lot of the rest of us made stupid decisions in the moment that just didn’t turn out as deadly.) but the real problem was that wind. They couldn’t do airdrops, the conflagration was too powerful. There was a problem with the hydrants, but honestly even if they’d been fully functioning it’s not clear if much more could have been saved. Altadena had plenty of water too, with working hydrants, but that maelstrom of fire was just crazy, man.
The problem with the hydrants is they used 9 million gallons of water, which was their entire reservoir (3 3 million gallon tanks in surrounding hills for water pressure).
To feed hydrants you need massive quantities of water in a higher place for pressure.
The state is investigating why they couldn’t keep up, but I think it’s as simple as the system wasn’t built to refill their reservoirs fast enough
Could be, it was an unprecedented situation. I’m also not sure if the water’s all connected and the folks using their house hoses took water from more strategic hydrants. And there’s perhaps a question to be asked about how hard it is under Prop 13 to pass property taxes for maintenance budgets.
Maybe hes thinking of the fact that ~80% of California’s water goes to irrigation for crops instead of to communities.
Tbf, the crops come to our communities. We love our fresh California produce. It sparks joy.
And the Palisades had enough water to drink and fill pools and grow landscape plants, and several people were hosing down their homes (a few died with hose in hand because the fire was way too strong for that and they should have evacuated but a lot of the rest of us made stupid decisions in the moment that just didn’t turn out as deadly.) but the real problem was that wind. They couldn’t do airdrops, the conflagration was too powerful. There was a problem with the hydrants, but honestly even if they’d been fully functioning it’s not clear if much more could have been saved. Altadena had plenty of water too, with working hydrants, but that maelstrom of fire was just crazy, man.
The problem with the hydrants is they used 9 million gallons of water, which was their entire reservoir (3 3 million gallon tanks in surrounding hills for water pressure).
To feed hydrants you need massive quantities of water in a higher place for pressure.
The state is investigating why they couldn’t keep up, but I think it’s as simple as the system wasn’t built to refill their reservoirs fast enough
Could be, it was an unprecedented situation. I’m also not sure if the water’s all connected and the folks using their house hoses took water from more strategic hydrants. And there’s perhaps a question to be asked about how hard it is under Prop 13 to pass property taxes for maintenance budgets.