[jacket3ree]

First, I know nothing about how the Santa Ynez Reservoir works operationally, I've never seen a schematic, I have never worked in Palisades, and I'm generalizing how municipal fire protection systems work.

Somewhere above in the thread I guessed that to deliver water to 1,000 homes on fire at 1,500 gpm each for two hours, assuming that could even be delivered by the system (doubtful), would draw 90 million gallons out of storage, noting that the demand on the ground with a bunch of open hydrants would probably be even higher. Basically a fully operational Santa Ynez Reservoir would have held enough water to fight that many fires for something like two hours before running dry. Again, whether that could be delivered by the system to all the hydrants and whether the available fire fighting force could have done that remain pure speculation. It's not like the fire only lasted two hours. A system like that generally would not be designed or built or capable of replenishing the gravity storage in Santa Ynez Reservoir anywhere nearly as quickly as the continued demand after the reservoir was drained in those two hours or so. So everything probably still would have burned just like it did, more or less, particularly with near hurricane force winds and the fire creating its own weather.

Someone will probably do a "but for" (that reservoir being out of service) extended period simulation of the water system and that will be discussed in detail by engineers, elected officials, department heads, and lawyers alike.

[jacket3ree]

First, I know nothing about how the Santa Ynez Reservoir works operationally, I've never seen a schematic, I have never worked in Palisades, and I'm generalizing how municipal fire protection systems work.

Somewhere above in the thread I guessed that to deliver water to 1,000 homes on fire at 1,500 gpm each for two hours, assuming that could even be delivered by the system (doubtful), would draw 90 million gallons out of storage, noting that the demand on the ground with a bunch of open hydrants would probably be even higher. Basically a fully operational Santa Ynez Reservoir would have held enough water to fight that many fires for something like two hours before running dry. Again, whether that could be delivered by the system to all the hydrants and whether the available fire fighting force could have done that remain pure speculation. It's not like the fire only lasted two hours. A system like that generally would not be designed or built or capable of replenishing the gravity storage in Santa Ynez Reservoir anywhere nearly as quickly as the continued demand after the reservoir was drained in those two hours or so. So everything probably still would have burned just like it did, more or less, particularly with near hurricane force winds and the fire creating its own weather.

Someone will probably do a "but for" (that reservoir being out of service) extended period simulation of the water system and that will be discussed in detail by engineers, elected officials, department heads, and lawyers alike.