[Goose]

This is exactly right. I've designed municipal water systems for nearly 40 years and we do not design them with massive wildfires in mind. Those are natural disaster, Force Majure, Act of God scenarios (even if god is an electric company) and no one can afford water systems capable of fighting that. I've done systems across California, on Maui, and Santa Rose after the Coffee Fire that melted underground distribution piping.

It is amazing the expertise that resides on the Cardboard! Thanks for posting this.

I would imagine that the pumping capacity to refill the tanks is at best sized to keep up with the "normal" drain over a 24 hour period plus a safety factor. After all, the water usage isn't constant every hour of the day. The inflow only needs to be adequate to refill the tank at a rate such that it never drops below some desired minimum in "normal" use. If there is a wildfire and the firemen are opening all the hydrants I would guess the pumps could not come close to keeping up with the outflow, even if they were all working 100% full blast. Is that correct? I would also guess that the input water supply is not unlimited either, and if all the surrounding zones are suddenly pumping at full capacity that supply could also become a limiting factor. Is that correct? Thanks again for sharing what you do for your "day job" :-).

[Goose]

This is exactly right. I've designed municipal water systems for nearly 40 years and we do not design them with massive wildfires in mind. Those are natural disaster, Force Majure, Act of God scenarios (even if god is an electric company) and no one can afford water systems capable of fighting that. I've done systems across California, on Maui, and Santa Rose after the Coffee Fire that melted underground distribution piping.

It is amazing the expertise that resides on the Cardboard! Thanks for posting this.

I would imagine that the pumping capacity to refill the tanks is at best sized to keep up with the "normal" drain over a 24 hour period plus a safety factor. After all, the water usage isn't constant every hour of the day. The inflow only needs to be adequate to refill the tank at a rate such that it never drops below some desired minimum in "normal" use. If there is a wildfire and the firemen are opening all the hydrants I would guess the pumps could not come close to keeping up with the outflow, even if they were all working 100% full blast. Is that correct? I would also guess that the input water supply is not unlimited either, and if all the surrounding zones are suddenly pumping at full capacity that supply could also become a limiting factor. Is that correct? Thanks again for sharing what you do for your "day job" :-).