Officials reported Friday that an important reservoir that supplies water to Pacific Palisades was online at the time the flames started, and that shutdown may have contributed to rescuers losing water so quickly in their battle against the flame.
Within the Palisades, Santa Ynez Reservoir you store thousands of gallons of water. It was late scheduled to have the reservoir’s include cleaned, according to records.
The tank was shut down when the fires started, according to Ellen Cheng, a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power spokesperson, in a statement released on Friday.
” We are also evaluating what impact Santa Ynez’s absence would have had on this condition,” she said.
According to Marty Adams, a former general manager and key architect at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the waters for the Pacific Palisades is fed by a 36-inch series that travels by weight from the larger Stone Canyon Reservoir. Santa Ynez Reservoir is likewise topped off by that water column.
The two dams ‘ water supply serves to provide the Pacific Palisades ‘ water system and also serves to power pumping stations that fill storage tanks that supply community higher-elevation properties. Officials were unsure whether the dam could have been restored to normal operation prior to the fireplace, or whether it had been after forecasters had issued a warning about risky wildfire conditions.
According to authorities, storage tank in the Pacific Palisades region, which each contain about 1 million liters, were filled before the fire but burned down as a result of the rapid influx of paramedics. The system had trouble refilling the tank in large part because the main water line was being drained so much water before it could reach the pump that supply the higher tanks.
According to Adams, having an operational reservoir may have helped to first more completely feed the local water system. He added that it appeared that the vehicles and that dam would later have been drained in a blaze that was simultaneously ravaging but some houses. Generally speaking, municipal water networks are constructed to withstand many smaller fires than those that burned in Pacific Palisades.
Years ago, crew had installed a handle on the Santa Ynez Reservoir. According to Adams, he was informed that the cover had been damaged, and that a business had been hired to fix it.
According to Adams, maintenance and repairs for such systems may be common, as did taking the reservoirs online. The nearby waters system may normally have continued to function perfectly.
Janisse Quiñones, CEO and chief architect at the state’s water office, has said that fire operation put enormous strain on the system, with four times the regular demand over a 15-hour period.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles City Council, Traci Park, whose region includes Pacific Palisades, said Friday that she had not been informed that the dam was online.
The director, Pete Brown, said Park and her crew had several questions about the water systems and the Santa Ynez Reservoir, and would be seeking more answers about whether it should have been out of commission.
