“If Santa Ynez had been on duty, you probably would have had help keeping the pressure on. It would not have been a panacea. It probably wouldn’t have lasted forever,” Adams said.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News. A department official told the Los Angeles Times that assessments were underway to determine the impact of the tank’s unavailability on fire response, but also noted that the water system was not designed for wildfires as severe.
Previously, the department said he had filled all available water storage tanks in Los Angeles before the windstorm that spread the fire, including three million-gallon tanks in the Palisades area.
Adams explained that typical water service to the Pacific Palisades relies on a 30-inch diameter “main line” that flows from Upper Stone Canyon Reservoir, along Sunset Boulevard, and down to Santa Ynez Reservoir, which is lower in altitude.
When the Palisades Fire broke out, firefighters and homeowners began using incredible amounts of water. Janisse Quiñones, chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, previously said there was about four times more demand on the Palisades system than usual.
If the Santa Ynez Reservoir had been in operation, water managers could have “split the system in two” and used Santa Ynez water to supply water to parts of the Pacific Palisades, Adams said. “Santa Ynez could have acted as a small water reservoir and provided some relief.”
Such a move would have reduced demand and contributed to increased water pressure elsewhere.
Still, he said, the water probably couldn’t flow fast enough to meet the firefighters’ incredible demands.
“The limiting factor was the hose,” Adams said, adding that water infrastructure is designed to allow firefighters to put out a few homes or a commercial building, not a wildfire.
“The systems are designed for a typical city fire, not an entire city catching fire,” he said. “There is no domestic water system built on this scale.”
In an interview on Fox 11 Los Angeles, Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said she did not know when the fires broke out that the tank was not working.
“When a firefighter approaches a fire hydrant, we expect there to be water. We don’t control the water supply,” Crowley said.
Pre-filling the tank out of concern for fire risk wasn’t impossible, Adams added, but it wouldn’t make sense since no one knew where the fires would start.
“You should put it in the tank, isolated, just in case,” he said.
And subsequently, the water from the Santa Ynez Reservoir would have been considered undrinkable and likely wasted.
“You probably should have issued a boil water advisory, and if you didn’t use it, the only way to get rid of it would be to throw it in the ocean,” Adams said. “It would have been a bit like betting on the winner of the Super Bowl before the season, without the Rams playing a game.”
Santa Ynez Reservoir can hold up to 117 million gallons, or 359 acre-feet of water. An acre-foot of water is roughly the volume of two Olympic-sized swimming pools. However, not all of this volume would have been available.
