Louisville, Colorado – Santa Rosa. Paradise. Boulder County. Lahaina. Los Angeles.
All are places where it was shown that American cities and their water systems have not been built so that they withstand wildfire, say experts.
Hydrants dripped. Pumps and treatment systems lost electricity. Chemical impurities were sucked into pipes and required extensive and costly work. In paradise alone, where the Camp Fire killed at least 85 people in 2018 and destroying more than 18,000 structures, the drinking water system will cost $ 125 million and three and half years.
If forest fires become more and more intensive with climate change and become a larger threat to cities, the water supply companies expect reality that they have to be better mined.
“People begin some of the same questions that people asked for hurricanes and earthquakes decades ago,” said Greg Hentschel, Vice President of Engineering at CST Industries, which produces water storage tanks. He noticed the acceptance of building regulations and new engineering standards in order to tighten the urban environment against these risks.
A better water infrastructure itself does not protect the neighborhoods from fire, experts say, and many of the ideas are expensive. But there are things that can do communities.
Here are some of them:
Far offset valves
When buildings burn, their pipes will also spill water until a supply worker can safely get in to switch off the supply valve. The delay can be hours or days, while precious water for the fire brigade is lost.
Since the Marshall Fire 2021 burned more than 500 houses in the city of Louisville, Colorado, the city has worked on installing remote shutdown valves in measuring devices in all houses that were rebuilt.
It can “prevent a thousand reductions from death,” said Kurt Kowar, director of public work and supply company from Louisville.
A standard measuring device costs around 400 US dollars, while one with remote switching functions is about twice as high. You need a cell signal for operation and make it possible to vulnerability if telecommunications are lost there when the fire burns but Kowar says that Swift Action can reduce this risk.
The main distribution lines can also be installed remotely, so that the supply companies can easily redirect water into areas that need it.
Emergency water sources
There is a simple idea to provide fire helicopters directly in cities so that they do not have to fly into distant reservoirs or the ocean. They are called “Heli Hydrants”-concrete tanks that hold a few thousand gallons water. Helicopters can fill less than a minute, and the helicopter hydrant quickly fills up from a tank fed in gravity.
In November, a 5,000-gallon heli-hydrant in San Diego County fought almost 30 times by aircraft with the 48-hectare garden fire. The Rainbow Municipal Water District, a small supply company that does not serve several municipalities, paid around $ 200,000 in 2021 after the Lilac Fire burned more than 100 buildings nearby.
In the meantime, houses and companies can take steps to protect themselves by storing water on site for fire fighting. Some commercial properties and large residential properties such as condominiums or residential buildings are already doing this, said Hentschel. Depending on the size, these tanks can be between $ 100,000 and million.
Individual houses and neighborhoods can do the same, but only if they have deep pockets. Hentschel estimated that a tank could cost $ 15,000 to $ 30,000 to protect a 2,000 square meter house, even before pipes and a sprinkler system. He said the districts could reduce the costs by working together in a single large tank.
Special pipes for fire fighting
It is not a imagination: separate high-pressure tubes that move water-Sogar sea water to special hydrants when the city needs, which have been standard for the worst fires in large parts of San Francisco for more than a century after 1906. The earthquake triggered widespread fire that burned more than 500 city blocks.
Today, 135 miles are fed by a reservoir and two large tanks that are only used for the largest fires. The city has a backup reservoir, 70 backup -underground cisterns, each holding 70,000 gallons and can pump sea water in sea water if necessary. The regular drinking water system is first tapped for small fires and sufficiently under normal conditions.
“Such a system would have done a lot of good things in the Pacific palisades,” said Steve Ritchie, who monitors the San Francisco Public Utility Commission.
The supply company has invested billions to update the system and expands it in the next 15 years in West and Southeast districts for a further 4.5 billion US dollars.
Today's structure of a comparable system would be too expensive for most communities, but “there are elements that they could be very useful,” said Ritchie. This could include the installation of distributed underground cisterns or a few high -pressure lines with special hydrants in areas with high risk.
Security
Power -supplied electricity typically supplies large treatment systems and pumps that flow the drinking water. When the performance is cut off, as is often the case with fires and storms, the water system fails without the right type of fuse.
Louisville had generators about critical water infrastructure during the Marshall brand, but they were powered by the local natural gas supplier, which was closed as a precaution in the city across the city because it was an additional fire risk.
Without performance for pumps – a frequent susceptibility to security for cities in the USA – water pressure dropped. Officials sent untreated water into the drinking system to restore the pressure – to save houses and possibly live, but contaminate the water system.
Today they convert their generators to run with diesel, which can run a few days before refueling.
Reduction in containment
Chemical impurities that enter drinking water are a risk of fires that reach cities. When toxic chemicals from burned synthetics reach drinking water pipes in houses, filtering or boiling water does not make drinking safe, experts say.
Backflow prevention devices can help solve this, said Andrew Whelton, an engineering professor at Purdue University. The devices are installed on the water knife and only let water flow in one direction.
The supply companies in Louisville and Paradise, California, install them when the houses are rebuilt.
Damaged service lines and water meters are another frequent contamination source, even if the house or building is intact. In the case of heated plastic, a common material in the water system can release toxic chemicals. Even indirect heat damage to pipes and fittings that usually use plastic can lead to contamination.
In order to limit the thermal damage to these parts, pipes should be buried underground underground, shrubs and buildings should be reset from the measuring box, and the box itself should have a metal or concrete cover.
These measures could be taken as part of a national forest fire code of the national water infrastructure, and insurers could offer discounts in communities that have taken steps to reduce risk, said Whelton.
“There is an approach to enable people to make their own decisions,” he said. “Another can be said, we have done it, we spend so much tax money to fix it. At some point we have to help everyone limit the financial effects so that we can use funds with care.”
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