[VINMAN]

Originally Posted by group911@aol.co

You probably don't understand my statement or wind driven fires. Water systems are limited in their capacity by size and pressure. My guess it that the water mains at the top of each of those canyons was an 8 inch and you'd be lucky to have 80psi up there. That means about 5 good master streams at 2000 gpm. The reservoir would have added duration to the equation but unless you had monstrous sized mains throughout the system, wouldn't have increased the flow rate. Now factor in that every structure had it's own water supply which became an open butt when that structure burned, you just robbed the system of capacity and pressure before you even think about supplying the pumpers to fight the fire.
Now the actual wind driven fire. The reason you can't stop them is because you have to get in front of the fire to stop it and had anybody dumb enough to try that would be part of the body count. Picture this. You have steep, narrow canyons with basically one way in and one way out. You have a 50mph+ winds driving the fire directly at the rigs responding to it. With hydrants situated about every 1000 feet, the first rig stops short of the advancing fire and hope you get hooked up quickly enough to get your master stream going before it overruns you. At best you can hope to protect a few structures within the reach of your streams. You are absolutely not going to stop/ extinguish any fire outside of that. Now you hope the other 4 rigs were able to do the same setup and there you have it. 5 little pockets in a vast area that were saved and that fire went right by you to the Pacific.

Excellent explanation Bob.

Posting from my phone. I had to make in short and sweet!

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