Copyright 2025 Robert Clark
Several fire fighting equipment manufactures have mobile, high power water pumps:
Such pumps can send water kilometer distances:
23 Jul 2018
New firefighting water cannon said to produce up to 81000 liters/minute.
“Extremely long hose lines.
With some pressure stabilization along the way, the pumps should have the capacity to enable crews to reach fires up to 3 kilometers / 1,7 miles away from the water source.”
https://www.ctif.org/news/new-firefighting-water-cannon-said-produce-81000-litersminute
Then the idea be would be to transport the high power mobile pumps to a water source, ocean, lake, pond, river, stream, and then use multiple fire hoses connected end-to-end to transport the water to the site of the fire.
Placing multiple fire trucks along the path from the water source to the fire you can extend the distance even longer than the 3 km mentioned in that article. Fire trucks typically carry fire hoses of lengths totaling 2,000 feet or more and their onboard pumps can further extend the distance which the high water pressure can be presented.
Note that many people have questioned why the nearby ocean water is not being used to fight the wildfires. An issue is that saltwater can be damaging to forest land. That is why I want to consider also other, freshwater sources. In looking up other wildfires I noticed it is common that water sources do exist within kilometers of wildfires. For the Pacific Palisades wildfire the Topanga Creek and the Santa Ynez Reservoir lie within kilometers of the wildfire, as can be confirmed by Google Maps.
Unfortunately, in the last few days it’s been reported that the Santa Ynez Reservoir has been out of operation and empty for nearly a year. This has raised quite a bit of consternation since it should have had quite a large amount of water and could have helped resupply the empty fire hydrants in the region.
Still, there is the Topanga Creek. But as its name implies it is rather shallow. A large, high volume pump may not be able to draw from it. However, actually it may be using smaller pumps would be of necessity anyway.
The Topanga Creek and the Palisades wildfire are in forested areas. They would not be accessible to fire trucks or large trucks to transport high volume pumps. You would need smaller pumps for the purpose. For transporting them and the needed fire hoses, there are ATV’s specialized for firefighting:
https://www.kimtekresearch.com/category/utv-vehicle-guide/
Using several of these could accomplish the same thing as one large, high volume pump:
You might also be able use small “Bobcat”-style bulldozers for clearing a paths for the ATV’s and fire hoses.
Because of the regulations and red-tape that hinder new government projects taking place in a timely fashion I would advise the companies that offer these mobile pumps to offer to implement the proposal gratis, just asking to get the go ahead. If the project succeeds they would get world-wide acclaim and contract offers to implement it to fight other wildfires.
1 comment:
The biggest problem is a shortage of boots on the ground, because this is so much bigger than they have ever had to fight before. Most of the fighting is done in the wilds before it reaches the neighborhoods. Usually cannot get fire hoses to it there. That's boots on the ground with pickaxes. No chance against a big one with high winds. -- GW
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