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Wisconsin | The biggest reason is elevation and distance. The water coming into LA flows in by canal and pipeline from higher mountains. Pumping out of the ocean INTO the EXISTING water mains would be an extreme last resort step, it would have to be cut off from the rest of LA or the whole city would be boiling water for weeks or months, drinking bottle water. It would have to be flushed from whatever it contacted, etc. Using sea water in fire trucks would be relatively easy to flush, but they'd have to drive to the ocean and back to the fire, and that's not practical for most of these fires.
A separate hydrant system of pumped seawater and salty reserviors would be possible, but just filling up the existing reservoir would have been good enough.
Salt would actually hold the moisture longer than fresh water dumped in the same dry windy conditions, I'd think that would more than offset the reduced heat capacity for air drops, and be irrelevant compared to the abundance of supply for the beachfront homes. | |
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no salt water used to fight fires
