It is also a fact that regardless of how much water is available in reservoirs and fire cisterns, the municipal water supplies (which are not controlled by the state) can only provide so much volume of water at a time before pressure drops cause the hydrants to run dry. Those systems are sized for typical residential and modest commercial use, and in the case of older neighborhoods are often already stressed by the amount of additional housing since they were originally installed. Relying on that system to provide water volume to fight a massive wind-driven firestorm is hopeless, notwithstanding that as houses burn to the ground their own water supply systems fail and release pressure.
The City of San Francisco actually has an entirely separate High Pressure Auxiliary Water Supply System specifically for fire service use because of the history the city has had with massive urban fires (most recently the 1906 earthquake and fire, but also the “Great Conflagration” in 1851 that burned most of the structures in the city to the ground). To install such a system in fire-threatened neighborhoods today would require digging up streets, sidewalks, and lawns at almost incalculable cost, and would still not prevent the kind of gale-force-wind-driven firestorms that consumed Pacific Palisades and Altadena.
It is also the case that in wet years (as we have had the prior two years, and even this year in Northern California), it is necessary to release water from reservoirs in anticipation of snowpack melt to avoid overload and collapse of damns and irrigation systems. So, even though someone told Trump a fish story about dumping water for smelt, California typically has to release water anyway to prevent catastrophies like that which almost happened at the Oroville Dam in 2017.
Per usual, Trump has no idea what he is talking about, and isn’t going to be bothered by inconvenient facts when it comes to attacking political adversaries or making sweeping claims about ‘wokeness’, notwithstanding that he has no authority to issue an executive order telling California what to do with completely internal water reservoirs. It is a given at this point that he will refuse to allow any federal aid for fire abatement or reconstruction, and that his boosters will blame it all on “Governor NewScum”, because they are about as clever with their taunts as a second grade boy.
Stranger