California Fires and the Reservoir Question
Okay so we’ve all seen the information on the fires from California and you know one of the things that we keep seeing on the news is about how there was that one Reservoir that was empty and the question is how much water was in there or could have been in there and was that enough to put out the fire so I just did some basic math using a calculator and let’s take a look and see what the math says first of all that Reservoir helds 100 and let’s go back 117 million gallons and it was empty and the question is well what if it was full is that enough water how much water is that compared to the fire.
Comparing Water to Structures Destroyed by the Fire
Well first we have to know how many houses were there well the math says that roughly 12,000 structures were destroyed now structures include sheds cars things like that but even if we just use 12,000 total structures that were houses which is probably not so if you take 117 million divided by 12,000 what do we come up with 117 million million million right 11 173 33 divided by 12,000 I put in too many zeros but 117 million divided 12,000 is 9,750 gallons per house so if you took that Reservoir 117 million gallons and divided equally over the 12,000 houses that would have given you 9,700 gallons per house to fight the fire for each house.
Firefighters’ Water Usage and Comparison
Well how many gallons do you need to fight a fire well here’s an article from um actually This Old House that says on average firefighters use nearly three 3,000 gallons of water on a house fire okay that’s a lower number how do you calculate this is from a website called Firehouse it gets into the the scientific math and and uh calculations firef flow length width so example below how the formula can be applied to a single family dwelling 60 feet long by 20 ft wide that would be 400 gallons per minute well if you fought the house.
Duration of Firefighting and Other Considerations
For 10 minutes that would be 4,000 gallons 20 minutes would be 8,000 gallons so you could probably fight a fire single family house for 20 minutes using that math and still have left over now I understand I get it there’s more factors than just the water you have to have enough hoses to connect up you have to have enough firefighters enough fire trucks right it’s not just the the water you need you need other stuff if all 12,000 houses are on fire at the same time there’s not enough people to put them all out even with the water but they probably weren’t all on fire at the same time and probably some of them if you put them out would have kept the other ones from catching on fire.
Analyzing the Math and Additional Factors
The point isn’t to determine who did right who did wrong who’s you know at fault the point is does the math work 117 million divided by 12,000 houses gives you 9,750 roughly 10,000 gallons per house that seems like on average four times what an average house fire takes now an average house fire might not be a fully involved um you know House burn to the ground it might just be one room catching on fire or kitchen fire but even if you multiply this times three right um that’s still 9,000 that’s still less than the total so tell me what your thoughts are I I understand this is oversimplifying the problem there’s more to it number of firefighters access fire trucks but there’s also each one of those has something wrong with it too the number of firefighters was lower than it could have been because of budgets the number of fire trucks was lower because a lot of them were in the shop and weren’t getting fixed so there’s a lot of factors at play but each one of those factors also has another story behind it not just the water.
Final Thoughts on the Math and Firefighting Effectiveness
Tell me what you think about this math 117 million divided by 12,000 equals 9750 that’s you know three times the average uh firefighters what they use and it’s 20 minutes worth of 100% involvement this is 100% involvement 400 gallons per minute 20 minutes at 400 gallons per minute is 8,000 so you can go more than 20 minutes you can probably go for a half an hour is it half an hour enough to put out a fire on a single family house I’m not sure but this is just some fun math in a in a you know terrible situation to see exactly what we’re talking about for numbers let me know in the comments what you think or did I do the math wrong.
