How come no one tried to install fire sprinklers and fire hydrants on their back yards?

Question

These equipments could have saved houses where wild fires are possible. Developers should be required to install these equipments or at least backyard fire hydrants where necessary.

Costs: one time cost versus losing your house/investment. It could lower your house fire insurance.

Insurance Companies: Would this be a good thing? How about discount for those who install?

Fire Hydrants: Not on every house but every specific distance away. Whoever has this hydrant has to be trained like a er exit in a plane. Fire hydrants are normally in the front but, somewhere outhere the danger is in the back. SPRINKLERS:

Fire Hydrants: Not on every house but every specific distance away. Whoever has this hydrant has to be trained like a er exit in a plane. Fire hydrants are normally in the front but, somewhere outhere the danger is in the back. SPRINKLERS: Optional for each house.
You can design your own. You have to choose which one is very important to protect your house. Some has alarm, but no protection from fire.

So sorry! I think I wrote the question in a wrong way. It was not my intension to question homeowners lack of sprinklers but rather suggesting that if these were there, probably it might have been a good thing. I've seen picture of guys using water hose and I thought, maybe if that hose was bigger. Then I saw a house equipped with spinklers on top of his roof, then I thought, it's a good thing to have. So sorry! This is the end of my question.

Answer 1

You must be from the city. In the suburbs and in the country, there is not necessarily water pressure from rural water lines to adequately service a hydrant, or water wells are used. Hydrants cost over $2000 or so, and do need a strong enough water pressure to function. As a former firefighter in a rural area, I can tell you we were prohibited from hooking up to the hydrants in most of our service area, they were on 4 inch lines and had inadequate pressure to serve a fire engine. My fire engine could pump 1200 gallons per minute, but the hydrants could provide only about 200. A hookup to an inadequate hydrant can actually cause the entire hydrant and part of the water line to be physically pulled out of the ground, I saw it happen once. Not pretty. My fire dept relied on tanker trucks to shuttle water to our fire scenes, big city guys rely on hydrants, so they don't know what to do in suburban areas where there is no water. We were always called in to "assist" in the neighboring city in areas not yet served by city water as the city had no water tankers.
I saw Michael Reagan on Fox the other day griping that the environmentalists are to blame becuase they don't allow the govt. to "manage" the forest and clear brush. Heck, the entire area is primarily brush, naturally. WHat is not managed is the process of allowing people to move out into semi-arid regions like the hills and mountains around southern California. Sure it is pretty, but how much is it costing for these people to live in their potential fire pits? Prevention is the key there. Also people don't build to protect their investment, they want it pretty--wood shingles, wooden decks, lots of wood to catch fire. Note in many of the pics, the stucco homes with tile roofs are still standing in many places, and homes with cleared areas around them, properly "managed" to protect their homes.

Answer 2

There's only so much water available in a given area. Even if people had one, it would only take a few people turning on their hydrants to leave empty taps for everyone else.
And even if there were, who would operate them? Homeowners? They don't know how to fight a brush fire or forest fire, each is different, even firemen have to receive special training.

This is not the worse Calif fire in history.....1936 was worse.

And Calif has been burning long before European man moved in. What has changed is the population is now in the hills, with the manzanita and due to environmental laws the people can not clear brush away from their properties...no firebreaks. Fire prevention is not stressed in home construction. This will continue every few years. It's already an old story......remember last year and the year before?

Answer 3

because they were too busy spending money on more important things like starbuck's, and cell phones, and lexus. the problem with it now is that it would take unimagineable amounts of water to prevent this fire from consuming a home with sprinklers. as for hydrants, the county should have done something. there isn't enough water in a water well to supply a regular pump engine. they'd need to run pipes from somewhere. a dry hydrant that runs to a lake or river would work perfectly, then all they'd have to do is hook up with suction hose and draft. Hindsight is 20/20, though. armchair quarterbacking is easy.

Answer 4

Costs. People are shallow and look at the initial cost of something and go...Ewww.. No Way!

This is the very reason that most people don't have solar panels on their roofs that would save them tons in the long run on electric utility bills and car fuel

Answer 5

Easy answer....Costs. Everything is very expensive in California. That would only add to the already inflated costs of homes.

Answer 6

No one could afford it. You obviously have not been in a wildfire. the heats hits first. Many things burn before the flames even get there.