210
Revealed: Hawaii official refused to release water for Maui fires until it was too late
(www.rawstory.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
210 points (98.6% liked)
News
22877 readers
5482 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Isn’t Hawaii surrounded by water? Is there really no system in place to use ocean water to put out wildfires?
That would poison the soil. What's worse, burned land, or land filled with dead stuff?
I can't say I have an answer to this, but least humans deceased would be the marker I would care most about.
Of course, but for the cost and energy required to have a system to pump sea water in dedicated lines to where a fire was, you could probably build some water towers or a desalination plant or something. I'd be willing to bet no firefighter is going to dunk a hose in the ocean either, they'd probably end up with a destroyed pump.
Aircraft dropping sea water is probably the only way it would be viable.
And most aircraft react very poorly to salt. Catalina PBYs we’re used in the Berlin airlift to airdrop salt supplies precisely because they were already heavily protected from the corrosion.
I’m not sure that normal water dropping planes have that.
Salt water destroys just about everything doesn't it?
Not really? Naval brass/bronze has been used for ages because it’s reasonably resistant. Noble metals, too.
copper in ship’s hull paint is used specifically to keep marine critters from growing on hulls.
Then there’s the silica’s and other minerals, etc,
Typical aluminum alloys (duralumin comes to mind) are very easily attacked by salt
Would be great if Hawaii and every coastal area could do this. Unfortunately, that’s a lot easier said than done. Not impossible and might be a necessary investment as fire risk increases though.
The fresh water lines already run practically anywhere developed, ready to go at the turn of a spigot or hydrant. Can’t send salt water through that without risking serious damage.
While truck/helicopter ocean water loads could be used (rinsing with fresh water after to prevent corrosion), the volume/accessibly just isn’t on the same level.