When wind flames raged through the Pacific palisades, Marco Terruzzin and his family were not at home. They quickly learned that hell destroyed the two -story Spanish style house in which they had moved a month earlier.
While Terruzzin followed the news of the catastrophic losses, he felt helpless and was struck by the accounts that the firefighters had trouble obtaining water because many terminals Pressure lost and dried.
Then, the Italian engineer had an idea: a technology he helped in inventing with colleagues from his energy company that he felt that some could have helped. This solution, he thought, would guarantee that there is a lot of water at hand at the right places to contain forest fires and maintain the flowing fire terminals.
“This problem must be solved,” said Terruzzin. “It’s resolved.”
The way of doing so, according to Terruzzin, would be to reuse a low -cost water storage system that his business, Energy vaultoperated in an old coal mine in Sardinia, Italy. There, the system is used to store intermittent energy by pumping water up during the day, when solar energy is abundant and the water flows downhill to generate power at night.
Marco Terruzzin is held near a hill charred by palisades fires in Malibu. Terruzzin evacuated with his family Pacific palisades, where the fire destroyed their house. His company, Energy Vault, has developed an easy -to -deploy to deploy water storage system which, according to him, could have helped fires in the Los Angeles region if they had been strategically placed in advance.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Water is stored in inflatable tanks similar to a balloon that the company calls water trees, which measure 39 feet high and resemble giant onions, each contained in a durable plastic membrane maintained by steel cables. Supported by a steel post and a concrete foundation, each can contain around 148,000 gallons of water, weighing more than 600 tonnes.
Terruzzin, the company’s commercial and product manager, believes that California should install these pop-up tanks in strategic places to provide additional supply to contain and fight fires like those that have devastated Pacific and Altadena Palisades Last month.
The patented system has not yet been used for the fight against fires, but Terruzzin and his company soon plan to send two prototypes of an installation to Texas so that they can be demonstrated for the California fire agencies.
Terruzzin envisages some of the water trees placed near the fire terminals, others arranged in rows where the districts meet wild lands, creating a sort of “shield” which acts as a fire by spraying water to turn off the flames and the embedding embers.
Once the inflatable tanks installed in high risk areas, they would be filled by pumping the existing municipal system, and stored water would then be insulated from the supply of drinking water and kept for an emergency.
In the event of a fire, the water flowed out of the reservoirs by gravity. This would generate a sufficiently strong flow towards the nearby fire terminals to maintain the pressure for hours, said Terruzzin.
The tanks that are aligned between houses and flammable vegetation would be equipped with flexible pipe networks and nozzle, which would make a large area to prevent flames from progressing.
“It’s ideal,” said Terruzzin. “It can be implemented today.”
He estimates that if more than 4,000 aquatic trees were installed in the Los Angeles region, the cost would be about $ 80,000 for each – essentially less than the cost of storage tanks or traditional tanks.
A single water tree, said Terruzzin, can contain enough water to release around 800 gallons per minute for three hours. The installation of 40 or 50 of them in the Pacific palisades while the districts are rebuilt would help make the community safer, he said.
Dean Florez, member of California Air Resources Board and former state senator, learned the idea of Terruzzin, who is a friend, and said he loved the concept as a “avant-garde innovation that could change the game in the way we approach preparing for forest fires.
Los Angeles and other areas subject to fire need a decentralized water storage strategy to solve the repeated problems of Loss of pressure loss And current breakdowns Cutting access to water sources during fires, said Florez. The limits of the existing infrastructure, he said, call on to rethink the way water is stored to better defend communities.
“It seems to be one of those ideas that could have already changed the game – if only we had started to think earlier earlier,” said Florez. “Would that have prevented all destruction?” Maybe not. But would he have bought firefighters more time, slows down the spread and reduces losses? Absolutely.”
The concept will probably be one of the many that local managers and the United States will consider when they analyze the means to redo water systems in Los Angeles and in other regions to be better equipped for large fires of forest.
The January storms of fire revealed the important limits of urban water systems in southern California, which say the experts have not been designed with the ability For large forest fires that are raging in whole neighborhoods. When the system has lost pressure in parts of the Pacific palisades, certain fire terminals have dried in high altitude areas, which hinders the efforts to fight fire.
Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered an investigation in pressure loss and lack of water available from a Pacific palisades tank out of service For repairs. The Los An Municipal Council present your results On the reasons why the firefighters lacked water.
Terruzzin said he was puzzled explaining why left the tank of 117 million gallons empty For almost a year for repairs. That said, he thinks that filling the tank would not have fully resolved problems. The current pipe system, he said, does not allow you to shunter all the necessary water of the tank both because the limited flow capacity presents a “gigantic strangulation abyss”-even if the whole ‘Water was released, he couldn’t all come to where he has to go.
“We need distributed water resources,” said Terruzzin. “You have strategically distributed water to protect residential areas. We just have to bring water nearby. »»
Having water trees installed through it could help solve this problem, he said. The valves worked with a remote control system could be quickly opened on pop-up tanks to send water to pipes and “make sure there is higher pressure in the system” each time a fire causes high demand. And the spray gushing tanks on the hills, he said, would flood the landscape to keep the flames remotely.
Terruzzin has spent years working on energy storage projects that reduce carbon emissions to help treat climate change. The energy storage project with water trees began to operate in Italy last year.
The workers of Sardinia, Italy, inspect one of the plastic membranes of the tanks, which, according to the company Energy Vault, are designed to last at least 20 years.
(Thanks to Energy Vault)
The company began to study the possibility of using inflatable tanks to fight fire after Metly 2023 Forest Fires in Greece. But it was only after the fire of the Palisades, said Terruzzin, that he and his colleagues “connected the points and realized that this solution should be implemented”.
The water trees, which the company plans to produce in the United States, will hold water in a plastic membrane of 4.8 millimeters thick designed to resist fire and last more than 20 years. Terruzzin said that the tanks, which are 35 feet wide, have been designed in the form of a drop of water, an optimal shape because the gravity lowers massive content.
Water experts who have shown information on the concept said it seems promising, although they have also raised certain questions.
“Los Angeles needs more water storage capacity, especially in high areas, for fire protection,” said Sanjay Mohanty, Associate Professor of UCLA Engineering. “Investing in these systems can be beneficial.”
MiERCHANTY said he saw several challenges, such as complying with drinking water regulations and demonstrating that the system would be safe in an earthquake. (Terruzzin said the system has been tested to withstand earthquakes.)
“They must also demonstrate that the quantity of water required will actually make the difference that they plan,” said Mohanty. “There are a lot of calculations to go, but we need tanks and it is certainly a very promising technology to put in a place where you cannot have a large tank.”
UpManu Lall, director of the Arizona State University Water Institute at Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, to what extent the tanks would effectively reduce fire losses.
“It would depend on the deployment scale, because if you cannot get a high deployment density, you are not going to reduce losses,” said Lall. He also declared, by strategically choosing where to install the tanks would be particularly important.
Another challenge, said Lall, would be to persuade the owners to authorize large onion tanks in their neighborhoods and in the natural landscape.
“How much is it socially acceptable, for these individuals in High Noue, to have these things at the appearance of a balloon sitting behind them?” Said Lall. “Of course, you must obtain public membership.”
Terruzzin has agreed that “a little work must be done” to make the big white drops “aesthetically acceptable”. But as he sees, the ball drops can be like highways: functional and necessary.
“Without new infrastructure that helps California have water available at the right place at the right time, you don’t solve the problem of these forest fires, and they will be more and more frequent,” said Terruzzin.
Investment costs in this type of solution, he said, would be low compared to risks.
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