The fight over water is nothing new on Maui. But the impact on the county’s ability to battle fires is coming clear.
With wildfires ravaging West Maui on Aug. 8, a state water official delayed the release of water that landowners wanted to help protect their property from fires. The water standoff played out over much of the day and the water didn’t come until too late.
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