Over the last few weeks, we’ve received many questions from community members about the availability of local water sources to fight fires, maintenance of our fire hydrants, and the impacts of Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) on these systems.
We’ve compiled this list of key facts and FAQs to help answer these important questions and keep our community informed.
City Water System & Firefighting Facts
- Santa Barbara’s water system is built to support firefighting efforts for multiple structure fires within a pressure zone.
- All of the Santa Barbara Fire Department’s equipment has computer-aided maps that show the exact location of every hydrant and its current operational status.
- No municipal water system can provide enough water to suppress an urban wildfire, like Los Angeles experienced from January 6-9, 2025.
- The City regularly inspects and maintains all its active water system assets including its hydrants, valves, water mains, pump stations, and reservoirs.
- The City regularly performs studies to assess water system performance and prioritizes capital improvement projects to ensure the greatest needs are met.
- The City regularly adopts cost-effective technologies as they become available to enhance system sustainability and resilience.
- The City collaborates with local and state agencies and participates in the California Water/Wastewater Agency Response Network (CalWARN) to maintain disaster preparedness.
- Prevention remains the best
and most efficient means to protect life, property, and the community from natural disasters.
Drinking Water Systems and Wildfire FAQ
Is the City’s Drinking Water System designed to fight wildfires?
Drinking water systems are not designed to combat catastrophic wildfires. Drinking water systems have long been designed around water quality and meeting peak day (summer) demands, which includes flows for urban fires, including multiple structure fires simultaneously. There are many standards in place to ensure community drinking water systems are designed, constructed, maintained, and tested to ensure systems are prepared to perform when needed.
Why is Escondido Reservoir (located adjacent to Escondido Park) not in service?
Escondido Reservoir (Reservoir) is a retired drinking water reservoir and has been out of service since 2000 (~25 years). Although the Reservoir is out of service, the site contains assets critical to supporting the drinking water system. The City has studied storage needs throughout the City to ensure we meet peak demands. The City currently has 11 potable water reservoirs in service to help ensure reliable service.
The science and regulation
Drinking Water Systems are
How does the City ensure that fire hydrants are maintained properly and are ready for service?
The City has over 2,600 active fire hydrants. They are regularly inspected and tested to ensure performance when needed.
Reinvestment in water infrastructure remains a high priority. Ongoing and upcoming infrastructure projects include the replacement of water mains, pump stations, and reservoirs to ensure reliable service and meet established demands.
Are there sufficient water supplies to meet demands during urban structure fires or wildfires?
The City has one of the most diverse water supply portfolios in the State to ensure sufficient water to meet health and safety demands during prolonged drought periods. The City has sufficient raw water supplies to combat urban structure fires. The City’s water system was not designed to treat and convey sufficient supplies to fight wildfire. Demands for water during a wildfire will exceed the peak demands of the City’s drinking water system.
When a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS), or an unplanned outage, happens, what is the impact on local water systems?
When a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) or an unplanned power outage occurs, it can disrupt the operation of pumps and treatment facilities that solely rely on grid electricity to maintain water flow and pressure. However, the City has implemented measures to ensure disruptions are minimized via backup generators and/or bypasses at all critical facilities. In a typical year, grid power is lost several times due to planned grid maintenance, grid electrical equipment failure, grid accidents, grid emergencies, or a PSPS. In most cases, customers are not aware of the impacts to their water service resulting from a grid power outage.
To learn more about emergency preparedness, visit:
Sign Up For ReadySBC Alerts or Update Your Contact Information:
To receive these emergency notifications from the County of Santa Barbara Office of Emergency Management, you must sign up for alerts at ReadySBC.org. If you’re already signed up, confirm or update your account information this month. Please spell out your entire street address, as this is a common reason community members don’t receive alerts. If we can’t reach you, we can’t alert you.
Water Systems and Wildfire FAQ (double-sided PDF)
Water Systems and Wildfire FAQ (double-sided PDF)_Español
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“No municipal water system can provide enough water to suppress an urban wildfire, like Los Angeles experienced from January 6-9, 2025.” – Whoa now, hold on a second…… we were told by experts ranging from our very own fire experts here, RUBY and BASIC, to the president (gag) of our (once) great nation, that these fires were so destructive because Gavin and the LA mayor failed to deliver on the water infrastructure. So, which is it?
The water system cannot stop a massive wildfire, true, but with preventive measures and adequate water, the water system can stop the fire from attaining the scale that it did.
RUBY – you just acknowledged the current water system couldn’t stop it, but then say “adequate water” could stop it? Which is it? LA had adequate water. There was no water shortage. Trump has no idea what he is talking about when it comes to CA water systems. Why would you believe that stuff?
Obviously there was not adequate water in LA or the hydrants would never have run dry.
Do you not comprehend that you can’t physically move more water through a system than the system’s capacity can handle?
RUBY. Please stop believing lies.
Is anyone else experiencing this site being incredibly slow or is it just me? On both the phone and PC, this site drags so hard it’s almost unusable more often than not.
Yes, the site was almost unusable a few days ago but has improved remarkably for me today.
We’ve been making some adjustments to the site. Try clearing your cookies/cache and refreshing. Let us know if that works better on your end.
Thanks, Ed, that helped a bit! Now if it would just stop jumping around when I ever I open a new link or refresh the page!
Working on it!