Reservoir was built to save Pacific Palisades. It was empty when the flames came

> although it’s unclear whether the reservoir would have made a meaningful difference in firefighters’ ability to combat the flames. Water systems experts said that with extreme Santa Ana winds that prevented the use of planes and helicopters, the Palisades fire was impossible to control, and that municipal water systems aren’t equipped for such blazes.

This is a complex system here. The article only focuses on the reservoir, not the whole fire prevention and response; yet that one simple piece of a much larger problem already talks about federal law, water quality standards, engineering culture at the LA DWP, procurement rules for the city of LA, lack of qualified contractors and a couple more issues.

Addressing this in a satisfactory manner may be very difficult or even impossible. Infrastructure needs maintenance and down time. A typical way around that is to duplicate it, but this is probably too costly here. Experts already stated that had the reservoir been full it may not have made much of a difference. So paying to have two reservoirs a primary and a backup that may or may not be useful in case of a fire sounds like a bad solution, tying up precious resources that could be used in more effective fire prevention measures.

For an honest postmortem and action plan going forward, of course not.

This is the mindset I'm coming around to.

Whether you think climate change is mostly human caused, or part of some natural cycle, it's happening and it will probably get worse. We need to figure out how to deal with the consequences of it, rather than pretending/hoping we can change the course.