I can't for the life of me think why someone would put a backup generator 17 floors up, these guys don't know you can buy mains cables longer than 4 feet?
If it absolutely has to be 17 floors up, buy a fucking pump.
Geeks. Sometimes we're so dumb it hurts.
"Here's the physical situation:
The generators are on a high floor in the building and the pumps supplying the generators with fuel are submerged. The best option at this point is for people to physically lug diesel up over a dozen floors, or make other arrangements for pumping fuel to that high floor. "
Yes, a generator not in the basement / ground level makes sense. When a flood happens, it usually happens from the ground floor up ;) Thus why generators are at the upper levels.
Even in this case, using a pump solution makes little sense. Assuming you have electricity to power the pump, I suppose you could power the pump with the electricity from the remaining fuel, but a 17 floor pipe containing fuel would probably be heavier (and more dangerous) than a long mains power cord, and it wouldn't make sense to have a 17 floor cable to power the pump with the pump at the bottom of the run than it would to have just the pipe of fuel running the length of 17 floors and the pump at the top of the run.
Time for a winch? I don't think Home Depot stocks a 17 story pipe, and relocating the generator probably will take more time than just winching / carrying up the barrels.
I understand that this might be a fire-safety issue. In which case I would agree that a winch should have been installed.
(I'm possibly missing something else obvious here!)
I suspect this is good advice, but the image that popped into my head was an elevated generator, a ground-level tank, and an electric pump reliant on either mains or generator power. "It's always worked during our monthly tests!" Whoops!
Probably the elevated generator should be installed with at least a small gravity-fed tank, easily refilled once the pump is operating. I doubt anyone wants a giant fuel depot anywhere inside or on the roof of the building.
Keep in mind that for heights taller than 3 floors (and practically, the limit is shorter than that), pumps have to be located on the same level as the fuel supply because the atmospheric column only has so much mass. Pumps and their electrical inputs should probably be installed with waterproofing if flooding is considered likely.
This has nothing to do with buying a pump, that was already there, this has to do with the fact that the diesel tanks and the pumps for them are under water.
In the future I hope they put the pumps on higher floors, and make sure the fuel tanks are completely sealed, so even if the tanks are flooded the pump can keep pumping fuel out of it.
You can armchair quarterback this all you want, but unless you're actually making the decisions, perhaps you should consider the information available.
Doesn't make that pump any less sensible though!
Past my bedtime, so didn't connect this with that wee bit of weather the East coast USA experienced recently.
Sincerely hope lugging diesel remains the least of their worries.