[thmsths]

I certainly hope we analyze what happened. And the linked article, is, in a way the beginning of one. But based on these early reports, it looks like there is no easy solution. It's not one of those "there was an obvious failure here, we will make X and Y changes which will hopefully prevent a repeat failure".

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.