 As the flames of the campfire moved through Paradise at the rate of 80 football fields per second, water plant workers had to flee their posts to save their lives. Left abandoned was the complex network of 172 miles of drinking water pipes laying beneath the ground as the buildings and vehicles up above were being incinerated by temperatures measured in the thousands of degrees. What happened next? Well the consensus is that the water system lost pressure due to the heavy firefighting activity. The pipes drained and the resulting vacuum drew volatile organic chemicals like benzene into the system from the superheated plastic pipes in addition to the contaminants created by melted fully burned pipes. Paradise Irrigation District's treatment facility is producing and storing clean water. The problem facing the PID is the contaminants already in the damaged distribution system and associated lines. The infrastructure project necessary to make a repair of this size will require money, time, manpower and science totally unprecedented in the history of American wildfire disasters. On a rainy Tuesday night, Kevin Phillips, PID's district manager, spoke before a capacity crowd at a local church. Describing to over 1,000 Paradise residents the plan that he hopes will restore drinkable water within two and a half years. In their first step, PID intends to install alternative water tanks at homes that are occupied. These tanks will be replenished by PID water. Meanwhile, they will continue carrying out their comprehensive plan to sample and test water from approximately 10,000 sites throughout the system to get an accurate assessment of the nature and extent of the contamination. Once that's determined, the monumental task of isolating and reducing contaminated portions of the infrastructure will begin in a plan that begins at the very top of their gravity fed system continuing to the lowest lying sections of town. Near the end of the meeting Phillips thanked the town of Paradise ending on a note of hope and solidarity. We are all one. We service the same population, the same customer base and we are standing as one through this process. For more recovery information, make sure you subscribe to OESNews.com and for more information on water, you can go to the Paradise Irrigation District website that's PID water.com