(if you can find a water source that'll give you that much)

Note that, for what it's worth, fire pumps are generally rated for their capacity when drafting from a static water supply (think, pond, lake, river, etc). Basically all modern fire pumps can easily exceed their rated capacity by a pretty good margin when pumping from a pressurized source, but then you're back to your point of "do you have a source that can supply that?" Still, there are ways. In my firefighting days we had some hydrants in our district (the ones on the big 30" main that ran right down the middle of the county in particular) that could individually supply 2000gpm. And nothing says you are restricted to using one hydrant! There are also all sorts of complex water supply evolutions one can run, involving relay pumping with multiple engines, drafting and using hydrants, etc.

▲

michaelt 3 days ago | parent [-]

In the UK a large-scale fire will often be attended by far more fire engines than the local water network can supply.

At the major Grenfell Tower fire, the water network could only supply ~4,320 litres per minute (1141 us gallons per minute) [1] despite firefighters asking the water suppliers to maximise the water supply.

And that fire was attended by seventy fire engines and two hundred and fifty firefighters, as they needed pretty much all the breathing apparatus in the city. So they had substantially more pump capacity than they had water available.

[1] https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/lfb-did-not-follow-even...

	▲	mindcrime 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Oh it happens in the US as well. I know of at least one relatively large metro area fire department here in NC that has a few sections of the city with known water supply issues - to the point that structure fires in those areas get dispatched with automatic mutual aid for tankers from surrounding rural departments.