Is there anything stopping me from an engineering standpoint installing a water tower on my property and making sprinklers around a radius of my home to drench the area in case of wildfire?
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So your question sort of has two parts. First is why aren’t homes in wildfire prone areas protected by a sprinkler system? The second part relates to a water tower.
The answer to this is sort of two fold. The first part is that typically you need water pressure to maintain the sprinklers. If the water pressure is gone, the sprinklers no longer work. And typically a lot of these places that are prone to wildfires, their water systems are pump based for their water pressure. And pumps require electricity to run. If the power goes out to the pump, no more water pressure.
Second is supply. Depending on the source of the water, that source might be required by the fire fighters to do structural loss prevention. Where they will target areas where there are high risks of structural loss. If water is being used in a non high risk area, that might be taking away water from a high risk area. For example, a wildfire that happened this year that forced me and my family to evacuate, it had forced parts of a city to evacuate. There was an order for many of the residents in the city to not waste water if they could, as the fire fighters were tapping into the local municipal water mains for water to use against the fires.
Now for the second part, a water tower. It is a hit and miss. Part of it again also has to do with water pressure. You need enough water pressure and water that it could run all your sprinklers for likely 24 hours or more. You would also have to the water tower be fairly secure against wildfires itself or you would lose the water tower and water pressure. So you have a bit of an engineering challenge there. But overall there are better solutions.
As others have mentioned, as a home owner, you want to attack the third corner of fires. And that is related to fuel. So keeping grass, plants or any potential fuel sources well away from your home. Also keeping the areas around your home well water will help. For example, just keeping your lawn well watered works well. My family had our water sprinklers going for about 18 hours really watering the lawn before the power went out. The fire only really took out parts that weren’t well watered to begin with. But we could only do that because our water source was directly from our own pump in the lake nearby.
You can also help fire proof your house, typically most structures are lost due to the fire being able to get inside, so you want to try and have the “outer shell” of the house be as fireproof as possible. So using fireproof side panelling and fireproof insulation(ie. Roxul/Rockwool). Making sure there aren’t many gaps, etc.
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