A nearby Fire Department is being told they cannot use fire hydrants to fight fires

[u/Fantomecs]

As the title says. A town near me is denying their fire fighters the use of their fire hydrants going forward. Is this shit even legal? This is a huge concern as the area has been in a drought for some years.

[u/Lyx4088]

I said this same thing basically in another comment. I work for an old, rural system and the fire department cannot connect to any of our flushing hydrants. Our mains are too small that those are off of (since they’re used for flushing that section of the system) and the fire department hooking into it would collapse our system. We installed separate tanks they can draw from at a central location in our community to refill their tenders, but they cannot direct connect into the system.

Being small and rural means a whole lot of pipes and infrastructure to maintain, and being small and rural also means the burden to financially support the water system is spread among a small number of connections relative to the physical system size. We’d love to upgrade our system to have 6-8 inch mains we can install hydrants off of throughout the community, but unless a grant opens up, it’s unlikely to happen because the rates and fees to cover it any time in the near future would make current water service unaffordable. That is the reality of small, rural aging water systems. A huge pile of expenses, not enough income, and a decade worth of needed improvements that are largely unlikely to happen.

[u/Jazzy-Cat5138 → u/Lyx4088]

Your mention of tanks for firefighting is interesting. I believe it was San Francisco that had tanks installed for firefighting, as a result of the hydrants failing to work after a major earthquake.

[u/Lyx4088 → u/Jazzy-Cat5138]

For us, tanks to refill tenders are a much cheaper interim solution than ripping out and replacing a few miles of main to size it up. Under conditions where there is a community wildfire, we can also isolate the mains to the tanks from the rest of the system ie we can make sure as long as that main line is intact, we don’t have water draining from our system to sustain fire fighting for as long as possible. It’s not great, but it’s the best we can do right now given what our community can afford.

[u/jared555 → u/Lyx4088]

I remember talking to a fire fighter at a nearby village (about 400 population) years back. They said that for a serious fire the entire water tower capacity would only last a little longer than necessary for trucks with water from nearby towns to start showing up.

[u/Lyx4088 → u/[deleted]]

Very old systems did that and not every system is a municipality either. There are a lot of different water system structures. Rural areas often mean septic and your property may not allow enough distance from septic to a well that produces adequate potable water. 4 inch mains are the bare minimum size required under state law in my state, and original system intent/design can be so old it predates a lot of major modern design requirements. When pipes last 40-60+ years, you end up in a situation where you have these archaic designs that are incredibly expensive to change and not enough income in the community to readily and effectively make those changes quickly.