A Thousand Broken Hydrants
With just 2500 fire hydrants left to test, DC’s Fire Chief Dennis Rubin says 14% of DC’s fire hydrants just don’t work. 14% of the 7,000 they’ve tested would be just under a thousand broken fire hydrants. Good God, folks. That’s insane.
That’s 1 in 7 hydrants out of service. Count seven fire hydrants near your house, and 1 of them won’t work, and when the fire department shows up to put out the house fire, you’re pretty much boned.
C’mon, WASA, get it together!
Uh, yeah!
http://dc.metblogs.com/archives/2007/05/got_water_2.phtml
My recommendation is to not have a fire.
This is a disgrace. Things break now and then and that is to be expected, but this is horrible. The really bad part is that they don’t know which are working and which aren’t. You’d think they might document this as they are decommissioned, or perhaps even remove the dead hydrants.
Yearly tests should be required for this type of thing, or else at some reasonable interval.