SALT LAKE CITY — Thousands of fire hydrants are spread out across Salt Lake City and other Utah communities, but how do we know they’re working properly before an actual emergency?
Salt Lake City firefighters are now in the process of checking all their hydrants to make sure they’re running smoothly.
“We test the caps to make sure we can get them open. Make sure there’s no debris inside of the hydraulic barrel," said Capt. Brandt Hancuff. "We want to make sure no debris gets through that because if we lose that water, that literally is a matter of life or death for our firefighters inside.
"This hydrant is our lifeline when it comes to a firefight.”
The department checks the hydrants twice a year with the help of Salt Lake City Public Utilities. With both a gravity-fed and pump-fed system, Hancuff says the city is lucky to have a large water supply.
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“We can call up public utilities and ask them to divert water to that location, so that we have adequate water. That’s one thing that helps so that we don’t have the issues that L.A. had during the fires and those sorts of things,” he explained.
It’s also inevitable that hydrants break or run dry, but there are alternatives. Firefighters can bring in additional water through a water tender, engines, a relay pump, or draft from other water locations.
That's peace of mind for those in the Capitol Hill neighborhood near Ensign Peak who have experience with nearby wildfires, including just a year ago, that nearly caused an evacuation order.
“The winds were really strong, blowing in from the north, blowing that stuff up over the hill. The winds were pretty strong,” explained resident Joseph Bright.
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With a fire hydrant just feet away from his driveway, Bright wasn’t too worried last year and still isn’t.
“The biggest threat would be getting on houses and the tiles and starting a fire that way," he said. "The fire department, I felt like, had it well under control. Don’t have any issues at all. In my opinion, it’s a very safe neighborhood.”
During drought seasons, the fire department relies on public utilities to decide whether they’re going to flow water.
“We’ll come out and we’ll test the caps, make sure that the barrel of that fire hydrant is free of any debris, but we’re not going to flow water because we want to conserve as much water as possible," explained Hancuff. "That’s been the case for the last two or three years.”
Their department's main goal is to make sure everything they need to fight a fire is operational and ready to go so they can keep the community safe.
Residents who see an issue with a hydrant can call the department's non-emergency line at 801-799-3473, and someone will be sent out to make a repair.
