After a rough few years in the drought, the site of running water is enough to jolt any resident.
“Our hydrants look nice,” Wichita Falls Fire Department Assistant Fire Chief, Donald Hughes said.”We keep them painted where they look good, but as far as exercising them, they havent been done in a while.”
Assisstant Chief Hughes says the drought halted the testing of hydrants, which before, was an annual process.
“Our testing–some of them probably havent been tested in probably three or four years, I’d imagine. So there’s a lot of hydrants that need to be checked right now,” Hughes said. “At some point we need to start testing the hydrants again, and we don’t want to just waste the water.”
Finding that solution to test without wasting water is the tricky part.
“Well we’re trying to come up with a way where we’re not just flowing water down the street. It’s going to take some way to catch the water–I’m not sure how we’re going to do it yet.”
“Right now, we’re looking at a plan to get started on it. We’re looking at a plan to at least some of them tested this year and hope everything good out there.”
And as more time passes, the problems keep filling up.
“The stems could be froze up. They’re bound up were you accidentally break one when turning it on. Over time they just get harder to open.”
“You know, we could pull up to a hydrant and it not have water to it. Then we have to continue to lay to the next hydrant. At least we know if we’re out there checking them that they’re ready for us to use when we need them.”
Assistant Chief Hughes says that if a new fire hydrant is installed or perhaps there was a leak, then they will check on those. He also says that the fire department is hoping to have a new test plan within the next couple of weeks.
(Information from TexomasHomepage.com)
