No fire hydrants in unincorporated parts of the county can cause problems when handling large fires, according to the Woodrow Fire Department.
“It can become a problem, we have run out of water at a fire before and there’s no more helpless feeling than being a fireman, having a firetruck there and not being able to fight the fire,” said Chris Hixson from the Woodrow Fire Department.
The size of the fire is everything for these volunteer firefighters out in the county. For a small fire, they say they have enough water in their tanker trucks to put it out. However, at times they’ll have to refill the trucks and they say that’s when things become more complicated.
“The fire that we went on [Thursday] was a small fire, if we have a large grass fire, two of our tankers that we use to shuttle water are our grass trucks so we can no longer use them to shuttle water cause they’re fighting fire,” Hixson said. “So we’ll use our tanker to do it.”
They told me since there aren’t any fire hydrants in the county it can become a major problem when dealing with large fires, and they rely on their water tankers to put them out.
“In the unincorporated parts of the county we have to bring our own water supply and we do that with tanker trucks,” Hixson said. “Our first engine carries 1,000 gallons of water on it.”
They have training sessions once every few months to make sure all volunteer firefighters are able to refill the tanks.
Eric Best with the Woodrow Fire Department helps train volunteer firefighters. He says it is helpful when they know how to do everything in case of a large fire.
“We get them, get the tanks out, put water in them, practice pumping off of them and different crews out there,” Best said. “We don’t know who will be available to respond so its always good to get these things out and practice with our water supplies.”
