Fire Rescue News - Egg Harbor Township to add community-owned fire hydrants to inspection rolls

Posted: Friday, November 25, 2011 9:46 pm | Updated: 7:44 am, Sat Nov 26, 2011.

By WALLACE McKELVEY, Staff Writer pressofAtlanticCity.com

firefighters struggled for 20 minutes or more with the device.

"It seemed like a long time before they got water on it," he said. "The smoke kept coming. At that time, we thought the whole building was going to go."

Like most of his neighbors, Fulton said he was unaware the hydrant was owned by the self-managed community and not the township.

Unlike county or municipal hydrants, which are inspected annually by either the Fire Marshal's office or New Jersey American Water Co., private hydrants are the sole responsibility of the property owners. But officials say oversight is negligible and not all owners understand the extent of the maintenance required.

Now, township fire officials are taking steps to address the issue.

In the past month, Fire Official Donald Stauffer said he has conducted a survey of all private hydrants in the township.

There are 28 locations with privately owned hydrants, he said. Some of them, such as AtlantiCare's Fire Road complex or the Shore Mall, have multiple hydrants.

Prior to the survey, Stauffer said, the departments took care of malfunctioning hydrants as problems arose.

Now, private hydrants will be incorporated into the next annual inspection, Stauffer said. The municipality's five fire companies will be responsible for obtaining documentation of inspection from each hydrant owner in their district.

This unit at Country Place Condominiums in Egg Harbor Township was damaged during an October fire where a nearby fire hydrant, owned and controlled by the condo community, was rusted shut.

‘A nightmare'

A month after the Oct. 10 blaze, boot prints traced the steps of firefighters to the broken front door of one of the Country Place units. A charred satellite dish poked through a blue tarp secured to the roof with two-by-fours.

"It was a nightmare," township Fire Chief William Danz said of the situation. "Imagine you pull up to a complex like that and you can't get water from a hydrant because it's (broken). It means that in the middle of whatever's going on, you may have to run all the way back to the Black Horse Pike and feed a hose line in."

That worst-case scenario did not materialize.

When firefighters arrived on the scene, Cardiff Volunteer Fire Company Chief Rob Winkler said they could not get the larger of three caps off the hydrant. Responders were forced to run two smaller hoses from the smaller caps, he said.

"It's like drinking out of a coffee straw compared to a McDonald's straw," he said.

Winkler said the faulty hydrant inhibited the amount of water that was available, but it is unknown whether it made the fire worse. No one was injured in the blaze, although six units were damaged, two of them extensively.

"It's a guessing game - maybe it did, maybe it didn't, but we got lucky," he said. "We were able to contain it to just one section of the units."

In addition to the risk to taxpayers' property, Winkler said faulty hydrants also put firefighters at risk.

"Our trucks only hold so much water, and we depend on those hydrants," he said. "Once we get the hoses hooked up, we're counting on them to be functional. By then, my guys are already inside fighting the fire."

A problem of awareness

Atlantic County Fire Marshal Whitey Swartz said he goes around to all of the county-owned hydrants each fall.

"We take every cap off, take a wire brush to them, spray them with light oil and put them back on," he said. Every few years, he said, the water utility will run the line to ensure nothing impedes the flow of water.

This routine ensures that normal condensation does not corrode the threads that secure the cap in place, and that water is available when firefighters need it.

Swartz said international fire code requires all hydrant owners to go through that process. But it is up to the municipalities to ensure the work gets done, he said.

For some municipalities, Swartz said, that's easier said than done, since many private hydrant owners are unaware of their obligations and not everyone who is aware is so vigilant.

"There's times you notify people to do something and they skip it," he said. "But it's up to the fire inspector to have it done. The buck stops there."

Fulton said he has seen condo and township officials inspecting and repairing the hydrants several times since the October blaze.

Winkler said the condo association immediately repaired the broken hydrant. The development's other hydrants appear to be in working order, he said.

Contact Wallace McKelvey:  609-272-7256  WMcKelvey@pressofac.com