By Jeff Proctor
The Albuquerque Journal
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Albuquerque firefighters are not confident that the city’s fire hydrants will kick out enough water to douse flames because of fuzzy details on inspection and maintenance of the hydrants through the years.
A document provided by the water authority states that 15,779 hydrants were inspected between Dec. 1, 2009, and Feb. 4, 2010. The authority discovered “issues” with 259 of those hydrants, all of which were fixed, the document states.
John Stomp, water authority chief operating officer, said two full-time water authority staffers and three interns did the 2010 inspections.
By those calculations, each of them inspected 6.3 hydrants per hour, eight hours a day, seven days a week - including Christmas and New Year’s.
Stomp said it takes his staff about five minutes to inspect a hydrant that doesn’t need repairs, a few minutes longer if a work order needs to be filled out.
But the water authority’s hydrant sweep only entailed visual inspections, opening the caps and some flush testing.
The authority was not testing how much water flowed from each hydrant to make sure they were up to the task of putting out fires.
Fire Chief James Breen said water authority officials told him only 40 hydrants needed repairs last year.
“That number seems a little low to me,” he said. “I personally know of at least 10 of them, and I’m sure there are more than that. Based on the information we get from structure fires and visual inspections, that number is low.”
During an hourlong tour of a small section of Northeast Albuquerque, a Journal reporter and photographer found that only a handful out of more than 50 hydrants were up to national code standards.
Many were missing the chains that keep hydrants’ caps in place; others were buried too far in the ground; some were illegally painted colors other than yellow; and most appeared not to have been greased and lubricated. The Albuquerque Fire Department was responsible for maintenance and inspection through 2008.
Breen said there were years on AFD’s watch when the hydrants weren’t tested.
Copyright 2011 Albuquerque Journal