Fire hydrants installed, but more needed

Seven hydrants have been hooked up on Valrie Lane, but, says one homeowner, it's still ''a crisis waiting to happen.''

By JANET ZINK
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 28, 2003

Peter White now feels safe.

Sort of.

In mid-March, three months after White formed the Alafia River Ridge Civic Association to address the neighborhood's lack of fire hydrants, the county installed seven on Valrie Lane between McMullen and Winn roads, a residential stretch previously served by only one hydrant. Plans call for three more to be installed in the coming weeks.

"We've come a long way," White said.

Those seven were installed as part of a water line improvement project in an adjacent community. White says the Alafia River Ridge area still needs another 15 hydrants for its 277 homes.

"It's a crisis waiting to happen," White says.

Neighborhoods without hydrants rely on tanker trucks for fire protection.

In-home sprinkler systems are the best protection against home fires, says Hillsborough County Fire Marshal Don Goff. Sufficient fire hydrant access is next best, and dependence on tanker trucks is least effective.

"That's one of the downfalls of living in the country," Goff says. "You'll have to accept that kind of protection." That kind of protection costs homeowners more than just peace of mind.

It costs money. Italiano Insurance Company raised James Vedral's annual premium $400 because his Clair-Mel home does not have adequate fire protection, he says.

"This whole section over here does not have fire hydrants, and right now the insurance companies are starting to stick it to everybody because they're not within 1,000 feet of a hydrant," Vedral says.

Sheila Shindorf, who lives in White's neighborhood, fared even worse when her lender decided she needed more insurance coverage in case of fire.

"My mortgage took a $200 a month jump," or $2,400 a year, Shindorf says.

Most home insurers raise their rates if a home is not located within 1,000 feet of a fire hydrant and 5 miles of a fire station, says Charity Huerta, customer service representative at Italiano Insurance Company.

Hillsborough County code requires that fire hydrants be installed every 500 feet in new developments. Officials put that standard in place in 1998, tightening a 1,000-foot requirement established in 1986, Goff says.

Neighborhoods built before the code was established often don't have fire hydrants because their water comes either from private wells or pipes too small to accommodate fire hydrants. The county has been retrofitting areas that it supplies water to and putting in fire hydrants, but some neighborhoods are still served by water franchises that use old pipes.

The county began phasing out contracts with franchises nearly 30 years ago. There were more than 100 franchises when they were the county's sole source of water.

"There hasn't been a new franchise awarded by the county since around 1975," says Jim Roberts, contracts coordinator for the county Water Department. "The board's policy is to have all the franchises go away by 2010. Over the last 10 years especially we have been buying up some of (the contracts) as they expire." The county only has about 10 contracts left, but one of the biggest is with Florida Water Services, which supplies more than 3,000 residents of south Hillsborough County, including Vedral.

In parts of Shindorf's neighborhood, where residents get their water from wells, there are no pipes in the ground at all.

The county will put in water lines if more than 50 percent of the residents vote to finance the cost of the installation over 20 years, says Harold Delk, infrastructure assessment manager at the Water Department. "Those are done for potable water and waste water," Delk says. "If a group of citizens determines that they want potable water they can petition the county."

If the county deems the project feasible, the pipes go in and the fire hydrants along with them. The entire process can take three years.

"Fire protection is a byproduct of bringing potable water in," Delk says.

White is canvassing his neighbors to find out if they want to shoulder the cost of county water. He hopes they'll vote yes.

"They need to go in and finish the area by putting pipes in there," White says. "Until they do that, this area is not going to be covered comfortably with hydrants."

-- Janet Zink can be reached at jzink@sptimes.com or 661-2441.