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Rusted hydrants hamper firefighters
By AMY HERDY
© St. Petersburg Times,
Eventually, they were forced to find another hydrant and drag water lines nearly 4,000 feet to battle the 11 a.m. blaze at Chase Crossing Apartments on Hillsborough Avenue. The fire was contained nearly an hour later, but not before it destroyed four apartments, caused smoke and water damage to two others and tallied at least $400,000 in losses, said Capt. Ray Yeakley, a spokesman for Hillsborough County Fire Rescue. Firefighters were hindered, Yeakley said, because the caps on the fire hydrants in the complex's parking lot were rusted shut, a condition that is difficult to recognize unless you try to open them.
The hydrants are privately maintained by the apartment complex, he said, which is owned by Camden properties. Officials with Camden, which also owns the apartment complex that burned in a multimillion-dollar fire in Ybor City last year, could not be reached for comment. The cause of the fire, which was contained to building 24, has not been determined, Yeakley said. No one was injured, although one resident from a different building was hospitalized with high blood pressure. A cat survived unscathed inside one of the burned units. The first 911 fire call came in shortly after 11 a.m., Yeakley said. County fire inspector Steve Kaplan, who happened to be driving past, helped evacuate residents from apartments at Hillsborough Avenue and George Road.
The firetrucks that initially responded each contained between 750 and 1,000 gallons of water, Yeakley said, but that only lasted about two minutes. "They knocked down the fire, then ran out of water and had to withdraw," he said. Firefighters "finally did manage to wrestle off" a cap on a parking lot hydrant, but the water pressure was so low they abandoned the effort and began running the heavy water lines to Hillsborough Avenue, said Chip Branam, battalion chief for Hillsborough County Fire Station 14. The effort took several minutes. "It was the most frustrating thing in the world," Branam said. "They were here fast and ready to do the job," he said of his station's crew, "but got hampered." The situation unsettled several residents. "I'm petrified," said Steve Gierhahan, who lives in the complex in a building across the street from the fire. He watched firefighters work to open one of the hydrants for several minutes, only to fail. "That shouldn't happen." Joel Smith, a 22-year-old University of South Florida student, said he barely had time to get his stuff and run. His mother, Maureen, called the rusted hydrants "inexcusable." An English teacher at Berkeley Preparatory School, Ms. Smith, 47, moved into her $810, two-bedroom, ground-floor apartment in building 24 only last week because she had heard good things about the maintenance of the complex, and her last apartment had leaked. "I moved in thinking I had moved to heaven," Ms. Smith said."I didn't think to say, "Well, do the fire hydrants work in case my building burns down?' " - Amy Herdy can be reached at (813) 226-3386.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
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TAMPA -- Joel Smith could see firefighters hammering one nearby water hydrant cap futilely, then another, as flames in his mother's wood apartment building crept toward the tree line.
