Fire chief: Lealman should add hydrants

He admits there are too few and that's being addressed, but each hydrant is tested annually and none are rusted shut.

By ANNE LINDBERG

© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 20, 2001

LEALMAN -- The news that Tampa firefighters were unable to open a privately owned hydrant at an apartment complex had residents calling the Lealman Fire Department. The mostly elderly women worried that the hydrants in their complexes also might be rusted shut.

Fire Chief Rick Graham reassured them: "We do test every hydrant in our district every year, including the private hydrants. I don't think we'd sit there for 15 minutes pounding on a hydrant trying to keep it open."

Lealman's real problem, Graham acknowledged, is too few hydrants in some areas. In a worst-case scenario, Graham said a hydrant might be 2,000 feet from a house.

"There's a hydrant situation here that needs to be addressed, needs to be taken care of, but Lealman is not burning down," he said.

Firefighters are aware of the areas where there are few hydrants and take precautions for handling the situation, Graham said. They carry more hoses and water than other departments. They also will do things such as dropping the hose by the hydrant and stretching it as they go into the situation rather than running back to the hydrant. They also send more firefighters to battle any blazes.

"It's a big issue in the Fire Department, obviously," Graham said. "But it's not the whole district."

While firefighters try to be prepared, it can be hard to convince insurers of that.

The lack of hydrants in some areas can lower the area's ISO rating. ISO stands for Insurance Services Office Inc., which provides statistics and other information to determine how much an insurance policy should cost. The better the ISO rating, the lower the fire insurance rates for homeowners.

"If you're missing hydrants, it affects your ISO rating," Graham said. And that means homeowners' costs are higher.

Ray Neri, president of the Lealman Community Association, said the organization discovered the hydrant shortage recently while members conducted a walking survey of Lealman neighborhoods to prepare a revitalization plan for the area.

"We've got areas where the fire hydrants are a couple of blocks away," Neri said.

Association members also found that St. Petersburg provided the water service and water lines in much of the affected area. St. Petersburg charges Lealman residents 25 percent more for their water and part of that, Neri said, should go to improving infrastructure and providing such things as fire hydrants.

St. Petersburg officials have a different view.

The agreement to provide water for Lealman applies only to drinking water, said Patti Anderson, St. Petersburg's assistant public utilities director. The 25 percent surcharge comes into effect because of the distance the water must go. It also helps to maintain the system.

"I'm not aware of any obligation to provide fire protection," Anderson said. "Outside of the city limits, we have water pipes. We maintain those pipes."

Any monies collected from Lealman are "not anywhere close to sufficient for upgrading the system for fire protection," she said.

Even inside the city, the amount residents pay for drinking water does not go to install fire hydrants. If the St. Petersburg fire department wants a new hydrant, it pays the water department. That cost comes out of citizens' property taxes.

Since none of the county's property taxes from Lealman come to St. Petersburg, the city will not provide hydrants, she said. The county and city have been arguing the issue, she said, but the discussion keeps running into a stalemate.

While St. Petersburg has taken a hard line, Anderson said that when the city installs new pipes, they'll be the size that is best for attaching to hydrants.

"We're not going to put in fire hydrants, but we'll put in pipes," she said. "It's not a total solution for sure, but we feel like we're making a good-faith effort because we are concerned."

Some of those changes for Lealman are in St. Petersburg's 10-year plan, but Anderson said she had no information on when any pipe replacement might begin.

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