Private fire hydrants can be found throughout the District in gated communities, universities and government agencies, but the city doesn’t know whether they work and has no record of how many there are.
“We don’t even know where these private hydrants are,” D.C. Councilman Phil Mendelson said Thursday during a hearing of the public safety committee, which he chairs. “Identifying the problem is nine-tenths of the solution, and we can’t even identify the hydrants.”
Private hydrants are allowed, according to the city code, but are not a part of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority system.
The Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department now performs an inspection on all hydrants in the District twice between March and December every year. In the past, the department has marked white rings on hydrants that were out of service and those that still worked but on which maintenance was required.
Starting next month, red rings will be used on hydrants that are “out of service” and unusable. Green rings will be used on hydrants that require maintenance but still work.
The fire department views all hydrants as public hydrants, said D.C. Fire Chief Dennis Rubin. Private or public, the firefighters will use any nearby hydrant to quench a fire.
“The bottom line,” said Mendelson, “is that if there’s a house on fire, we don’t want to be pointing fingers that the house burned down because the hydrant didn’t work because nobody took responsibility for it.”
The first step is to identify the private hydrants, said Jerry Johnson, general manager of WASA.
Although private hydrants create concern, city officials say progress is being made on the repairs of public hydrants in the District. Out of the nearly 9,000 hydrants in the area, 87 or just under 1 percent are considered “out of service,” which means they are not usable in an emergency. Almost 1,300 “require maintenance” but are still functional.
