IN BOSTON AND ELSEWHERE, WHEN THEY DO NOT FIGHT FIRES, THEY DIG FIRE HYDRANTS OUT OF THE SNOW AND ICE, JUST IN CASE THEY NEED TO USE THEM
February 11, 2015
Boston, Massachusetts (BG):
Shovels in hand, the firefighters of Engine 3 stared
incredulously at the 8-foot pile of dirty snow on East Dedham Street Tuesday.
“There’s a hydrant in there?” asked John Varner, halfway
through a 48-hour shift and squinting through his glasses. A hand-painted red
and white sign, striped like a barber’s pole, stuck up out of the snowbank and
announced “Hydrant,” with two arrows pointing down into the snow pile, which
was big enough to hide 10.
They attacked the heap, two men on each side and snow flying
furiously, until it emerged: one of the more than 13,000 fire hydrants in the
city that Boston firefighters have dug out before and will dig out again. And
again. And again.
“People don’t realize how important it is. You delay a small
fire, and suddenly, it’s out of control. Seconds, it’s literally seconds,”
Lieutenant Kevin Jordan said. “Good chance tomorrow, they’ll be plowed back
in.”
The snowiest 30 days in Boston’s history have turned streets
and sidewalks into mazes of towering snow heaps and have left the city
scrambling to keep hydrants clear. While officials ticket property owners who
do not shovel their sidewalks, there is no penalty for ignoring the fire
hydrants on city property. So, all officials can do is encourage people to be
good neighbors and point out that in case of a fire, they will be very unhappy
indeed if their nearest hydrant is encased in ice.
The tank of a fire engine holds enough water for about two
to five minutes — or about two rooms’ worth — of firefighting, Jordan said.
After that, firefighters need another source of water. Seconds spent digging
can add up fast.
On a normal day in Boston, there are 263 firefighters on duty,
department spokesman Steve MacDonald said. But during major snowstorms, each
truck gets an extra person, for a total of 57 extra bodies. And when
firefighters are not out answering calls, they are shoveling. The city has had
four major fires, one fatal, since the blizzard at the end of January,
MacDonald said, but so far, buried hydrants have not interfered with
firefighting.
But, he said, “it’s a gamble.”
By Tuesday afternoon, the crew working on Engine 3 — Varner,
Jordan, and firefighters Matthew Brady, Dara Nunan, and Phil Holda — were on
their second hydrant-digging mission of the day. After unearthing their first
hydrant, they set off on foot in search of others, armed with a dense,
color-coded map and trailed by the fire engine, their shovels slung over their
shoulders.
As they rounded the corner onto Albany Street, Jordan
stopped in his tracks to stare at a long, unbroken wall of snow.
“Oh, man,” he murmured.
Each hydrant needs to be shoveled to about a foot below the
valve where the hose attaches, with about 2 feet of clearance in every
direction so firefighters can spin the hydrant wrench.
“This is bad. No sooner do we do them, we’re back out doing
them,” Jordan said. “This is the worst [winter] I’ve ever had. I’m in my 30th
year.”
Still, his crew was in good spirits, teasing Jordan about
his classic firefighter’s salt-and-pepper mustache — “Only a boss could grow a
mustache like that,” Holda told him admiringly. And they worked fast, revealing
hydrant after hydrant in three-minute bursts.
Nunan, who graduated from the Boston Fire Academy just
before the first blizzard hit, was sanguine about the amount of time he has so
far spent shoveling. “Someone’s gotta do it,” he said, as he and Holda headed
toward Massachusetts Avenue, jammed their shovels into a snow bank, and
listened for the “ping” of metal on metal. “I just didn’t know we were gonna
get this much snow.”
The shoveling is good practice for the new guys, said Holda,
who has been on the job for nearly 10 years. Digging out the hydrants gets them
familiar with their district, so they can find a hydrant by landmark and memory
instead of map.
“You know the old Bull Heaney story?” asked Jordan, who
loves a good Bull Heaney story.
“What’s that?” asked Holda, smiling, because he loves to
give Jordan a hard time about his Bull Heaney stories.
“Years ago, there was an old-timer, they had a fire on
Beacon Hill. He walked up, big snow like this” — Jordan gestured to a heap on
Mass. Ave. “He took his shovel like a spear” — Jordan cocked his arm back. “Boink!”
He released.
“Hit the hydrant and then dug it out. Bull Heaney.”
And with that — about an hour and a half, 20 hydrants, a
mile of slushy pavement, and a tale about the legendary Bull Heaney — they were
done.
For now.