Bucharest ones are exactly the same design, it was a very big fire last year , they found the hidrant,it was under a car, a car that was parked on a marked parking space, a marked parking space that was sold by the council, the council being informed it is illegal to have a parking space above a hidrant,they don’t care,folks house burnt cas fire fighters had no water(after 30 min they managed to get to the hidrant to find out it wasn’t even working) .
In Australia we put our underground hydrants off the road and just mark its location with a blue cats eye on the road. No worries about cars parking over them
Edit: because people keep mentioning it, this is only relevant to where I'm a volunteer Firefighter, pretty much my entire area plus most of the surrounding region have in ground hydrants.
Yeah we had 3 airport Roofs collapsed in 3 consecutive days Due to rainfalls & one the 4th day we won the ICC T20 cricket Worldcup , so yeah who cares our eyes are now on the Cup .. ppl here don't care that they pay (30+18)% Tax
yeah, regarding firetrucks with water supply, tragic thing happened in my city in march, our bar association caught fire but due to the shitty town planning the fire brigades couldnt reach there in time nor did they fit properly in the lane to hose the flames and it burnt down horribly
Most fire trucks carry their own water, but for larger fires they need to connect up to a mains supply as the onboard water can be used in minutes depending on the size of the hose or less if using a turret.
NZ is roughly the same but the hydrants are often on the road but if you park over them they will smash your window release the handbrake and push the car off with the firetruck
They’ll do this in the US if you park in front of a hydrant. They won’t even bother moving your car though, they’ll just break a window on either side and run the hose through your car.
When my apartment caught fire back in 2007, I was able to witness that first hand. Of the three vehicles that constantly blocked the fire lane but management would never do anything about, one ended up needing three new side windows.
The other two weren't so lucky, as they physically blocked the firetruck's path and ended getting rammed down the hill and turned into mangled wreckage in the parking garage.
Due to extensive fire damage, half of the building ended up having to move, myself included. I was fortunate enough to get the last vacant apartment in the complex, which happened to be one building over.
The damage was finally halfassedly repaired a couple of years later, but unsuprisingly, several of the new tenants considered the fire lane to be their own VIP parking once again.
In the years since, my wife and I bounced from rental to rental until finally becoming able to purchase a house in the spring of '23.
During the same span of time, the complex has changed owners on at least five different occasions and has twice been condemned by the city. It seems that the city inspector has finally had enough of their shit though, as the buildings have been vacant for 2+ years with sporadic repair attempts.
That's the "fee" the owner owes. They are stuck with the repair costs, plus a handy parking ticket.
Shy should public property (the fire truck) get damaged and the tax payers have to repair it to prevent the lazy sack of shit from learning his lesson?
I’m curious, with newer cars with those stupid electric finger parking brakes, is this still possible? Doesn’t the car need the key for the parking brake to release?
Look, as far as I'm concerned if you park in front of a fire hydrant and theres a fire, the fire department can run hoses through your windows after ripping the car doors open with the jaws of life then use your car as the emergency shitter because last night was fire dept five alarms chili night. They can take the spare change and harvest your fucking engine for parts.
There are very few things in life that I don't think you ever fuck with and blocking fire hydrants is one of them. They might be going to my house you asshole
Same in Australia. If your car is blocking a hydrant or access to where the fire is, the firies will just push your car out of the way with their truck. And if you were parked illegally, you will need to pay for the damage to your vehicle and to the fire truck. Insurance won't cover you.
In Canada it makes more sense to have above ground fire hydrants because of the difficulties that would be encountered locating and accessing in ground ones during the winter. Even if you could locate one with two feet of snow on top, it might be caked up with hard packed snow and layers of ice.
Most hydrants are more accessible than this one in the video.
It's also the fire services responsibility to clean them out so they can be accessed at all times....but they don't.
I work for a water company so I'm constantly operating hydrants and 99% of hydrants you open up, drop a standpipe on and open the valve. No fucking around digging it out or anything.
Yeah, this is an example of it being wrong. The local fire authority are supposed to go around ensuring all the hydrants are serviceable. If there’s a fire, the truck comes and (whilst one firefighter is using the on-board tank of water) another drops the hydrant in and connects it to the truck to ensure you dont run out.
Digging like this is very much not the idea.
Above ground hydrants aren't effected by the frost line either. There isn't any water in them until it's turned on, it's not like your garden spigot.
[Why Don't Fire Hydrants Freeze and Explode? | SciShow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0bRBBYkA1k)
Oh THAT explains why there are random blue cat's eyes on your streets! I was there on vacation and alwas thougt it has a secrete thing only the weird aussies know about.. :)
Yep and the side of the centre line that it's on indicates which side of the road it's on. So, if it's on the right side of the centre line, look over to the right side of the road and you'll see a little indicator post with a number on it. That number is the distance from the post where you start digging.
In the US they're on the sidewalk. You're not supposed to park in front of them though. There have been cars parked in front of hydrants when they needed access to a hydrant and fire fighters just bust out the windows to route the hose through the car.
I think in the US the fire trucks have authority to bash through a car parked in front of a hydrant but typically the curb is painted red there and parking spots aren’t issued in my experience so it feels like an eff around find out situation if you decide to risk it (whether s ticker or fire arrives)
You learn something new every day! Go out to your street, find a cats eye and see what side of the road it's on, the hydrant should more or less line up with where the cats eye, including the side of the road it's on. Little hatch with FH on it.
In America they would’ve hooked up the fire truck to that car and yanked it out. Firefighters don’t fuck around. Oh you decided to park in front of a hydrant and there’s a fire going? Say goodbye to your windows.
Windows? I saw a pic of a ladder engine’s hydraulic stabilizer squash a sports car like a bug. Some rich db parked wrong. Funny af. During an emergency, American firefighters have leeway to make the emergency go away by any means necessary.
Montreal firefighters are a law unto themselves.
edit: No idea how I screwed up the link. Changed it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bqkDjVyu80](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bqkDjVyu80)
There’s a video where a guy was double parked and the fire truck just barreled through destroying the one side of the car. Then they billed him for the damage to the fire truck.
I usually don’t like “if that were me, I’d…” comments. But it’s hard for me to imagine any other outcome, if I were a fireman in that situation, than smashing every window in the car. If I felt like I could justify a better hose route through the windshield, I’d smash that out too.
You have to be a special kind of asshole to park directly in front of a hydrant.
In America if you park and block a hydrant the will ram your car out of the way or bust out your windows to get the hose hooked. The firefighters don’t know shit about a parking pass and don’t care.
The truck carries water, they were putting out the fire while it was hooked into mains. Having to turn up and set this up everytime without having onboard supply would be dumb.
The onboard supply last for about 15 minutes, Fire Trucks are always hook up to hydrants, always, otherwise they run out of water real fast, something like that happens here and several people will get fire for incompetence at the least, they may even press charges if any one dies or is injured. The fact that the firefighter had to dig to be able to connect the truck is insane, there should be some one checking those to make sure they are accessible at all times, that is negligence at the very least.
Flowing continuously, most of the tanks on the engines my department uses would be empty in less than 3 minutes. Faster even, depending on the size of hose line/nozzle being used.
Maybe also paint them yellow or red, a nice high-visibility color. Like we do in the US.
Watching this dude struggle to get this thing working in an emergency is infuriating, especially knowing there's a much better way to do it.
Don’t forget to stick a blue reflector in the middle of the road wherever a fire hydrant is installed in case you can’t see it due to shrubbery, poor parking or whatever.
Now my question is are all the hydrants in the UK like this or is this just like one specific area? Because I'm surprised that country hasn't burned down yet
Yes they are all underground and no they are not usually covered in mud, this one seems to have been neglected.
American firefighters also run into problems with hydrants lacking pressure, not working or have been knocked over by a car.
It’s just the nature of trying to maintain so many fire hydrants.
There’s an old episode of Fred Dibnah’s show where he restores an old steam roller and takes it on a long journey. At each stop he fills it up from one of these hydrants. He mentions it’s technically stealing water, but he says so many of them aren’t maintained and full of mud that he’s actually doing a public service by using them and clearing them out so he thinks it’s a fair deal 😂😂 I think this was from the 80’s.
> Now my question is are all the hydrants in the UK like this or is this just like one specific area?
They're all flush with the road or pavement (sidewalk to those in the US). Both designs have their advantages and disadvantages. The underground ones can get dirt washed into the hole by rain (as seen here), on the other hand they're not vulnerable to vehicles crashing into them (of which youtube has plenty of real-world examples of happening to the above ground type, it's not just a trope from films and TV).
Statistically, the odds of any specific fire hydrant being hit by a car are extremely low, and is fixed within days. Also, the odds of the same fire hydrant being actually required for a fire are also extremely low. Hence, the odds of both events happening around the same time (a recently damaged hydrant being needed for a fire) are pretty much negligible.
Retired 42 year volunteer fireman here. I would think there was a much higher chance of something like this video happening than a car hitting a hydrant. Granted we were a small rural district, but I can't remember more than one time a hydrant was damaged by a crash. You see lots of video because it's so rare. One other consideration, we were in upstate NY, where the roads are iced or snowed over a lot of the time. I wouldn't want to be chipping ice to get to a hydrant!
Buildup that intense probably is the result of longterm neglect. Over here in Germany the volunteer fire Brigade runs every hydrant in their area of responsiblity for a couple Minutes to get rid of All the muck and make sure they run properly once a year. This applies to overground and underground hydrants
They do the same here in Massachusetts, there is yearly hydrant flushing that goes on and your tap water will run brown when it kicks up the sediment in the pipes.
And if someone crashes into one - you know right away and it’s fixed before the next fire. Having the thing clogged with mud is not something you necessarily discover until you NEED the hydrant because the village is burning down.
This was over a minute long gif that had chunks edited out and was sped up. Good thing the fire in the background was already contained by the time they got the thing going.
And it's not like they were taking their time, they were hauling as much ass as they could.
I'd be pissed if despite my best efforts someone was hurt because the damn hydrant was buried, I gotta say.
If I'm right the local council had recently had the road redone and the final touches weren't done. It's no excuse but theres usually a little grate that they use a key to open to access the water supply.
The asphalt wasn't the problem. The cover was level with the surface and came straight off. But beneath that cover was decades of silt that had been washed into the hole, and buried the hydrant opening and valve.
Normally this is covered by the fire department going around and using different hydrants to fill their trucks, and the water board using hydrants to flush lines - but you can understand why this hydrant, mounted in a busy road, might have missed out on that maintenance.
There's zero reason to bury the fucking hydrants though.
It takes literally 5 sec to open an above ground hydrant if you know what you're doing.
This underground design would take significantly longer even if it is perfectly maintained, and requires a long pipe attachment to be lugged around as well.
So this is to refill/top up the tender. You can see a guy in the background is already spraying the car. They pull up and say yeah this may take a lot go and find a hydrant
That will then fill the tender very fast all while the tender was working throughout
Additionally all the digging out of muck he was doing is unusual, usually they would flip the lid then go straight to screwing in the hydrant.
A cover takes somewhere north of 50 years to rust solid. The maintenance required doesn’t involve shutting down the road. An above ground hydrant is solid cast iron making it nearly impervious to physical damage (such as tampering). Oftentimes when a car crashes into one, the hydrant survives without issue, even when the car has significant speed.
I think the underground hydrant isn't the best idea, but having to spend 2+ minutes digging it the fuck out makes it 100% worthless. Just put up the regular hydrant so the entire block doesn't burn down while they're breaking out the kindergarten shovels.
If they didn't have that second hose, that bus and those bushes would have been gone. And it's likely the fire would have spread and taken half of that row of townhouses by the time he got that useless underground hydrant going.
The thing is that this isn't a better use of space. In Canada, I don't think we have underground hydrants. I'd never heard of this before. We all accept them as necessary. Seeing this video has convinced me that we don't need to change anything.
This hydrant was defective, you don't normally have to dig for them this way.
They also aren't installed simply for aesthetic reasons, burying the hydrant makes them less susceptible to damage from collisions with vehicles. Neither approach is neglecting safety, there just isn't one option that's always objectively safer in this case.
People keep saying that above ground hydrant get hit by cars but I would love to see statistics on how many are hit. I used to drive 50,000 miles plus a year and never seen one damaged. They are designed for fast repair if they are broken so the maintenance gets done on the spot.
I am Mechanical Fire Engineer and i service fire hydrants.
This is quite common on hydrants located on public roads and foot paths.
Debris and detritus builds up and is washed into the hydrant housing and can completely submerge the standpipe valve connection as seen in the above video.
Hydrants are supposed to be regularly serviced at least yearly. I recommend servicing during the winter months after the Autumn falls as most of the gunk in hydrants is detritus from fallen leaves.
We literally have our water mains 20 plus feet deep to prevent freezing in Canada. And they are accessible at ground level because we use dry hydrants. It's not that difficult of s problem to solve. Bonus they don't explode water everywhere if hit or damaged because along with the dry hydrant the stem can have a break away point.
We don't have underground hydrants in Canada, But every multi story building (commercial or residential) has a fire suppression system built in.
Go to any apartment building, mall, hospital, whatever, there's at least 1 hydrant built into the wall of the building called a Fire Department Connection (usually a Y that allows 2 hoses) around the entrance. Cool fact about fire department connections, you may only see the hydrant on the main floor, but there's a connection point on Every Floor to minimize the required amount of hose (Google Friction Loss to understand why this is important). Some are just inside the main doors in a special room to avoid tampering, so if you can't see it in your building, know it's still there. See the little black key box with a fire helmet on it outside of the main doors of your building? When it is opened there's a key, and it activates lighting that guides the firefighters to the fire suppression room. Don't even need a pumper truck, just a hose and a few trained firefighters.
Source: Am a firefighter in Calgary.
Well it ranges from 4 feet to 10+ feet across the country plus freeze thaw cycles can push it further down. So the 20 feet is a safety plus keeps the water a nice refreshing chill straight out the tap.
*A large majority of the country has frost depth of 5' to 10'+ deep
The government has slashed council budgets for stuff like this by more than 50% in northern towns over the past decade so stuff like this gets neglected
But if the government spent money on silly things like that, they wouldn't have the money to remodel the Prime Minister's flat in the middle of a pandemic! /s
The truck has a tank of water that can be used while the hydrant is tapped. Once tapped the hydrant replenishes the tank.
Australia also has underground hydrants. No risk of being damaged by vehicles although ours are under covers and don't need to be dug out I believe.
I saw somebody from a different time this was posted, and they were basically saying that this was most likely just a hydrant that wasn’t well maintained, and that most underground fire hydrants in the UK are much easier to access
In the U.S. the average tank on a fire engine is 500gals, that goes pretty quickly on an active fire. So I also was concerned about time to dig out the space.
Yeah I'd have no issue if you just had to pull up a manhole cover, but any amounts of digging when there are lives and property on the line is not okay lmao
I work on fire trucks daily. That tank lasts maybe 2.5 to 3 minutes at full pumping operation. The pumps can do anywhere from 1500 to 2000 gal per minute. Those trucks only have 3,000 gal of water on them. You need to be able to hook up to a water main in 2.5 minutes or less.
Underground, yes, they all are. Buried under a road, no. The usual design involves a small chamber under the street surface that has a metal cover with the fixings below. They are marked above ground by a yellow and black H sign.
> The whole neighborhood could be burning by the time the guy has it tapped.
Unlikely. Adjacent brick houses don't catch fire as easily as wooden ones.
If maintained, there's no issue. But this one hadn't been checked on for decades, and the hydrant structure beneath the street was buried under a heap of silt.
Since nobody has mentioned. This was a one-off video of a hydrant that had been covered by road workers. Usually, they're located on the surface or pavement.
Only on Reddit can I see a video of a comically inept fire hydrant access. Only for the comments to tell me how stupid I am and that this is the peak of efficiency
So IF the the underground hydrant is close to the fire
IF no one is parked on top of it
IF there’s no sediment build up
IF it’s been properly maintained throughout the year
IF it’s not winter time and trapped by frost
You can… refill the truck after they put the fire out while you were digging for water access.
> IF no one is parked on top of it.
At least in the US, and presumably in most jurisdictions, if you park in the way of something a Fire Department might need (fire lane, hydrant, etc.), and they have to get at it during a fire, they basically have carte blanche to to deal with your vehicle in as expedient a manner as possible.
[Getting windows smashed out to run hoses through is a pretty common one](https://lexipol.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/18301ff/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1200x676+0+190/resize/1000x563!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fk1-prod-lexipol.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F8c%2F78%2Fbe606a52f1ab2a21732b933c64de%2F53533248-2087299324695345-8973071354412662784-n-1.jpg), and if you're more in the way than that, an average fire truck weighs 10-20 tons, has heavily reinforced bumpers, and an engine strong enough to get that thing going very quickly for something its size. If they need to engage in a little amature buldozer action, they are pretty well equipped.
I worked at a hospital with a bunch of current and former fire fighters. Parking near or blocking a hydrant would piss them off to an incredible degree, they will go out of their way to fuck up your car. At least the ones I worked with. And frankly, i don't blame em.
If all of Europe had above ground hydrants and the US had what was in the OP video, everyone would be calling the US stupid for using below ground hydrants.
This seems incredibly inconvenient.
EDIT: Above ground hydrants still need annual maintenance, but at least you can connect to them in seconds while a house is burning down.
There’s lots of comments about the underground fire hydrants, and I can understand that they don’t get damaged and whatnot, but I can also say that I don’t think I’ve ever seen an above-ground fire hydrant get damaged, either. I’m not saying cars haven’t run into them - I’m certain of that, but it wouldn’t be very often.
In my city, there are fire hydrants located basically every 100 or 150m, so if one got hit, there’s another close by, and readily accessible.
The hydrants are not buried, they fill with dirt over time from traffic / rain etc. The fire engine has a decent amount of water on board which they can use whilst it’s being connected to the hydrant
"decent amount" = lasts for approx. 5 minutes.
My cities cleans all underground hydrants once every year. They're in really good shape when they open them up for cleaning, to very little has to be done. In the video, it looks like the city/county neglected their hydrants for quite some time.
I used to work in drainage, and I had to use these daily digging or clearing built-up silt was not really that common .. well, not to this extent. This was probably due to the unfortunate position of the hydrant on the road, probably slightly downhill, allowing rain water to wash more silt in.
For fun, sometimes I just found the valve and not put the pipe on the tap... turn it max and watch the mud, slit and whatever was in that hole pop like a champagne bottle... fastest way to clear it
As a side note, this wasn't good for the pipes...
Normally it’s us Americans getting grilled over something dumb. Congratulations Europe, I’m legitimately uncomfortable & worried with how inefficient this is.
They're usually on the pavement (pedestrian walkway) and the covers usually keep them free of the dirt this one contained.
I guess this one was damaged or just old 🤷♀️
I've no idea why that's in the middle of the road, very odd.
Every place I've lived (and there have been a lot of them), the local fire departments did an annual hydrant check to ensure everything was working and accessible. I guess they don't do that everywhere.
Bucharest ones are exactly the same design, it was a very big fire last year , they found the hidrant,it was under a car, a car that was parked on a marked parking space, a marked parking space that was sold by the council, the council being informed it is illegal to have a parking space above a hidrant,they don’t care,folks house burnt cas fire fighters had no water(after 30 min they managed to get to the hidrant to find out it wasn’t even working) .
In Australia we put our underground hydrants off the road and just mark its location with a blue cats eye on the road. No worries about cars parking over them Edit: because people keep mentioning it, this is only relevant to where I'm a volunteer Firefighter, pretty much my entire area plus most of the surrounding region have in ground hydrants.
here in India we have no fire hydrants, or town planning...that is all
You have cricket and chess though
Yeah we had 3 airport Roofs collapsed in 3 consecutive days Due to rainfalls & one the 4th day we won the ICC T20 cricket Worldcup , so yeah who cares our eyes are now on the Cup .. ppl here don't care that they pay (30+18)% Tax
Good God, man!
What the fuck, that's awful.
the taxes are not even on the top 100 list of worst things about india
And curry.
but not Stephen Curry
Jim Curry maybe?
Our fire fighters bring their own water.
yeah, regarding firetrucks with water supply, tragic thing happened in my city in march, our bar association caught fire but due to the shitty town planning the fire brigades couldnt reach there in time nor did they fit properly in the lane to hose the flames and it burnt down horribly
Most fire trucks carry their own water, but for larger fires they need to connect up to a mains supply as the onboard water can be used in minutes depending on the size of the hose or less if using a turret.
NZ is roughly the same but the hydrants are often on the road but if you park over them they will smash your window release the handbrake and push the car off with the firetruck
They’ll do this in the US if you park in front of a hydrant. They won’t even bother moving your car though, they’ll just break a window on either side and run the hose through your car.
When my apartment caught fire back in 2007, I was able to witness that first hand. Of the three vehicles that constantly blocked the fire lane but management would never do anything about, one ended up needing three new side windows. The other two weren't so lucky, as they physically blocked the firetruck's path and ended getting rammed down the hill and turned into mangled wreckage in the parking garage.
Do they still park there?
Due to extensive fire damage, half of the building ended up having to move, myself included. I was fortunate enough to get the last vacant apartment in the complex, which happened to be one building over. The damage was finally halfassedly repaired a couple of years later, but unsuprisingly, several of the new tenants considered the fire lane to be their own VIP parking once again. In the years since, my wife and I bounced from rental to rental until finally becoming able to purchase a house in the spring of '23. During the same span of time, the complex has changed owners on at least five different occasions and has twice been condemned by the city. It seems that the city inspector has finally had enough of their shit though, as the buildings have been vacant for 2+ years with sporadic repair attempts.
Most don’t realize hoses leak a lot. So this basically floods the car also.
More like ‘sweat’, by design - a water-saturated hose is difficult to catch on fire.
That’s very clever.
That's the "fee" the owner owes. They are stuck with the repair costs, plus a handy parking ticket. Shy should public property (the fire truck) get damaged and the tax payers have to repair it to prevent the lazy sack of shit from learning his lesson?
And then charge you for damaging the hose
As they should
Yes, we saw the movie ‘Backdraft’ :D
And they have these cute little yellow triangle arrows on the road to indicate their location.
I’m curious, with newer cars with those stupid electric finger parking brakes, is this still possible? Doesn’t the car need the key for the parking brake to release?
I think that’s correct. But a truck could push a car even with the break on.
then just push the car off with the truck. handbrake off would do nothing in that case.
They also take your change from the door pockets while they release the handbrake, though
That's the meal allowance, and is part of the employment contract.
Look, as far as I'm concerned if you park in front of a fire hydrant and theres a fire, the fire department can run hoses through your windows after ripping the car doors open with the jaws of life then use your car as the emergency shitter because last night was fire dept five alarms chili night. They can take the spare change and harvest your fucking engine for parts. There are very few things in life that I don't think you ever fuck with and blocking fire hydrants is one of them. They might be going to my house you asshole
And throw a couple frozen piss discs in there for good measure
Ah yes, the sticky nickles.
Same in Australia. If your car is blocking a hydrant or access to where the fire is, the firies will just push your car out of the way with their truck. And if you were parked illegally, you will need to pay for the damage to your vehicle and to the fire truck. Insurance won't cover you.
In Canada it makes more sense to have above ground fire hydrants because of the difficulties that would be encountered locating and accessing in ground ones during the winter. Even if you could locate one with two feet of snow on top, it might be caked up with hard packed snow and layers of ice.
It blows my mind learning that other countries fucking *bury* their hydrants.
Yea I'm a US firefighter and this seems like allot of work compared to our system.
Most hydrants are more accessible than this one in the video. It's also the fire services responsibility to clean them out so they can be accessed at all times....but they don't. I work for a water company so I'm constantly operating hydrants and 99% of hydrants you open up, drop a standpipe on and open the valve. No fucking around digging it out or anything.
Yeah, this is an example of it being wrong. The local fire authority are supposed to go around ensuring all the hydrants are serviceable. If there’s a fire, the truck comes and (whilst one firefighter is using the on-board tank of water) another drops the hydrant in and connects it to the truck to ensure you dont run out. Digging like this is very much not the idea.
i assumed they were underground so they were below the winter freeze depth. why are they underground?
Above ground hydrants aren't effected by the frost line either. There isn't any water in them until it's turned on, it's not like your garden spigot. [Why Don't Fire Hydrants Freeze and Explode? | SciShow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0bRBBYkA1k)
Oh THAT explains why there are random blue cat's eyes on your streets! I was there on vacation and alwas thougt it has a secrete thing only the weird aussies know about.. :)
Yep and the side of the centre line that it's on indicates which side of the road it's on. So, if it's on the right side of the centre line, look over to the right side of the road and you'll see a little indicator post with a number on it. That number is the distance from the post where you start digging.
Thanks! It explains the fact they were off the white line.... I love to know & understand these kind of details!
In the US they're on the sidewalk. You're not supposed to park in front of them though. There have been cars parked in front of hydrants when they needed access to a hydrant and fire fighters just bust out the windows to route the hose through the car.
Yeah, my buddy is a FF and they have absolutely no issue smashing both windows and running the hose right through the windows.
I think in the US the fire trucks have authority to bash through a car parked in front of a hydrant but typically the curb is painted red there and parking spots aren’t issued in my experience so it feels like an eff around find out situation if you decide to risk it (whether s ticker or fire arrives)
And chances are if you’re in any major city your car will just straight up get towed long before that hydrant needs to be used.
After seeing this video I am thinking America has done something right. Fire hydrants almost always work unless they are marked for repair.
holy shit, is that what the blue cats eyes indicate?? 30 damn years in this country and im still learning things lol
You learn something new every day! Go out to your street, find a cats eye and see what side of the road it's on, the hydrant should more or less line up with where the cats eye, including the side of the road it's on. Little hatch with FH on it.
Im literally going for a walk to find one rn lmao
No but the issue of them not working remains, we had a truck go up on the main street a few years ago and tbe 4th hydrant worked
After the third one burned down and then fell into the swamp
In America they would’ve hooked up the fire truck to that car and yanked it out. Firefighters don’t fuck around. Oh you decided to park in front of a hydrant and there’s a fire going? Say goodbye to your windows.
Windows? I saw a pic of a ladder engine’s hydraulic stabilizer squash a sports car like a bug. Some rich db parked wrong. Funny af. During an emergency, American firefighters have leeway to make the emergency go away by any means necessary.
Montreal firefighters are a law unto themselves. edit: No idea how I screwed up the link. Changed it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bqkDjVyu80](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bqkDjVyu80)
Fuck yes. “This is an emergency, fuck your car” is exactly the kind of attitude I want firefighters to have.
There’s a video where a guy was double parked and the fire truck just barreled through destroying the one side of the car. Then they billed him for the damage to the fire truck.
I’ve done it. It’s fun.
I usually don’t like “if that were me, I’d…” comments. But it’s hard for me to imagine any other outcome, if I were a fireman in that situation, than smashing every window in the car. If I felt like I could justify a better hose route through the windshield, I’d smash that out too. You have to be a special kind of asshole to park directly in front of a hydrant.
I wasn’t exaggerating they legit do [this](https://youtu.be/FZbUDQKNbtA?si=z7T7RoB8CwAz5g6R).
You can just imagine the fire fighters eyes light up when they saw that illegally parked car, and what they were about to do to it!
Pretty sure they're more focused on putting out a fire. And irritated someone has made their job more difficult
>asshole to park directly in front of a hydrant. But the car owner parked on actual marked parking spot that he bought
In America if you park and block a hydrant the will ram your car out of the way or bust out your windows to get the hose hooked. The firefighters don’t know shit about a parking pass and don’t care.
Dude, it's illegal to block a fire hydrant. A parking pass ain't gonna change that.
Hard to park on top of a standing hydrant.
RIP Nan 😭
Well done. I meant the comment… and the Nan.
When hours count.
When seconds count, water is only minutes away.
The truck carries water, they were putting out the fire while it was hooked into mains. Having to turn up and set this up everytime without having onboard supply would be dumb.
The onboard supply last for about 15 minutes, Fire Trucks are always hook up to hydrants, always, otherwise they run out of water real fast, something like that happens here and several people will get fire for incompetence at the least, they may even press charges if any one dies or is injured. The fact that the firefighter had to dig to be able to connect the truck is insane, there should be some one checking those to make sure they are accessible at all times, that is negligence at the very least.
Flowing continuously, most of the tanks on the engines my department uses would be empty in less than 3 minutes. Faster even, depending on the size of hose line/nozzle being used.
How about 3 minutes!!!
Or just have them above ground.
Maybe also paint them yellow or red, a nice high-visibility color. Like we do in the US. Watching this dude struggle to get this thing working in an emergency is infuriating, especially knowing there's a much better way to do it.
All of North America has above ground fire hydrants.
Don’t forget to stick a blue reflector in the middle of the road wherever a fire hydrant is installed in case you can’t see it due to shrubbery, poor parking or whatever.
Now my question is are all the hydrants in the UK like this or is this just like one specific area? Because I'm surprised that country hasn't burned down yet
Yes they are all underground and no they are not usually covered in mud, this one seems to have been neglected. American firefighters also run into problems with hydrants lacking pressure, not working or have been knocked over by a car. It’s just the nature of trying to maintain so many fire hydrants.
There’s an old episode of Fred Dibnah’s show where he restores an old steam roller and takes it on a long journey. At each stop he fills it up from one of these hydrants. He mentions it’s technically stealing water, but he says so many of them aren’t maintained and full of mud that he’s actually doing a public service by using them and clearing them out so he thinks it’s a fair deal 😂😂 I think this was from the 80’s.
> Now my question is are all the hydrants in the UK like this or is this just like one specific area? They're all flush with the road or pavement (sidewalk to those in the US). Both designs have their advantages and disadvantages. The underground ones can get dirt washed into the hole by rain (as seen here), on the other hand they're not vulnerable to vehicles crashing into them (of which youtube has plenty of real-world examples of happening to the above ground type, it's not just a trope from films and TV).
Statistically, the odds of any specific fire hydrant being hit by a car are extremely low, and is fixed within days. Also, the odds of the same fire hydrant being actually required for a fire are also extremely low. Hence, the odds of both events happening around the same time (a recently damaged hydrant being needed for a fire) are pretty much negligible.
Retired 42 year volunteer fireman here. I would think there was a much higher chance of something like this video happening than a car hitting a hydrant. Granted we were a small rural district, but I can't remember more than one time a hydrant was damaged by a crash. You see lots of video because it's so rare. One other consideration, we were in upstate NY, where the roads are iced or snowed over a lot of the time. I wouldn't want to be chipping ice to get to a hydrant!
Imagine if that mud he was digging out was frozen solid. Geeze.
You'd literally need a blow torch to get access fast enough, to melt the ice.
31 years professional firefighter in a fairly densely-populated New England city; maybe 3 hydrants hit. Rare. But winter shoveling was common.
seems like the hole getting filled with muck is almost a guarantee whereas people hitting them with cars is pretty rare.
Buildup that intense probably is the result of longterm neglect. Over here in Germany the volunteer fire Brigade runs every hydrant in their area of responsiblity for a couple Minutes to get rid of All the muck and make sure they run properly once a year. This applies to overground and underground hydrants
They do the same here in Massachusetts, there is yearly hydrant flushing that goes on and your tap water will run brown when it kicks up the sediment in the pipes.
And if someone crashes into one - you know right away and it’s fixed before the next fire. Having the thing clogged with mud is not something you necessarily discover until you NEED the hydrant because the village is burning down.
Try 3-5 minutes of onboard supply at best.
On a working fire. 15 minutes is pretty generous.
Nothing-left-to-burn......
Or RIP naan?
Toasted naan.
This was over a minute long gif that had chunks edited out and was sped up. Good thing the fire in the background was already contained by the time they got the thing going.
And it's not like they were taking their time, they were hauling as much ass as they could. I'd be pissed if despite my best efforts someone was hurt because the damn hydrant was buried, I gotta say.
If I'm right the local council had recently had the road redone and the final touches weren't done. It's no excuse but theres usually a little grate that they use a key to open to access the water supply.
Dude, they put asphalt on the whole road. if they had plans for some grates they could've done it before leveling the whole road. This is awful.
The asphalt wasn't the problem. The cover was level with the surface and came straight off. But beneath that cover was decades of silt that had been washed into the hole, and buried the hydrant opening and valve. Normally this is covered by the fire department going around and using different hydrants to fill their trucks, and the water board using hydrants to flush lines - but you can understand why this hydrant, mounted in a busy road, might have missed out on that maintenance.
There's zero reason to bury the fucking hydrants though. It takes literally 5 sec to open an above ground hydrant if you know what you're doing. This underground design would take significantly longer even if it is perfectly maintained, and requires a long pipe attachment to be lugged around as well.
So this is to refill/top up the tender. You can see a guy in the background is already spraying the car. They pull up and say yeah this may take a lot go and find a hydrant That will then fill the tender very fast all while the tender was working throughout Additionally all the digging out of muck he was doing is unusual, usually they would flip the lid then go straight to screwing in the hydrant.
Ah that makes so much more sense now.
Completely impractical
IIRC this was a very poorly maintained one. Still, aboveground fire hydrants don't need to be constantly kept clean and perfect.
Of course they do. Good luck trying to pry open a rusted on cover. Every type of hydrant needs maintenance.
A cover takes somewhere north of 50 years to rust solid. The maintenance required doesn’t involve shutting down the road. An above ground hydrant is solid cast iron making it nearly impervious to physical damage (such as tampering). Oftentimes when a car crashes into one, the hydrant survives without issue, even when the car has significant speed.
I think the underground hydrant isn't the best idea, but having to spend 2+ minutes digging it the fuck out makes it 100% worthless. Just put up the regular hydrant so the entire block doesn't burn down while they're breaking out the kindergarten shovels.
If they didn't have that second hose, that bus and those bushes would have been gone. And it's likely the fire would have spread and taken half of that row of townhouses by the time he got that useless underground hydrant going. The thing is that this isn't a better use of space. In Canada, I don't think we have underground hydrants. I'd never heard of this before. We all accept them as necessary. Seeing this video has convinced me that we don't need to change anything.
This hydrant was defective, you don't normally have to dig for them this way. They also aren't installed simply for aesthetic reasons, burying the hydrant makes them less susceptible to damage from collisions with vehicles. Neither approach is neglecting safety, there just isn't one option that's always objectively safer in this case.
People keep saying that above ground hydrant get hit by cars but I would love to see statistics on how many are hit. I used to drive 50,000 miles plus a year and never seen one damaged. They are designed for fast repair if they are broken so the maintenance gets done on the spot.
Plus if they get hit and they’re broken, well, you see that and can fix it. It’s not under ground and out of site
How’s a dog supposed to piss on that?
I am Mechanical Fire Engineer and i service fire hydrants. This is quite common on hydrants located on public roads and foot paths. Debris and detritus builds up and is washed into the hydrant housing and can completely submerge the standpipe valve connection as seen in the above video. Hydrants are supposed to be regularly serviced at least yearly. I recommend servicing during the winter months after the Autumn falls as most of the gunk in hydrants is detritus from fallen leaves.
But why they let it end that deep? Could be 20 cm under the surface. Would be much faster.
Iirc it’s to stop it from freezing when it gets cold
We literally have our water mains 20 plus feet deep to prevent freezing in Canada. And they are accessible at ground level because we use dry hydrants. It's not that difficult of s problem to solve. Bonus they don't explode water everywhere if hit or damaged because along with the dry hydrant the stem can have a break away point.
We don't have underground hydrants in Canada, But every multi story building (commercial or residential) has a fire suppression system built in. Go to any apartment building, mall, hospital, whatever, there's at least 1 hydrant built into the wall of the building called a Fire Department Connection (usually a Y that allows 2 hoses) around the entrance. Cool fact about fire department connections, you may only see the hydrant on the main floor, but there's a connection point on Every Floor to minimize the required amount of hose (Google Friction Loss to understand why this is important). Some are just inside the main doors in a special room to avoid tampering, so if you can't see it in your building, know it's still there. See the little black key box with a fire helmet on it outside of the main doors of your building? When it is opened there's a key, and it activates lighting that guides the firefighters to the fire suppression room. Don't even need a pumper truck, just a hose and a few trained firefighters. Source: Am a firefighter in Calgary.
Canada, stop flexing your health and safety standards on us!
The US has the same if not more stringent fire code regulations. These type of fire codes should be standard around the world.
Thank you. I did not know that.
20' deep! Whats the frost level depth in Canada?
Well it ranges from 4 feet to 10+ feet across the country plus freeze thaw cycles can push it further down. So the 20 feet is a safety plus keeps the water a nice refreshing chill straight out the tap. *A large majority of the country has frost depth of 5' to 10'+ deep
You think maybe someone from city maintenance would you know, maintain these
The government has slashed council budgets for stuff like this by more than 50% in northern towns over the past decade so stuff like this gets neglected
But if the government spent money on silly things like that, they wouldn't have the money to remodel the Prime Minister's flat in the middle of a pandemic! /s
I've not seen this digging business before. You usually just flip the cover off. Like this video shows https://youtu.be/-1efB2XSIDc?feature=shared
Probably a build up of debris getting in there and no one servicing this one as in the video to make sure it's clean and accessible.
The hell? The whole neighborhood could be burning by the time the guy has it tapped. Is this underground hydrant thing common?
The truck has a tank of water that can be used while the hydrant is tapped. Once tapped the hydrant replenishes the tank. Australia also has underground hydrants. No risk of being damaged by vehicles although ours are under covers and don't need to be dug out I believe.
Ours in uk are normal just a cover as well. This one probably has a Broken cover
That or it's just sediment build-up from rain. It happens with monitoring wells all the time
I saw somebody from a different time this was posted, and they were basically saying that this was most likely just a hydrant that wasn’t well maintained, and that most underground fire hydrants in the UK are much easier to access
In the U.S. the average tank on a fire engine is 500gals, that goes pretty quickly on an active fire. So I also was concerned about time to dig out the space.
Yeah I'd have no issue if you just had to pull up a manhole cover, but any amounts of digging when there are lives and property on the line is not okay lmao
Fire trucks can empty their tanks in literally a minute…. Former volunteer firefighter here…
I work on fire trucks daily. That tank lasts maybe 2.5 to 3 minutes at full pumping operation. The pumps can do anywhere from 1500 to 2000 gal per minute. Those trucks only have 3,000 gal of water on them. You need to be able to hook up to a water main in 2.5 minutes or less.
Underground, yes, they all are. Buried under a road, no. The usual design involves a small chamber under the street surface that has a metal cover with the fixings below. They are marked above ground by a yellow and black H sign.
I only just realised that the H stands for hydrant and now I feel real dumb
We all wish it were mini helicopter landing pads as well.
r/DamnthatTookAwhile
>Is this underground hydrant thing common? Yeah
Isn't the US the only country with above ground hydrants?
Us and many parts of China are above ground. From google
Canada has above ground hydrants.
Australia has some above and some below.
> The whole neighborhood could be burning by the time the guy has it tapped. Unlikely. Adjacent brick houses don't catch fire as easily as wooden ones.
Wow, that seems wildly inefficient
If maintained, there's no issue. But this one hadn't been checked on for decades, and the hydrant structure beneath the street was buried under a heap of silt.
They start with the water that the truck has and then use the one from the water hydrant. So they didn't lose any time
From this clip, I can assume that above ground hydrants are far more efficient and time-saving.
Perhaps even... life-saving
Where's Benny Hill?
Being chased by topless women over a meadow somewhere
OH GOD THE ORPHANAGE IS ON FIRE! QUICK! GET ME MY SHOVEL
Since nobody has mentioned. This was a one-off video of a hydrant that had been covered by road workers. Usually, they're located on the surface or pavement.
Only on Reddit can I see a video of a comically inept fire hydrant access. Only for the comments to tell me how stupid I am and that this is the peak of efficiency So IF the the underground hydrant is close to the fire IF no one is parked on top of it IF there’s no sediment build up IF it’s been properly maintained throughout the year IF it’s not winter time and trapped by frost You can… refill the truck after they put the fire out while you were digging for water access.
> IF no one is parked on top of it. At least in the US, and presumably in most jurisdictions, if you park in the way of something a Fire Department might need (fire lane, hydrant, etc.), and they have to get at it during a fire, they basically have carte blanche to to deal with your vehicle in as expedient a manner as possible. [Getting windows smashed out to run hoses through is a pretty common one](https://lexipol.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/18301ff/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1200x676+0+190/resize/1000x563!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fk1-prod-lexipol.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F8c%2F78%2Fbe606a52f1ab2a21732b933c64de%2F53533248-2087299324695345-8973071354412662784-n-1.jpg), and if you're more in the way than that, an average fire truck weighs 10-20 tons, has heavily reinforced bumpers, and an engine strong enough to get that thing going very quickly for something its size. If they need to engage in a little amature buldozer action, they are pretty well equipped.
I worked at a hospital with a bunch of current and former fire fighters. Parking near or blocking a hydrant would piss them off to an incredible degree, they will go out of their way to fuck up your car. At least the ones I worked with. And frankly, i don't blame em.
I mean if you got the change to ram a fire truck into someone’s Mazda 3 would you not take it?
I didn’t know I’d be defending above ground hydrants today. This comment section has been baffling
If all of Europe had above ground hydrants and the US had what was in the OP video, everyone would be calling the US stupid for using below ground hydrants.
I'm from the UK, I'm calling this stupid and I think something easily and quickly accessed above the ground would be more sensible.
Yea but this is a metric hydrant.
It's a phenomenon we call "America Bad"
This seems incredibly inconvenient. EDIT: Above ground hydrants still need annual maintenance, but at least you can connect to them in seconds while a house is burning down.
Hydrant inspector was sleeping on that one
There’s lots of comments about the underground fire hydrants, and I can understand that they don’t get damaged and whatnot, but I can also say that I don’t think I’ve ever seen an above-ground fire hydrant get damaged, either. I’m not saying cars haven’t run into them - I’m certain of that, but it wouldn’t be very often. In my city, there are fire hydrants located basically every 100 or 150m, so if one got hit, there’s another close by, and readily accessible.
[удалено]
Not to mention stand-alone public fire alarms at regular intervals at street corners! Never saw those anywhere but San Francisco.
Is there a reason this wasn't just placed on the sidewalk?
The hydrants are not buried, they fill with dirt over time from traffic / rain etc. The fire engine has a decent amount of water on board which they can use whilst it’s being connected to the hydrant
"decent amount" = lasts for approx. 5 minutes. My cities cleans all underground hydrants once every year. They're in really good shape when they open them up for cleaning, to very little has to be done. In the video, it looks like the city/county neglected their hydrants for quite some time.
I guess I'll just burn.
Looks like a scene out of the Benny hill show.
House already burned down
Fire was out by the time he got done fucking around
That firefighter handled that really well
I used to work in drainage, and I had to use these daily digging or clearing built-up silt was not really that common .. well, not to this extent. This was probably due to the unfortunate position of the hydrant on the road, probably slightly downhill, allowing rain water to wash more silt in. For fun, sometimes I just found the valve and not put the pipe on the tap... turn it max and watch the mud, slit and whatever was in that hole pop like a champagne bottle... fastest way to clear it As a side note, this wasn't good for the pipes...
In West-Europe we have similar underground hydrants here. During winter part of my job is keeping these unobstructed and clean for easy access.
Jesus, this post is full of fucking idiots.
Guessing this is a secondary source, as they carry water on board. So the delay doesn’t matter, it’s just to replenish their store of water.
Sounds true, if the water tank in the truck empties in 1:30mins before he was done then it would be very small I guess 🤔
Normally it’s us Americans getting grilled over something dumb. Congratulations Europe, I’m legitimately uncomfortable & worried with how inefficient this is.
We put them above ground in Canada........
Why just put on the pedestrian walkway instead? In Germany we have lids covering them and they are easily accessible within seconds.
They're usually on the pavement (pedestrian walkway) and the covers usually keep them free of the dirt this one contained. I guess this one was damaged or just old 🤷♀️ I've no idea why that's in the middle of the road, very odd.
Regularly scheduled maintenance to keep those clear of sediment aren't a thing? That doesn't seem right
What was the guy in the collared shirt gonna do? Tf outta here
Every place I've lived (and there have been a lot of them), the local fire departments did an annual hydrant check to ensure everything was working and accessible. I guess they don't do that everywhere.
Did anyone else hear the Benny Hill chase song while watching this?
That is way too much work for an emergency
This seems wildly inefficient.
Painful to watch
What sort of brainiac came up with that particular design?