Everything is O.K...everything is fine?

 
"Flanders Mansion" 'NOT IN SERVICE' Fire Hydrant
Location: N/s Flanders Mansion/Lester Rowntree Arboretum Driveway, Hatton Rd. 
City Council Agenda
Regular Meeting
November 7, 2006

V. Announcements from Closed Session, from City Council Members and the City Administrator.

• Receive report on City’s Fire Hydrants.

A transcription of Fire Chief Andrew Miller’s report on City’s Fire Hydrants, as follows:

“Madame Mayor, Members of Council, again thank you for the opportunity to bring this issue to the Council. I know there’s been a lot of questions about the fire hydrants throughout the city. I must say that The Pine Cone did do an excellent job of kind of framing the issue about a month ago, when it came out, and I’ll just give you a quick update of where we’re at and some successes that we’ve made thus far."

"First and foremost, I really need to reassure everybody in the community that the Fire Protection System, the fire flow system in the city is in service and adequate enough for us to do our job. I think that’s the #1 message that I want to leave with everybody tonight. That everything is O.K. That even though maybe you have a bad hydrant in front of your house, that’s O.K. because we still have an ability to get the water to your house, where it needs to go…and I’m going to get into that a little bit when I talk about our contingency plans. I’m going to start with some positive outcomes and some solutions that we’ve come up with thus far. The Cal-Am engineering assessment has been completed and we do have an action plan in progress. Just today, my assistant chief, David Brown, and a member of Cal Am were out going and doing some testing in the northern end of town and after some troubleshooting, some simple things, just making sure that valves, extreme valves, were all the way open, going through the calculations again and testing, we were able to put 6 fire hydrants back into service today. That was a real positive move forward…We’re going to go out and do some more tomorrow, not guarantee that they are all going to come back miraculously because we do have some work ahead of us. We do have some deficiencies in the system."

"Our Contingency Plans that we have in place,...First of all, Carmel Fire Department personnel have been briefed and are continually updated on the fire hydrant issues. So basically what we do, is now that we’ve tested all the hydrants that are in the bad areas, in the bad areas there are some areas in town that have 4” lateral galvanized mains in the ground. They’re over 80 years old. What happens is they become corroded and restricts some fire flow. So what we’ve done is we’ve developed a series of maps for the city so our firefighters, before they respond to any call for a structure fire or a vegetation fire within the city, they can quickly brief the map, they’ve done the preplanning and because the fire hydrant placement in the city is so exceptional, basically there’s a fire hydrant in every corner, all they have to do is identify the hydrant that’s out of service and go to the next hydrant over which might, in most instances, be on the next corner or the next block."

"Another thing that we’ve done, our first-out engine, 7111, the 5” hose, the hose which we carry in the back, that we lay from the hydrant to the scene of the fire, we have increased that hose to 1200 ft., which gives us more than enough hose to reach any area of the city with an adequate fire hydrant."

"We also have Carmel Fire Department available as we request and we do have an agreement with them to have water tenders, which are basically big water tankers, and if we did get into a situation where we felt there was an issue and we couldn’t make the water delivery needed we can easily call for one of these water tenders to respond over to assist us and I don’t really even see that happening."

"I need to thank Cal Am for being very responsive and stepping up to the plate and helping us get a handle on this issue. Initially, we went out, we found some areas that we had concerns with, we brought those to Cal Am’s attention, they got their engineers out working on it, we got together with Cal Am personnel, did the final test, real comprehensive testing of the water flows of those certain areas, we really need to thank them for being such a great partner in this process."

"So what the final outcome is is in the areas that we do have fire hydrants that are out-of-service, we have a strategic plan with Cal Am and what we are doing to do next is to identify a priority. So some of the fixes are really simple. Some of the fixes might be as easy as moving a hydrant across the street where there is an adequate main. Those types of things those are no brainers and we’re going to start with those. The other ones that are more complex, like maybe replacing a water main, a little 4” main, what we’re going to do is to prioritize those. So in the first year, we’ll start concentrating on this area, the second year, this area, this is a long-term project though. And I don’t want to leave anybody with a false expectation that this is going to de done overnight."

"This is happening all over the nation. All communities are doing with infrastructure that’s under the ground, its sewers, its water mains, it’s all those things that we don’t see on a daily basis and usually we react to them when they are no longer adequate."

"So once again reassurance that everything is fine, we do have contingency plans in place, we are working proactively with Cal Am to mitigate the issues and that I am available as your Fire Chief, to answer any of your questions or the community’s questions. Contact me at the Fire Station or certainly your questions tonight I can answer."

After Fire Chief Andrew Millers Report on City’s Fire Hydrants, City Councilman Michael Cunningham asked about the number of fire hydrants. Miller answered that the total number of Fire Hydrants in Carmel-by-the-Sea is 194; and of 110 Fire Hydrants tested on 4” galvanized mains, 32 of 110 are “NOT IN SERVICE.”

COMMENTS:
“Everything is O.K...everything is fine...” (Andrew Miller, Carmel-by-the-Sea Fire Chief)

Carmelites are expected to believe that because contingency plans entail

a) 5” hose on first-out engine 7111 is now 1200’ long

b) Distant, to-be requested water tenders are available per agreement and

c) A “series of maps” identifying “NOT IN SERVICE” Fire Hydrants are at the Fire Station

“Everything is O.K...everything is fine!”