By Ty Tagami
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Residents on a DeKalb County street where a house was destroyed by fire this week say it took firefighters at least half an hour to find a fire hydrant, access it and begin battling the blaze.
“Every time I walk by here I get mad,” said James Radford as he looked at the charred remains of Hosie and Karen Steward’s home. “I get mad because it could have been my house.”
Radford and others have a litany of complaints. Chief among their concerns is what happened after the firefighters got to the street, which is near Lithonia in south DeKalb.
“They couldn’t fight the fire because they didn’t know where the fire hydrant was,” said Sabrina Favors, who lives next door to the Stewards. She and others say it took at least half an hour to locate and access the hydrant, which was across the street from her house, surrounded by a bush that had to be cut.
Karen Steward, reached by phone, said she called 911 three times as she tried to evacuate her three children, ages 6 to 11. Each time, she got a message telling her an operator would come on the line shortly.
The county says Steward was not the first caller and the first person did get through to a live operator — at 12:05 a.m. The first ambulance was on the scene eight minutes later, followed by a fire truck at 12:16 a.m., county spokeswoman Shelia Edwards said.
Edwards said county Public Safety Director William “Wiz” Miller listened to an audio recording of the incident afterward. The first truck on the scene carried its own water and firefighters could be heard deploying their hoses to spray immediately, she said.
Edwards said Thursday that officials were still listening to the recording to determine when water started flowing from the hydrant. But, she said, “they’re pretty sure it didn’t take 30 minutes.”
But neighbors are adamant that it did. They also said no water was sprayed on the house until the hydrant was tapped.
Copyright 2010 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution