By Matt Gomez
Albuquerque Journal (New Mexico)
Copyright 2006 Albuquerque Journal
Fire crews had to travel as many as five miles in one direction to reach adequate water sources for fires in the Sandia Knolls area this summer, said Bernalillo County Fire Chief Bett Clark.
Thanks to fundraising efforts by the Sandia Knolls Neighborhood Association and residents of the nearby Fox Hills and Monte Largo neighborhoods, a new, much closer source of water is now available.
“We had a couple structure fires ... that you could say had some significance that happened during the summer,” said John Helmich, president of the SKNA. “At that time the fire department basically, to fight those fires, went all the way back ... several miles away to go to a fire hydrant to be able to fill.”
That fire hydrant was located near the intersection of Frost Road and N.M. 14.
“Those fires during the height of the drought ... really brought a lot of awareness and concern to the fact that there was nothing available easily to the fire department,” Helmich said.
As a result, the SKNA, Fox Hills and Monte Large neighborhoods took action themselves to bring a fire hydrant closer to their homes.
The SKNA contacted State Rep. Kathy McCoy, R-Sandia Park, who acted as the intermediary between the neighborhoods and Entranosa Water, which eventually installed the hydrant, Helmich said.
The cost to install a hydrant was set at $3,000, Helmich said. Once that price was set, the SKNA and surrounding neighborhoods began seeking donations from residents and holding yard sales to raise money, Helmich said.
Between late September and early October, the hydrant was installed and attached to a water line near the Sandia Knolls entrance, Helmich said.
“It’s going to greatly affect, in a positive way, the efficiency of what we’re going to be able to do on fires,” Clark said.
Helmich said he wasn’t sure why fire crews had been using the hydrant near Frost and N.M. 14 when fighting fires this summer because several area communities had water tanks set up to provide water for fire crews.
Clark said the fire department uses those tanks occasionally, but because the tanks only use gravity to push out water, they simply can’t fill a truck quickly enough.
“The concern is those are gravity-feed tanks, so instead of being able to hook up to a hydrant and fill a 2,000-gallon apparatus in a matter of minutes, we’ll go try to fill off those gravity-feed tanks, and to fill that same truck is going to take us 15 to 20 minutes,” Clark said. “The hydrant will give us more water faster.”
The hydrant does bring a new level of comfort to the department, Clark said.
“With Sandia Knolls being as compact as it is with several hundred homes — it’s one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the East Mountains — we certainly feel more comfortable because we’ve got a hydrant right out at the entrance of (Sandia Knolls),” Clark said.
Helmich said the fundraising that was done to purchase the fire hydrant is a good example of the way the SKNA uses its funds to provide for the good of the entire neighborhood.