By Joe Kennedy
The Roanoke Times (Virginia)
Copyright 2006 The Roanoke Times
All Rights Reserved
On the surface, it looks like a joke awaiting a punch line.
Three firefighters gather around a hydrant with cans of paint, a paint brush or possibly a spray-painting device.
They cover the barrel of the hydrant with silver paint and the top with one of four colors — red, orange, green or blue.
Meanwhile, a fire truck — which could be a pumper, a ladder truck or any other kind — idles nearby.
How many firefighters does it take to paint a hydrant?
That, it turns out, is not the question.
The question is, how many firefighters does it take to operate a piece of equipment that’s still in service while they handle the task of maintaining the 4,000 or so hydrants in Roanoke and the 1,000 or so hydrants, public and private, in Roanoke County.
For years, Roanoke County has coated the barrels of the hydrants it uses for fighting fires with silver paint and the tops with one of the four colors approved by the National Fire Protection Association.
This year, Roanoke is joining them.
Uniformity reigns
Both departments use paint provided by the Western Virginia Water Authority, to which their localities belong.
“It’s the first time we’ve ever taken on that project as far as completely painting the hydrants,” said David Hoback, Roanoke’s acting fire chief.
“Some were all red, some were silver and red” and some were far from presentable.
The department started the work in May, he said, and has just a few left to paint.
A red cap indicates a hydrant with a flow capacity of less than 500 gallons a minute.
Orange indicates 500 to 1,000 gallons a minute.
Green caps indicate 1,000 to 1,500 gallons, and blues are greater than 1,500 gallons.
The value of such colors was apparent at a fire at Sixth Street and Loudon Avenue Northwest, where the closest hydrant was low volume and a better producer stood just a block away.
There was no guesswork: The firefighters knew immediately to hook their hoses to the more distant, more powerful one.
Lay of the land
Simply finding hydrants can be a challenge in Roanoke County, said Steve Poff, division chief with the county fire department.
“County blocks are a half-mile long,” he said. “City blocks are 500 feet long.”
The city consists of 32 square miles, while the county is 250 square miles.
Moreover, hydrants in the county may be publicly or privately owned and may be hidden by bushes or stand in the middle of fields, accompanied by livestock.
“We know we miss some,” Poff said.
But, he said, paint detail is “a great way to teach the guys the location of the hydrants,” far more effectively than merely studying a map.
Firefighters may not always regard hydrant duty as the best use of their time, but once they see the educational value of it, their opinions often improve.
Both city and county fire personnel are helping the water authority with hydrant mapping, and computer programs help the departments determine which hydrants need to be replaced and where new ones should be placed when new water lines are built.
Hoback couldn’t estimate the age of longest-serving city hydrants.
“They’re very old,” he said. “Some are extremely old.”
But they look like new, and residents have noticed.
“We’ve had a lot of positive comments from the community and from everybody,” Hoback said. “They’re a lot brighter, [people say] ‘We can see them, they look nicer.’ ”
When county crews go out to paint, they may be preceded by an ambulance whose crews wield a weed-cutter to prepare the spot.
Some days, Poff said, the teams complete 25 to 30 hydrants, and sometimes only five.
Several things can influence that, including the odd fire that pulls them off task and ruins a potential joke.
“They have to stay in service,” Hoback said. “They’re still running calls.”
Poff agreed, saying, “They have to run. It’s the only way we can do it.”