By Christian Boone and Michael Benzie
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
EAST POINT, Ga. — East Point resident Jennifer Young was coming home from a baby shower Sunday evening when she noticed smoke rising from a nearby apartment building.
Little did she know she would be enlisted into fighting the blaze.
Witnesses to the fire on Phillips Street in East Point — located southwest of Atlanta in Fulton County — say firefighters were unable to draw water from five nearby hydrants.
Young and her mother were among those who helped fire crews carry hoses until they found a hydrant that worked, two blocks away, at the corner of Semmes Street and Center Avenue.
“They were either low on pressure or they were not operable,” Charley Fisher, a nearby resident and a member of the Center Park neighborhood association, said a firefighter told him.
Fortunately, neighbors said, the eight-unit building was vacant when the fire started around 6 p.m. It was still burning but contained at 8 p.m. No injuries were reported.
The reason for the malfunctioning hydrants and the cause of the blaze were not known. An East Point Fire Department official at the scene refused to comment Sunday night.
Neighbors were left wondering what might have happened if the fire had broken out in their own homes.
“If that had been my house and we were trapped inside, we’d be dead,” Young said.
She estimated the working hydrant was a quarter-mile away.
Other residents who helped out confirmed the distance, noting they were carrying fire hoses past non-working hydrants.
It took at least 45 minutes for Young and about 15 other neighbors to find a working hydrant, she said.
Vehicles from at least two other fire departments were assisting. Several segments of hoses had to be joined together to reach the nearest working hydrants.
Sunday’s incident came days after an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis revealed that during the first six months of 2008, only 38 percent of East Point’s calls met the national response standard of six minutes.
That was before the city , in a budget move, laid off 48 firefighters and closed two of its five stations.
East Point city Councilwoman Earnestine Pitt — man, who voted to close the stations, said the council was not told of the failures to meet the national response standard.
Sunday night, she confirmed the city knew about low water pressure in some of its hydrants.
After Sunday’s fire, residents said they would demand immediate action from the city.
“Our infrastructure is aging and is not well-maintained,” Fisher said. “Here’s proof. It was a shock seeing the fire department, undermanned, having to get citizens to help. It’s not their fault. They were as frustrated as we were.”
East Point had, as of the 2000 census, a population just under 40,000.
Young, who has lived there her whole life, said she now questions whether she is safe there.
“My parents live here. My grandparents live here. What if this had happened to them?” she said.
Copyright 2008, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution