Kamloops firefighters are urging homeowners to ensure that fire hydrants near their homes are not buried by the snow when they’re clearing snow off their driveways.
Life Safety Educator Lyle Weninger says it will allow crews to get to hydrants a lot quicker, if there is an emergency.
“We just have a small amount of water on the fire trucks, so we need that water. That’s our water source to put out a large house fire, so we need that as quickly as possible, so any delay could be a big problem.”
He says crews have a general idea of where all the hydrants are, but notes if they’re buried behind a snowbank though, crews might drive right past it wasting valuable time in the process.
“So we are just asking people to help us out by keeping a three-foot perimeter around that hydrant,” he noted. “We need that three-foot perimeter around there so that we can stand there and be able to take the caps off the hydrants and wrap our hose around it when the truck drives up to the fire, so we need quite a bit of area to work in there.”
And he says for the most part, Kamloopsians do a good job in keeping the hydrants clear of snow in the winter.
Photo via woodleywonderworks/flickr
Due to the recent weather, the fire hydrant closest to your house could be buried in snow, and not visible to our crews. Helping us out by clearing the snow and making it visible could save time if we need to use it!#Kamloops@cityofkamloops @KamFire @environmentca pic.twitter.com/l1NviUSyDX
— KamloopsFirefighters (@iaff913) January 14, 2020
