source: Champion Newspapers
DeKalb fire hydrants to be color-coded
Over the next 12 to 18 months, DeKalb County’s approximately 23,000 fire hydrants will get tested and will be color-coded to show the water pressure for each hydrant.
“By flow testing them we will know exactly how much water each hydrant can produce,” said DeKalb County Fire Rescue Chief Darnell Fullum at a news conference during which interim county CEO Lee May, dressed in a firefighter’s outfit, helped personnel test and paint a hydrant on Idle Creek Way in Decatur.
A partnership between the county’s fire and watershed management departments, the program Fullum said “is really an effort to make fire hydrants a little more visible in our neighborhoods.
“Obviously, fire hydrants are our lifelines,” Fullum said. “When firefighters go into a building they think of that hose as their way of not only getting back out, but also of saving our citizens.”
Each hydrant will be color-coded to show how much pressure it has: red for 0-500 gallons per minute (gpm); orange, 500-1,000 gpm; green, 1,000-1,500 gpm; and blue, 1,500-2,000 gpm.
“[In] our ISO recommendation it was commented that we should add a fifth color because we do have some hydrants here in DeKalb County that they term as super hydrants,” said Deputy Chief Garrett Smith. “For our system we will be adding gold for anything that flows above 2,000 gallons per minute.”
The barrel of each hydrant will be silver.
May said the color-coding and testing is “really about the quality of life of our county—to know that when our men and women show up to a scene where there may be a fire, they have the ability to know what they’re going into to preserve life, to preserve property in the county.
“Rest assured, DeKalb County. We are doing those things that are necessary to make sure that we are preserving life in our county,” May said.
“We’re glad to be out here saving lives and saving time,” said Commissioner Larry Johnson. “As we get into the summer time, things can always happen with fires and deck fires and barbecues. We want to make sure that the fire hydrant—the flow—is right. This testing will only help us.”
“When we pull up to a structure, whether it be a house, apartment, we make a determination on what our required gpm is going to be to extinguish that fire effectively and safely,” Smith said. “We pull up to this hydrant; they see it’s got a blue top on it. They know they have at least 1,500 gallons a minute available from this hydrant, which in most cases is going to be more than enough for operations on a residential structure fire.
“If they pull up and it’s a red top hydrant and it only gives you 500 gallons a minute or less, they know right [off] the bat that they need to bring another water supply in,” Smith said. “This is a huge, huge, huge benefit to us coming off the truck.”
To date, Smith said, the watershed management department has spent $90,000 on flow test kits, cap-and-gauge kits and “a whole lot of paint for 23,000 hydrants.”
The hydrants are being painted by firefighters, fire recruits, fire reservists and homeowners associations. Reservists have painted more than 800 hydrants, Smith said.
