By Scott Freeman
Fire suppression in snow country is more demanding and dangerous than in non-snow areas because of slick dark roads that lead to five times the call ratio of areas that do not have snow or ice. The fire hydrants in the snow country have unique trials. National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards require hydrants every 1,000 feet for a building smaller than 3,600 square feet, and the duration of the water flow must be two hours or more. The first-arriving fire engine must establish fire flow water within four minutes.
How do you keep the hydrant accessible 24/7 when a common snowstorm can dump five feet of snow in a 48-hour period? Then, there are the types of snow: heavy and full of water; light, as in Valdez, Alaska; or the type of snowplows make–crushed snow and ice, what we call “concrete snow.” The latter is the greatest eradicator of all your shoveling work. After a long day of digging out hydrants, the snowplow goes by and it’s as if you haven’t shoveled at all.
In addition, firefighters like to plan ahead and must also contend with limited staffing because of budget cutbacks. So the solution to quick response times to a medical call, a vehicle accident, or a fire call is to have the squad, medical unit, or fire engine with them all day out in the cold.
The idea of the Hydrant Snorkel was born. We can now lay in year round and flow at the same gallons per minute as the hydrant was able to do before we installed the Hydrant Snorkel. The Snorkel allows us to make the correct choice in how to fight the fire so we can win. Knowing that the weather (snow) will not affect our water supply enables us to concentrate on other aspects of the response, such as arriving safely and setting up the scene. As we all know, the first few moments on scene dictate the outcome!
Lt. John Creel of Hoodland Fire obtained a patent on the Hydrant Snorkel, which has been in use now for more than 12 years at Government Camp, situated at the 4,500-foot level of Mt. Hood, which is home to three world class ski resorts and is a prominent destination on the West Coast. Wagon trains traveling the Oregon Trail in the 1800s passed through here, where small trading posts were established. It is not uncommon to have snow more than five feet deep at this site. Creel saw a need for the Snorkel and developed a prototype. The first one worked fine, but he kept perfecting it. The primary goal was to have a simple device that would maintain the same water flow in the winter as in the summer. Also, the Snorkel had to be adjustable so it could be seen when the depth of the snow increased without having to do any digging. This objective was achieved by adding a quick connect feature on the top–a 2- or 4-foot extension to elevate the hydrant to the desired height. The device can be installed in less than 90 seconds.
The Hydrant Snorkel is four feet tall. Once it is attached to the steamer port, it can be added to indefinitely. The steamer port is one foot off the ground, making the first hook-up at five feet and the hydrant wrench at five feet; it progresses up from there. The Snorkel can reach the same height as your tallest truck. The snow bank can be 10 feet tall. All you have to do is step off the top of your truck with the supply line and hook up. (The term “stepping off” is used because you can’t climb the snow bank when it is higher than five feet and straight up and because the snowplow makes the wall of snow into a wall of concrete.) Additional information on the Snorkel is at www.hydrantsnorkel.com.
Another challenge that has to be addressed for some fire departments is a long-standing contractual agreement between fire departments and their water districts, which are paid to clear the streets and fire hydrants. I visited a fire district in Alaska. At a meeting at which the water district was represented, the matter of paying $2 million a year to the water district came up. The water district did not want to lose the contract/work, and the fire district did not want to lose the public-funding money.