Web Tech: Accessing Snow-Covered Fire Hydrants

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.

The public thinks the fire department is responsible for the clearing fire hydrants. On average, it takes 20 minutes to dig out a hydrant. In a community that has, say, 840 hydrants, it could take 40 days to dig out the hydrants, just once. In many locations, snow comes and goes like the tide. You could have five feet of snow one week and 12 inches the following week. This brutal dance goes on for six months or more. This represents a significant number of personnel work hours and wages just for shoveling snow, and that doesn’t guarantee 24/7 exposure of the hydrants.

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.

Hoodland Fire is located on Mt. Hood in Oregon, where we have year-round skiing. We know about lots and lots of snow. After experiencing numerous times when we used up the 500 to 1,000 gallons of water on each fire truck at a fire scene and had to wait for the water tenders to show up with more water, which sometimes took up to 15 minutes because our combination department depends on the availability of personnel qualified to drive, we had to plan on using a quick-attack blitz or go defensive.
 
THE BIRTH OF THE SNORKEL

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!

The Federal Emergency Management Agency/Assistance to Firefighter Grant and The Fireman’s Fund have approved the Hydrant Snorkel for funding grants. A firefighter designed and built the first prototypes of the Snorkel.

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.

 

 

(1-3) The primary goal of the Hydrant Snorkel is to have a simple device that maintains the same water flow in the winter as in the summer. A quick-connect 2- or 4-foot extension elevates the hydrant so it is visible when the depth of the snow increases. This snorkel, which can be installed in less than 90 seconds, has two ports so there is no need to ever come back to the hydrant to add a length to bring it up. (Photos courtesy of POK Manufacturing.)
 
The end product mimics the street hydrant so closely that any firefighter would figure it out within 30 seconds even if he had never seen it before. You attach the Hydrant Snorkel directly to the steamer port.( The two side ports are left unaffected.) The extended wrench comes straight off the hydrant nut and turns exactly the same way. To lock it in place, the tubes are predrilled to accept a clip to lock it in its new height. The attachment to the hydrant nut is a cast part with three bolts to hold it on the hydrant nut and keep the wrench centered over the fire hydrant. Attach the stortz fitting to the supply line, and you’re ready for water. The end product can withstand continual passes by the snowplows and grinders, and snow can pile up all winter. In fact, the more snow piled around the Snorkel, the easier it is to use.

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

Pete Karlson, who heads the U.S. sales division for POK, tested our prototypes for two days and observed those that have been working in the field for the past 12 years. He immediately recognized that the Snorkel was a “game-changer” for U.S. fire departments, which have more than three million fire hydrants buried in snow. Karlson says the hardest thing to overcome would be that the fire industry “is more than 200 years of tradition; educating its members and getting them to accept a better way of doing what has been established will be tough.” POK now manufactures and is very enthusiastic about the future of Hydrant Snorkel. The device is made exclusively in the United States and is distributed worldwide.  

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.

Forward-looking fire departments must ask, “How can we do better and improve “the way we have always done things?” The answer may be as simple as the Hydrant Snorkel or as complex as a new airway or a hydraulic battery-operated ram device.
           
 
Scott Freeman is a senior firefighter with the Hoodland (OR) Fire Department, where he has served for nine years. He has been a sales representative for Hydrant Snorkel LLC for two years.   
 
Send your submission for this column or any comments or suggestions to maryjd@pennwell.com.

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