Adopting a Fire Hydrant

The Housing and Local Government Ministry found out that there is a lukewarm response from the public regarding their campaign on adopting fire hydrants. The objectives of the campaign are to ensure that the hydrants are not being vandalized, not being stolen, etc. Currently, the Fire and Rescue department inspected the hydrants twice a year and they will never being able to cover all of the hydrants.

I have a suggestion to overcome these issues. I think The Fire and Rescue Department should routinely check all of the hydrants within each of the Fire Station jurisdictions by flushing the hydrants and at the same time used the flushed water to clear all of the clogged drain in the vicinity. By doing this, the fire and rescue department will know the current status of the hydrants, will be able to check on the water pressure of the hydrants, and the same time will be able to reduce the vandalising of the hydrants. Furthermore, the exercise will be able to clean some of the clogged drain and can reduce significantly the occurrences of flash flood.

It is very important to check on the hydrants water pressure because it will be too costly if in actual emergency that the water pressure for the hydrants is not up to the standards. At least upon routine checking, hydrants with low water pressure can be addressed immediately by the relevant agencies.

Of course, the Fire departments will say that they cannot do the routine checking etc because they are too busy carrying out their duties. However, emergencies does not happen everyday and during those free sort of days, they can carry out their duties to check on the health of each of the hydrants under their jurisdiction. If all of the Fire and Rescue Department can carry out this duty, I think they can cover almost all of the hydrants in the country.

However, residents interested to join the campaign can contact their nearest fire stations to register themselves. But again, I don't know what else the residents can do after registering for the campaign besides only looking after the visual aspect of the hydrants. I don't think the residents are allowed to check whether there is enough water pressure for each of the hydrants that they are adopting.