Thousands of hydrants not yet tested

AUSTIN (KXAN) - You typically see city-owned fire hydrants along streets and sidewalks, but did you know there are privately-owned hydrants as well? Like the name suggests, the private hydrants are on private property.  The responsibility to keep them working falls on the property owner.

Many of these private hydrants are where large populations of people are -- in shopping centers, next to schools and inside apartment complexes.

And there are thousands of them.

The Numbers

According to public city records provided to KXAN :

• About 3,400 private hydrants have been tested so far
• Of those, 123 were found unfit for use
• About one-third have since been fixed
• 82 still do not work

The city still needs to touch base with another 3,000 plus hydrant owners to see if inspections have been done.

The Challenge

The city is almost a year into the process of figuring out which ones work thanks to a new program approved by the city council.  As part of that program, there is now a single employee whose sole job is to reach out to hydrant owners and help them get hooked up with hydrant inspectors.

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See who has been contacted (map view)

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"We've known for a long time a lot of these weren't being tested,” said Antonio Canales, division manager with Austin Water Utility, the city-owned water company.

Until all of the hydrants can be evaluated, firefighters have no way to determine if they'll be operational when lives are threatened.  The goal is to have every private hydrant mapped out so firefighters will know which ones work on their way to the fire.

Generally, hydrants on private property are closer to the buildings they're supposed to serve that the one in the public right of way. But if those private hydrants haven't been inspected -- or if the failed inspection, firefighters must bypass them and use the nearest city-owned fireplug.

And that could cost precious minutes that would otherwise be devoted to dousing flames.

"We're hoping all the private hydrants get checked and they're good to go because that just makes our job easier -- it's to their benefit obviously,” said Capt. Matt Cox with the Austin Fire Department.

Passing the test

Mike Peterson, associate vice president of facilities at St. Edwards University, said you won't find a private hydrant on his campus that doesn't work.

"We're responsible for maintaining these on an annual basis,” said Peterson while pointing to a campus map outlining nearly three dozen hydrants situated in between buildings.

Campus plumbers just wrapped up the latest round of testing.

"On an annual basis they go through and they inspect them, put a flow meter on there, make sure they're all flowing, test the pressures on them,” said Peterson.

But not every property owner is as diligent even though city fire code requires it.

"For years we had a few doing that, they were very proactive about it, but as we've dug into it more and more we've realized many of these customers basically didn't know it was their responsibility,” said Canales.