Out of 7,500 public fire hydrants in Stockton, only about 20 are broken. In a stroke of extremely bad luck, however, not two, but three of the latter were found to be out of service at the scene of a large three-alarm fire earlier this month. 

As if that wasn’t bad enough, a fourth hydrant at the scene then broke after fire crews disconnected one of their hoses.

At a Stockton council meeting last week, Vice Mayor Jason Lee asked city staff why firefighters weren’t made aware of the broken hydrants that night at the fire, which had occurred in his district.

“How is it that the fire department arrived at a fire in District 6 and were unable to know that those hydrants were working?” Lee inquired during the meeting.

Approximately, 99.7% of public hydrants are operational, said Travis Small, deputy director of Water Resources, explaining that the Municipal Utilities Department (MUD) is responsible for maintaining the city’s hydrants, including the roughly 20 that are inoperable. 

Small said that they simply can’t monitor the city’s thousands of hydrants at once, however “problem areas” are inspected weekly.

“It looks good on paper,” Small said, “but it looks bad out there.”

The fire at the recycling plant sheds light on the challenges that these small numbers of non-working hydrants can still pose in an emergency.

Deputy Fire Chief Brandon Doolan described the fire to Stocktonia as “a perfect storm,” due to a combination of broken hydrants, toxic fumes from the warehouse and its lack of a sprinkler system. He had never responded to a fire where several hydrants were out of service before.

Since 2008, MUD has been responsible for maintenance of the city’s public hydrants, according to a presentation to the City Council by Small and Doolan. Whenever a faulty hydrant is discovered by the fire department, a report is made to MUD who then inspects them. 

Both public and private hydrants require an annual inspection, with the latter required to maintain an owners operating permit. 

When hydrants do fail, it’s usually from valve and connection damage, broken water mains or simply faces a greater demand than the system can supply.

All hydrants receive an annual inspection to ensure functionality, which includes physical operation, a visual inspection and confirming its location. Hydrants in what Small describes as “problem areas” are inspected weekly.

Flow testing is the last part of the process, which is under “very limited” use as to not waste water. 

Despite weekly inspections of these “problem areas,” it’s unclear exactly why the fire department received no prior warning from MUD prior to that early-morning fire. However, Vice Mayor Lee summed up the incident as “a lack of regular conversations.”

Small said going forward, MUD will increase efforts to talk with city staff.

“Overall what we’ve kind of learned through this process is that we have needed to communicate better with some departments,” Small said.

Currently, MUD has capacity to only repair four hydrants a year out of the several thousand they oversee due to what was described as limited funding options. To repair just one of these fire hydrants was estimated to cost roughly $20,000.

Councilmembers proposed several solutions at the meeting, including constructing new hydrants from stronger metal, as well as installing sensors inside the hydrants in order to potentially stop inappropriate water flow. The council also directed staff prepare a report on a plan to fix the city’s 20 broken hydrants and to turn ownership of its fire hydrants over to the city’s water purveyors.

However, these solutions don’t directly solve issues surrounding what Doolan describes as an increasing homeless population.

Doolan says fire hydrants are commonly broken through the gradual rounding of their top nuts, usually from makeshift tools and the general daily overuse of them. They are only meant to only be used once or twice a year during a fire.

To add on to the problem, hydrants are often found to be simply left open, wasting water, Doolan said. However, he says the fire department strategically chooses to save resources by not turning high-risk hydrants back off. 

“We don’t tell our firefighters every day to go running around turning off fire hydrants that are open, because eventually 30 minutes later we can get called back out there for the same thing,” Doolan said.

This issue is unfortunately not new either. Just a few summers ago, temperatures prompted those desperate for relief to turn to the city’s fire hydrants, something that’s persisted for years and Doolan says only grew worse with the rise of homelessness.

“The homeless have been tapping into the hydrants since we really saw an uptick with homelessness in the mid-teens,” Doolan explained. “It’s a difficult thing to handle as one department or city.”

It’s also likely that illegal fire hydrant use will rise this summer amongst those seeking relief from the heat, Doolan said, especially around hot spots for what he describes as hydrant abuse in areas with large homeless populations such as Mormon Slough and Church Street. 

But Doolan said that breaking into the hydrants and causing damage to the water system isn’t the goal. It’s usually an act of desperation, not ill-intent, he says.

“It’s common everywhere, I know it’s common everywhere. LA has those problems, anywhere that has a large homeless population,” Doolan said. “It’s one of those things where you know — especially when it’s hot outside people need to drink.” Dolan noted even seeing even having lawn sprinklers being used, among other sources of water, in desperate times.

The public is encouraged to report hydrant tampering at the city’s 24-hour hotline (209) 937-8341, or through the Ask Stockton app.