Alameda County Firefighters Borrow Buckets to Salvage Water from Broken Water Main

Firefighters leaving the scene of a residential structure fire in San Leandro Monday evening stopped nearby to salvage water from a broken water main, according to a spokeswoman for the Alameda County Fire Department.

When firefighters arrived in the vicinity of Aurora Drive and W. Ave. 134th around 5:25 p.m., there was a large volume of water flowing through the gutter, according to fire spokeswoman Aisha Knowles.

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“In an effort to help conserve water, or at least use the water that was overflowing, we knocked on doors to ask residents if we could water their lawns,” Knowles said.

Knowles and a crew of four firefighters used borrowed buckets and shovels to scoop water out of the gutter and spread it around on the lawns of nearby homes for roughly half an hour. After about 20 to 25 minutes a crew from the East Bay Municipal Utility District arrived to deal with the broken water main, and firefighters were able to clear the scene.

They had been in the area to extinguish a one-alarm residential structure fire on the 13000 block of Aurora Drive that displaced a woman and her dog.

By Bay City News

Photos courtesy Alameda County Fire Twitter