The Big Dig in Greenwich

As Mother Nature relentlessly continues to drop sleet, freezing rain and snow in Greenwich, there are piles of frozen precipitation every where.

Hundreds of yellow fire hydrants that dot curbs throughout town are enveloped in the snow.

The Greenwich Fire Department has issued a plea to residents to dig out a three-foot circle around hydrants to make it easier to locate them in the event of a fire.

Some residents have done their civic duty and for that, the firefighters are grateful — as evidenced when the crew assigned to the Byram station visited the neighborhood of High, Ivy and View streets.

In a program initiated by Deputy Fire Chief Thomas Zack, crews are assigned to find and dig out hydrants throughout town and attach reflective Fiberglas markers to the hydrants. The Aquarion Water Co., from which the town leases the more than 1,300 hydrants that provide water supply to fight fires, has donated the markers the firefighters are installing, according to Zack.

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Since September, markers have been installed on nearly 500 hydrants, according to Zack. He anticipates that by next fall, all hydrants will be marked.Zack said marking the hydrants is a welcome addition to the firefighters’ tool box, especially in the winter. Each apparatus is equipped with a mobile data terminal and 911 dispatchers make sure to include hydrants locations when dispatching a fire call.

Zack said, “At night, the markers do stand out really well because they’re reflective. They are a big help with life safety in terms of getting to a water source.”

With the winter weather, if a hydrant isn’t shoveled out or marked, could mean previous minutes lost in combating a fire, Zack said. “This adds an additional layer to our response.”

“With a significant snowfall” or the continued small storms that pile up, “They can be difficult to get to or to find,” said Lt. Steve Whittaker, a 25-year department veteran. “If we’re digging to find the hydrant, we lose time” battling a blaze.

Whittaker and Firefighter Dustin Holt spent part of Thursday digging out hydrants and installing markers in the Byram section of town.

As Holt shoveled out a three-foot-plus mound of snow and ice from a hydrant at the corner Ivy and View streets, Whittaker used a wrench to unscrew the hydrant cap to install the marker. Just up the street, in front of 98 Ivy St., a resident already dug out the hydrant — leaving Holt and Whittaker the duty to install the marker.

“This is a perfect example of a resident doing it right,” Holt said. “It’s an insurance policy.”

Whittaker added, “We can only carry so much water on the truck. And it doesn’t last long.”

Zack said, “For residential and commercial property owners, if there’s a hydrant in front of their property, we strongly encourage them to assist us by digging out the hydrant and cleaning out vegetation in the summer. — it only adds more havoc to our response of an incident when the hydrant is buried in three feet of snow.”

Photo credits: Barbara Heins.