HELENA – Snow-buried fire hydrants can be a safety issue during severe winter weather, as local officials are doing their best to prevent any potential dilemma in case of emergency by informing citizens to make certain they keep hydrants outside of their homes and on sidewalks clear and visible.
Assistant Fire Chief of Operations for fire station one, Ken Wood, urges patrons to not push heavily accumulated snow and ice over fire hydrants, leaving them unseen or hard to get to during an emergency fire.
“It’s important if we can, get the help of the citizens of Helena when they’re removing snow from their side walks, if we can get them to not pile up the snow around the fire hydrant that would be a real help for us,” Wood said.
The fire department would appreciate everyone working together to keep hydrants open and clear for safety.
“If they’re willing,” Wood continued, “to just clear out snow around them, that would be really helpful because when we are coming into a fire, and we’ve got a lot of things going on, and we look for those hydrants as we are coming in to a structure fire, so that we can hook up to them, if we can’t find them; that’s of course, going to be a problem.”
For more information on how to aid fire officials during this winter season, please visit here.
Reporting by Christine Sullivan for MTN News
