Sunday, October 23, 2011

Too many fire hydrants broken

From the Times Ledger:

Vinnie Alberici is an unlikely inspector of fire hydrants in and around Community Board 5, but he has found that a significant number are in poor condition or not working at all.

Alberici removes graffiti for a living as part of the Greater Ridgewood Restoration Corp., a nonprofit dedicated to improving housing in the area. To do his job, he uses a pressure washer to blast offending marks off buildings and has a permit to tap into the city’s fire hydrants, but he sometimes has trouble finding one that works.

In one of the most alarming cases, Alberici said he was trying to blast off some graffiti near St. Frances Cabrini School, a parochial school just across the border between Ridgewood and Brooklyn at 181 Suydam St.

During a Tuesday tour, a TimesLedger reporter witnessed Alberici check the five hydrants again, more than two months after each was broken and reported to the city.

Only three of the five hydrants in the vicinity of Wilson Avenue and Suydam Street produced water.

One of the broken hydrants was directly in front of the school. The other was on the corner and had a white ring painted around one spout.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

So what does the NYFD get paid to do?

Anonymous said...

So what does the NYFD get paid to do?

Watch!

Anonymous said...

why doesn't this person go to the news media and report all of the non working fire hydrants -- that would only make sense and put the NYFD to shame!!!!

RC said...

If you read the article carefully, the FDNY is only supposed to check the hydrants semiannually, mark the broken ones with white discs, and forwards report to the DEP. The FDNY is paid to put out your fires, not fix plumbing.

It's easy to blame the city employees, but what do you expect would happen with staffing cutbacks and increased job responsibilities? You're seeing this across the board with city services and you should expect to see more deferred maintenance in future as budgets are slashed.

Anonymous said...

Credit to this person for looking into it. This is a danger to the public--maybe a serious one. Question: Just what is broken? the hydrant? The pipes? What?

Jerry Rotondi said...

So what's it to be---
"burn, baby burn"?

I thought that Bloomberg was supposed to save us all from those nasty 1970s.

Somebody surely screwed up---
and it looks like it was the voters who gave Mike his 3rd term.

Hey, I'm not forgetting you jellyfish in the City Council who backed him on this.

Ajlounyinjurylaw said...

Poor condition of fire hydrants can be a recipe for disaster.

Tyler said...

What if a big fire breaks out everyone's in some trouble.