INDIANAPOLIS — One of the city’s largest two-day snow events in history dumped heavy snow and left frigid temperatures that strained responders and residents alike.
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The Indianapolis Fire Department shared what residents should know to keep themselves and their crews safe if an emergency hits home.
"Inclement weather adds to the degree of difficulty of everything that we do," Indianapolis Fire Department Battalion Chief Howard Stahl said.
Inclement weather is exactly what Indianapolis Fire Department crews are dealing with. After Central Indiana digs out from historic snowfall and bitter cold.
"It really gets us when we have to trudge through the snow. We have to dig down to where we are; our hoses get lost in the snow," Stahl said.
Plus, there are slip-and-fall risks when all that water used freezes. Not to mention if the fire hydrant is buried in snow.
"You can imagine if you are up knee deep or even more in some of the drifts, it taxes our firefighters with all of that gear and everything that is on," Stahl said.
With several feet of snow piled up along the roads, Stahl says buried hydrants can slow emergency response when seconds matter most.
"There are hundreds of fire hydrants in Marion County, we can't physically get out as busy as we are and uncover them. If you want to be a good citizen, you want to be our hero today if you could clear a path from the curb to the hydrant and maybe give us about a 36-inch circumference around it so we can get our hoses in there and work - we would love that," Stahl said.
Stahl says the few minutes it takes to dig out a hydrant could save critical time in case of a fire. If that hydrant is buried in snow, crews have no way to determine exactly where it is.
"Our mobile dispatch terminals will give us a general vicinity. A little red dot saying there is a fire hydrant there, so we kind of have an idea. And the experienced people in the neighborhoods we know where a lot of our hydrants are, but we don't want to have to go searching for it."
All IFD apparatuses have a minimum of 500 gallons of water on board to start the initial attack.
Department officials say most of the hydrants are below the frost line, so they're usually okay as long as the stem itself isn't frozen. Still, they urge residents to help where they can, adding that small actions can make a big difference in an emergency.
IFD stresses that three feet around a hydrant can help crews connect hoses faster and keep response times from being delayed. The department also says utility partners are notified so they can service hydrants after they’re used and check to make sure they’re draining properly.
