OAKHURST – Residents in the Indian Springs Road area of Oakhurst have probably noticed the orange bags over fire hydrants saying “not in service.”
These hydrants are operational and can be used in case of a fire, but after the huge demands on the system during the Junction Fire, Hillview Water Co. is making sure everything is in perfect order before putting them “back online,” and notes that there is no water flow problem at these hydrants.
Jim Foster, Manager at Hillview Water Co., says that in the early hours of the Junction Fire on Aug. 18, some people were tampering with the fire hydrants.
“We wanted to make sure that water was reserved for the firefighters,” says Foster, whose company provided nearly 2 million gallons of water to battle the Junction Fire, free of charge. “We still had people using water on Indian Springs, and we wanted to get the firefighters as much water as they wanted or needed.”
The hydrants were bagged so that the water tenders could fill up on the corner of School Road (Road 427), and have all the water volume possible.
“We expect to pull the bags off in the next week, as we’re still doing some random flushing of the system,” says Foster. “When you run that volume of water through the pipelines, it stirs up a little of the iron, and we want to make sure things settle back down again.”
As for the system itself, there are no problems, says Foster, and the water to residents is not affected by the feeds to the hydrants, which are operational and ready to be used should the need arise.
