West Metro Fire-Rescue Asks Community to Adopt a Fire Hydrant
There’s not too much snow yet, but living in Minnesota you know it’s not a matter of if we’ll get snow, but when.
And when that significant snowfall does comes, firefighters are banking on you to help them out by keeping access to fire hydrants clear.
Firefighters ask public to keep fire hydrants clear of snow.
“We need to, as firefighters, access these hydrants as quick as possible and as efficiently as possible,” said West Metro Fire-Rescue District Lt. Jesus Soto.
Lt. Soto explains that fires can quickly double in size.
So if firefighters have to shovel around fire hydrants first, they are wasting valuable time.
Lt. Soto demonstrates how to clear around a fire hydrant.
“Our experience usually is if there’s snow covering the entire hydrant, it’s usually been there for awhile and it’s nice and packed with snow and ice and that’s the kicker and we need to shovel that out which can take up to five minutes,” said Soto.
West Metro Fire-Rescue District is asking the community to lend a hand and shovel three feet around a fire hydrant and shovel a clear path to the street.
“Right in front of the hydrant we want that clear, that way our firefighters can see it when it comes to times of emergency,” said Soto.
You can officially adopt a fire hydrant to keep clear of snow.
“We know that we have folks already out there that are not part of our system that are doing a good service to their community and clearing those hydrants out so we want to say thank you to those folks,” said Soto. “But if you are interested in doing an act of service that’s truly going to make a difference here at West Metro, we would like you to go to our website at www.wmfrd.org and you can go to our fire prevention page scroll to the bottom, and there you can submit a form which will be your name, your address and your phone number and either Chief Nelson or myself Lt. Soto will reach out to you.”
