The Arbor Heights fire that consumed a family’s home on 41st Ave S.W. in August was an anomaly caused by the spontaneous combustion of material left in a portable fire pit stored away in the garage. The 911 call came in from a neighbor who saw smoke coming from the garage and, according to Seattle Fire Chief Gregory Dean, that’s when things started to go wrong.
Dean, along with directors from Seattle Public Utilities, attended a Seattle City Council hearing on Dec. 7 to hash out why firefighters were unable to get adequate water pressure to combat the blaze, forcing them to employ a relay system of trucks and several miles of hose over a five-block radius in order to get enough water. By that time the home was a complete loss with $300,000 in damages.
According to Dean, the initial call came in at 5:26 p.m. The two closest engines were already dealing with a medical emergency involving a 2-year-old. About 10 minutes later the first trucks with 500 gallon water tanks on board arrived and started getting water to the fire. By 5:40 they realized they couldn’t get water from the nearby hydrants. A two-alarm call was put out by the commander on scene and over 100 emergency personnel responded. By 6:09 the relay system was set up and they had enough water to make a difference. At 6:40 the fire was under control.
The problem for the first hydrant they tried was mechanical, but as firefighters linked to nearby hydrants they realized there just wasn’t enough water pressure to combat the fire.
The question was raised at the hearing: How did these failures happen?
Seattle Public Utilities Director Ray Hoffman took a first crack at explaining the problem – and it goes back over half a century. Hoffman said the Arbor Heights area was annexed by Seattle in 1954 with substandard water mains. While new developments in Seattle are required to have adequate systems, Arbor Heights was grandfathered in.
He said Local Improvement District votes were twice brought to voters to improve the system, but they both failed.
Essentially, the Arbor Heights neighborhood is rife with two and four-inch water mains when the standard for combating fires requires an eight-inch main.
“The single largest area (in Seattle) where water flow is an issue is Arbor Heights,” an SPU employee said at the meeting.
The other issue raised is that Seattle Fire is in charge of checking every fire hydrant in the city, however, they do not check for water pressure. Instead, they only check to make sure water comes up into the “bonnet” of the hydrant. If it doesn’t they notify SPU, who sends a crew out to fix it. Dean said the malfunctioning Arbor Heights hydrant had been checked earlier in 2011 and passed the test, so it was not on their radar. As for the other hydrants in the area, since they were not checked for adequate pressure the problem went unnoticed by SFD.
Improvements made and planned
SPU has already replaced or relocated 11 hydrants and installed one new one in the Arbor Heights neighborhood. The upgraded hydrants increase flow by 25 percent, SPU said.
Hoffman said SPU’s goal for Arbor Heights is to have every home within 1000 feet of a hydrant that can push 1000 gallons of water per minute (the residential minimum, and fire trucks have 1000 feet of hose) by December of 2012. It will require replacing two and four-inch mains with eight-inch pipe, and pulling that off will require digging up sidewalks and roads. Full street restoration is expected to be completed in early 2013.
The cost of improvements is estimated at $2.2 million.
Presenters said 70 percent of Arbor Heights homes are currently within 500 ft. of 1000 gallons per minute hydrants, and after improvements it will jump to 87 percent.
“I want to compliment the firefighters for the job that they did at that fire,” Dean said. “When they go into fires things go wrong, they have to adapt, they have to be resourceful, and that is what happened here.”
“This was an unfortunate incident but I’m glad to see that the city is responding quickly,” Councilmember Tim Burgess said.
For anyone interested in taking a look at Seattle Fire and SPU presentations to the council, they are included as links at the top of the story. You can watch the city council hearing here, with the Arbor Heights discussion starting around 48 minutes
