No Water for Fires In Wicomico County?

Sunday's Daily Slime featured an article claiming that 60% of Wicomico County's Residents don't have access to a fire hydrant and therefore, there homes may be in imminent danger of destruction by fire.

I say, "So, there are other options."

Wicomico County isn't the only jurisdiction to face this problem, but it seems like they may be the only jurisdiction that isn't doing anything about it.  Up here in the vale of the Gunpowder, good old Yankee ingenuity and some hard work on the part of volunteers solved this problem over a decade ago.  Volunteers from Hereford VFC and a few other stations recognized the same problem back in the mid-1990s, and decided to do something about it.

They got together and mapped out every independent water source -- pond, stream, swimming pool, water tank, etc. -- in the North County.  For a while, all this information was mapped out in notebooks the companies carried with them.  Now, with the assistance of the county's "professional"* service, the entire system is computerized and available countywide to any incident commander through dispatch.

The county has even gone so far as to put in marker signs for most locations, and dry hydrants where it makes sense.

Plus, the county council passed a number of statutes that require developers to put in underground storage tanks sized to match the development space-- whether it is residential or commercial.  And all rural stations now feature their own on-site storage facilities and cisterns.  The last time there was a water issue (that I know of) was when the Hillendale Country Club burned.  Of course, two problems occured there:  1) it was probably arson, and the building was long lost even before the first company arrived, and 2) the volunteers who drove to the fire instead of to the station caused a serious traffic issue on the single road leading into the country club.  As a result, volunteers MUST report to the station and not the incident, now.

Perhaps the Wicomico County fire companies should call up here and check out the system.  Northern Baltimore County hosts the highest fire safety rating available from ISO, and the result is incredibly affordable home insurance rates in almost every corner of the county.  The system has even been deployed into southern PA (New Freedom, Shrewsbury, Stewartstown, etc.)

And, don't cry me a tear about "money".  This was a system that grew out of the volunteer's determination to secure adequate water for a fire, not government bureacracy.  Adquate water supplies are not only a matter of protecting property, but protecting the lives of firefighters involved.  No incident commander wants to send hose teams into a burning structure when the water might suddenly be shut off.

Of course, it is a shame the Daily Slime report didn't make an effort to find out other counties do.  For the first time in a long time, the Daily Slime could have actually informed county residents what their options really were.