Joseph Cranney and Jeff Adelson
The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate
(TNS)
Aug. 8—More than 700 blocks across New Orleans have dead or malfunctioning fire hydrants and lack any that are up to the task of fighting a typical house fire.
That includes more than 500 hydrants that are missing or completely broken, along with hundreds of others with inadequate pressure or water supply, according to a Times-Picayune analysis of city data.
The hazards are more prevalent in the city’s older neighborhoods, where the infrastructure is more antiquated.
New Orleans Fire Department officials say the problem has not caused a widespread issue of out-of-control fires. House fires are far less common here than they used to be, too.
Officials from the Sewerage & Water Board, responsible for maintaining hydrants, said firefighters can achieve an adequate flow as long as any well-functioning hydrant is within 1,000 feet of the fire, or by combining the flow of multiple hydrants. However, that takes more time.
A four-alarm house fire that Barbara Corley escaped in Central City last year illustrates the risks.
The closest hydrant to that fire, at the corner of Magnolia and Amelia streets, was broken. And, firefighters later said, the pressure at the next closest hydrant was feeble. Corley described it as a “sprinkle.”
Firefighters scrambled to pump water from their engines and connect to other hydrants around the corner.
The fire raged for two hours, consuming the Corley house, a wood-framed shotgun where the family lived for 40 years. There were no reported injuries, but the fire also destroyed another home next door, damaged two others and reportedly displaced at least a dozen people.
The head of the local fire union said malfunctioning hydrants are an all-too common problem. And even though the fire department sends weekly reports of faulty hydrants to S&WB, it often takes more than two months for that agency to make repairs.
Over his 27-year career here, Capt. Aaron Mischler, the fire union president, said he’s been on the scene of countless fires where the closest hydrants are leaking, have broken caps or weak pressure. He recalled one hydrant that was in such bad shape that, when firefighters tried opening the cap, they yanked the hydrant clear out of the ground.
He said the resulting delays are critical because fires can double in size every 60 seconds.
“The fact that the first two hydrants were dead — that’s a huge detriment,” Mischler said of the Corley fire. Fire Superintendent Roman Nelson said heavy winds, not broken hydrants, were the main reason that fire spread.
Poor flow
In a recent statement, Nelson said he doesn’t believe faulty hydrants are a significant problem.
“The NOFD has no concerns related to water flow for the purpose of firefighting in the City of New Orleans,” Nelson said.
Though New Orleans has a well-deserved reputation for crumbling infrastructure, the effect that the city’s old pipes and poor water flow can have on fire protection have drawn little notice.
The Times-Picayune identified problematic hydrants by combining databases from NOFD and S&WB, reviewing fire reports and interviewing firefighters and fire analysts.
Among the findings:
— At least 703 blocks in New Orleans are populated by hydrants that collectively don’t have a large enough water source, don’t pump water fast enough to fight a typical house fire or don’t work at all. That’s about 1 in 13 of all city blocks for which data was available. Firefighters say they have tools to boost water pressure and that they can always quickly pump water from their trucks. But that water source can run out within a minute.
— Roughly 45 additional blocks have low-performing hydrants that only would be effective if firefighters plugged into more than one. Firefighters say that’s not an uncommon way to achieve adequate flow, but it costs time.
— The majority of water mains in New Orleans — about 60% — have a diameter of 6 inches, considered the minimum size by national fire standards. New water mains are built to a size of at least 8 inches, though only a little more than a third in New Orleans are that big, records show.
— No fewer than 500 of the city’s hydrants, or about 3%, are missing or don’t work at all, according to the most recent NOFD inspection data.
Firefighters keep plans that identify water sources for large fires at commercial buildings, like a high-rise apartment or the Superdome, which allows them to “easily locate and utilize hydrants with higher water flow,” said Capt. Edwin Holmes, a department spokesperson.
But they often don’t have that information in residential neighborhoods, where buildings lack sprinkler systems and where many of the city’s oldest and least effective hydrants are located.
Finding an adequate water supply “at most residential responses isn’t an issue,” Holmes said.
Mischler sees things quite differently.
“It’s a huge issue,” he said. “And it’s not acceptable.”
A spokesperson for Mayor LaToya Cantrell said Cantrell declined to comment and referred questions to the S&WB.
Lagging response
Steve Nelson, the S&WB superintendent who started the job in January, called hydrants “a key focus” of the agency’s work.
He noted that New Orleans has the top rating from the state property insurance association that grades fire protection, though the city hasn’t been assessed since 2019.
The fire department inspects all of the city’s roughly 14,000 fire hydrants and updates S&WB every week with maintenance needs.
Still, the average overall response time for repairs is 75 days, S&WB officials said.
“Firefighters, we feel like we’re taking on other people’s work in doing (inspections),” Mischler said, noting that the hydrants are S&WB’s property. “Because it’s important to us to do it. That’s our lifeblood. We can’t operate without water.”
“We would expect that if we tell you there’s a problem, we expect it to be fixed in a timely manner,” Mischler added. “Seventy-five days isn’t timely.”
Nelson said that average includes non-priority repairs, like minor leaks. He acknowledged that 75 days is “too long” and said his goal is for the agency to complete repairs within 30 days. The most critical repairs are addressed on an accelerated schedule, Nelson said.
“Any out-of-service hydrant is one that we want to address quickly,” Nelson said. “We are staffing and equipping our team to reduce average timelines for lower priority items and ensuring prompt response for (urgent) repairs.”
Decline in services
When it comes to the maintenance of the city’s all-important drainage system, the split of authority between the S&WB and the city has proven disastrous.
The city’s public works department took over maintenance responsibilities for most of New Orleans’ stormwater management system 30 years ago. The department has been understaffed and underfunded ever since.
As City Hall has increasingly relied on contractors to do basic jobs, the city has been backsliding badly in getting those tasks completed.
Last year, the city unclogged just 2% of its catch basins, the first line of defense against flooding, The Times-Picayune has reported. And it takes the city, on average, about a year to fill a pothole upon a citizen’s complaint, a job other cities routinely do within a couple weeks.
That’s all despite an increase in local tax collections of almost 50% in constant dollars over the last two decades, along with billions of dollars in federal relief set aside for infrastructure improvements.
As for the city’s hydrants?
The Fire Department conducts visual inspections every year. About 1 in 5 undergo more extensive annual testing designed to flag hydrants that have poor flow, like one of those by the Corley house.
Council member Oliver Thomas, who chairs the council’s Public Works Committee, said the issues are just another sign of the beleaguered state of the city’s services.
“You can’t talk about what’s rare when systems don’t work, or when systems aren’t dependable,” Thomas said.
“Fire hydrants out, lights out, roadways out — at some point, if everything is out, that means the whole city is out,” he added.
Hydrant hazards
NOFD responds to an average of around 300 residential fires a year. Two decades ago, it was more than 700.
In Detroit, a city of similar age that has far greater arson rates than New Orleans, broken or malfunctioning fire hydrants have proven to be a significant barrier to fire protection.
A 2015 report found that nearly two-thirds of Detroit’s hydrants were broken or had inadequate pressure to extinguish an average house fire. The fire department there lost control of hundreds of fires at least in part because of those issues, the report found.
At the Corley fire in Central City, after the first hydrant didn’t work, firefighters tried pumping from an engine, but soon ran out of water, firefighters later said in reports. Firefighters “made attempts to get water,” while the fire spread to a second house.
“I smelled the smoke and ran outside and saw all the firefighters saying, ‘Do you have water, do you have water?'” Henry Offiah, who lived in a neighboring apartment, told a reporter at the time. “And I was very shocked — why do you firefighters need water?”
Since the fire, Corley, 81, a retired caterer, has been living with a neighbor across the street. She had amassed a collection of antique furniture, dining sets and artwork that filled the front and dining rooms of her house, a hobby she started decades ago when her uncle worked at a thrift store on Freret Street.
There was nothing left but ashes. “I stood and watched my whole life go up in flames,” she said.
A year later, Corley occasionally walks the grass lot where her house stood, hoping to find an old piece of her jewelry.
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