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Mar 24, 2008 9:45 pm US/Central
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Frozen Fire Hydrants Put Chicagoans At Risk
City Employees Speak Out About Faulty Hydrants That Leave City Residents And Firefighters Vulnerable
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
The 2 Investigators have exposed a deadly problem for firefighters in Chicago – out-of-order fire hydrants.
CBS 2 Investigator Dave Savini reports children have died and firefighters have been injured in fires involving frozen hydrants. There are thousands of hydrants with problems and city workers say little is being done to fix them.
Doris Ramos is forever trapped by the horrific scene of an inferno that destroyed her house in the Little Village neighborhood six years ago. She escaped but her nephew Frankie and two nieces, Samantha and Erica, were still inside.
"It feels like a nightmare and I wanna wake up," Ramos said.
"I started hitting the fire fighters telling them to… that kids were there," she said.
Firefighters tried repeatedly to rescue the children, but even they became trapped because there was no water to help them reach the kids.
"They were yelling, you know, that the hydrants were frozen," Ramos said.
All three hydrants were frozen and critical minutes passed as hundreds of feet of hose had to be run to other hydrants a block away. Eventually they got the kids out.
"But it was too late, they were dead," Ramos said.
Even on the coldest days fire hydrants should never freeze. A frozen hydrant means it's broken – has a defective drain, or a leak – leaving a standing pool of water in the part of the hydrant called the barrel.
A six-month investigation by the 2 Investigators found thousands of hydrants in Chicago have this problem, putting both residents and firefighters at risk.
Hydrant repair records obtained by the 2 Investigators reveal 4,021 hydrants were listed as frozen in the last four years -- and those are just the ones they happened to check.
City officials refused to be interviewed but did say they fix them and dispatch workers to steam and thaw them at fires, but the problems are increasing. Records show since 2006 the number of frozen hydrants more than doubled.
Randazzo, Patrick McDonough, Michael McGann and Archie High have all worked for the Chicago Department of Water Management, which is responsible for hydrant maintenance. They are risking their jobs by speaking out because they say there is a safety crisis.
"It ain't never going to get any better," High said.
They believe as many as half of the city's 47,000 hydrants pose a potential danger because they're clogged.
"It's really the percentage of the hydrants that are down that is a concern," McGann said.
"There's way too many hydrants that are broken, that are frozen, that are missing parts and in most cases, they're not draining properly," McDonough said.
Just last February there were four more fires where hydrants were frozen.
A fire fighter yells for water as the frozen hydrant at 9654 S. Indiana proved useless.
Two hydrants were frozen outside of 842 W. Barry during a fire that proved fatal.
Fire erupted at 6033 S. Morgan, again a hydrant is frozen.
In December on the 5300 block of South Marshfield, 17-year-old Gabriel Green and her 7-month-old son, Marion, died in a fire where rescue crews once again faced frozen hydrants.
And six years after the Ramos children died the hydrants still didn't drain properly; you can hear water sitting in the bottom of the barrel.
"I complained/about these fire hydrants and they told me, you know shut up and just do your job," Randazzo said.
"They were healthy, healthy, full of life," Ramos said of her family. She believes the firefighters would have been able to save the children's lives if the hydrants had been working.
The 2 Investigators found no evidence of hydrants freezing this often in other cold-weather cities.
Chicago Department of Water Management officials claim they do repair them immediately when they find out about them. They would not, however, give CBS 2 the addresses of all frozen hydrants.
A spokesperson from the Chicago Fire Department says "We anticipate that this may occur in cold weather and we adjust our tactics to allow for these circumstances that may come up."
The city workers in this story have filed past claims alleging corruption.
Pat McDonough was also a whistleblower in the Hired Truck Scandal and has a lawsuit against the city for allegedly retaliating against him in that case.
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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