Stephen Gay believes the Lewis Street house fire that killed his father on April 4 could have been more quickly beaten, and possibly non-fatal, if the street’s underground fire hydrants had not been buried and rendered inaccessible during the road’s recent resurfacing.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Although hydrants were marked on the gutters to either side of the house, neighbours say they were tarred over following the street’s recent resurfacing, leaving them inaccessible and invisible.
“It seems like they’re probably not being maintained like they should be,” Mr Gay said.
“That sort of stuff shouldn’t be played with.”
The morning after the fire, a neighbour heard chipping noises from outside, and left the house to find a council work crew applying fresh paint to an uncovered hydrant casing and its corresponding marker on the gutter.
Other neighbours encountered similar scenes outside their own homes, and hydrant covers along the street are now unearthed, with the covers and their gutter markings repainted.
“Where all the yellow paint is now,” said a neighbour indicating the now very visible hydrants, “they weren’t there.”
Instead, firefighters on the night of the fire had to extend hoses - up to four hoses connected over about 80 metres, according to one neighbour - to a hydrant outside the Oriental Hotel half a block away.
Around town, Mr Gay found numerous hydrants partially or totally buried by earth.
Across the street from a Mortimer Street house burned down on Monday morning, markings on the gutter show two underground hydrants, one of which was accessed by firefighters.
The ground in front of the other shows that some inches of earth have been removed without uncovering the hydrant.
Mr Gay said all residents should go outside their houses, check for hydrant markings on the gutter, and see whether the corresponding hydrant would be accessible in an emergency.
Mr Gay said that since his father’s death, he had progressed from being “depressed and sad” to being angry over the circumstances of the fire.
“It’s a thorough disgrace,” Mr Gay said.
Mr Gay and the Lewis Street neighbours disagreed with comments made on WIN News by general manager Warwick Bennett that firefighters had water from the hydrants within 90 seconds of arriving at the scene.
“I don’t believe it was 90 seconds to get the water from here to there,” said a neighbour. “There’s no way it could have been.”
Council declined to comment, in light of the possibility of legal action raised by Mr Gay.
Mr Gay also hoped to discount rumours that his father had left the burning house and returned inside, saying that his father in fact did not reach the front door.
“My father did not go out of the house - he did not come out at all,” Mr Gay said
