By Joe Anuta
Vinnie Alberici is an unlikely inspector of fire hydrants in and around Community Board 5, but he has found that a significant number are in poor condition or not working at all.
Alberici removes graffiti for a living as part of the Greater Ridgewood Restoration Corp., a nonprofit dedicated to improving housing in the area. To do his job, he uses a pressure washer to blast offending marks off buildings and has a permit to tap into the city’s fire hydrants, but he sometimes has trouble finding one that works.
“Truthfully, more than 50 percent of them have something wrong with them,” Alberici said last Thursday night at a meeting of the Glendale Civilian Observation Patrol
In one of the most alarming cases, Alberici said he was trying to blast off some graffiti near St. Frances Cabrini School, a parochial school just across the border between Ridgewood and Brooklyn at 181 Suydam St.
He tapped into five hydrants near the corner of Wilson Avenue and Suydam Street, including three directly in front of the school. None of them worked. Joseph Vecchio, a property owner in the area, confirmed that all three hydrants in front of the school did not function and that they were broken for at least two months.
The Fire Department is supposed to inspect all of the roughly 100,000 hydrants in the city in the spring and fall. After the FDNY identifies all of the broken hydrants, it passes that list on to the city Department of Environmental Protection, which is responsible for repairs.
When a hydrant is broken, a white disc or ring of white paint is placed around it so firefighters know not to try and use it. Two of the five hydrants around the school had the white indicators on them for more than a month after residents reported them, Alberici said.
Certain hydrants are considered high priority, which means they are near hospitals, schools or senior centers, or that they are the only functioning hydrant on the block.
A DEP spokesman said 99 percent of the city’s hydrants function property on any given day.
“At times, some fire hydrants can need repairs, often because of reckless driving or normal wear and tear, and DEP fixes them as quickly as possible,” said Farrell Sklerov, noting that in fiscal year 2011 the DEP’s average response time for fixing high-priority hydrants was 5.9 days.
During a Tuesday tour, a TimesLedger reporter witnessed Alberici check the five hydrants again, more than two months after each was broken and reported to the city.
Only three of the five hydrants in the vicinity of Wilson Avenue and Suydam Street produced water.
One of the broken hydrants was directly in front of the school. The other was on the corner and had a white ring painted around one spout.
Alberici said many of the city’s hydrants are missing caps, leak water or have been halfheartedly repaired. Other times water seeps out of the concrete sidewalk instead of coming out of the spout.
City Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley (D-Middle Village) proposed legislation earlier this year to require the DEP to fix broken hydrants within 10 days, since the agency does not currently have mandated response times, only internal goals.
That response time would go down to seven days for high priority hydrants.
Reach reporter Joe Anuta by e-mail at januta@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4566.
