GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Frigid temperatures and wintry weather moving into West Michigan will make things harder on firefighting crews in the coming days as they work to get property-saving water onto fires before it freezes.
“It just creates more concern for driving around trucks full of water,” Grand Rapids Fire Department Battalion Chief Ed Braman told News 8. “If nothing else, we have to make sure it doesn’t freeze inside our machines.”
While waiting for a call, that means emptying the trucks if they are going to sit outside, or bringing everything indoors. Braman told News 8 crews also try to avoid washing their trucks if they know extreme cold is on the way to prevent doors and valves freezing up.
Once they arrive at a fire scene, that water has to flow.
“Freezing lines for us at a fire (is a concern),” Braman said. “It creates another problem because we try to keep the lines flowing so they don’t freeze, but that creates ice concerns. It just complicates things all the way around.”
There are also personnel concerns.
“We take other precautions on fires or extended duration events like extractions. We try to cycle our crews out faster to keep them out of the cold,” Braman added.
Hydrants are a point of concern as well. A small drip or cap leak from a hydrant in cold weather can quickly turn it unusable.
“Every once in a while, we find a frozen hydrant so we have to go even farther,” Braman said. “That makes the odd-even parking restrictions really important as well, so we don’t have to move around to find an open hydrant as much.”
He asked that if you see a hydrant that is leaking or appears covered in ice, call the water department at 311 so they can fix it up.
