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The Los Angeles hearth catastrophe has prompted Miami-Dade officers to investigate how ready this county is to take care of an identical emergency. The county’s 47,000 hearth hydrants are all examined and dealing, they stated, however many areas of the county don’t have any entry to hydrants in any respect.
In consequence, the chairs of the tourism and infrastructure committees agreed Monday to push laws to encourage municipalities to verify their hydrants and water stress as they mentioned encouraging unincorporated areas emigrate from wells to the county water system.
“I feel this can be a nice alternative for us to deal with the properly subject,” Raquel Regalado, the infrastructure committee chair, informed the Recreation and Tourism Committee. She recounted the 40-year push to get Pinecrest onto the county water system that succeeded solely by displaying how a lot the change would cut back Pinecrest residents’ hearth insurance coverage prices.
Tourism committee chair René García raised the difficulty on the finish of a gathering. Roy Coley, who till a current promotion headed the Water and Sewer Division, recounted efforts to get the county’s hydrants as much as commonplace up to now few years after discovering that “our hydrants wanted further upkeep.”
“What we now have achieved,” Mr. Coley stated, “is employed a devoted staff of water and sewer professionals who’re in control of 47,000 hearth hydrants on this county.” Since then, “all 47,000 have been examined, those that wanted rebuilt, and in the present day they’re all functioning as they need to, and along with that we’ve achieved a whole hydraulic mannequin evaluation of our water system to make sure it might maintain the fireplace flows. All of that was accomplished final yr, and the devoted employees that we employed continues on to maintain biking via these 47,000 hydrants.”
These, he stated, are the county’s hydrants and people of the Metropolis of Miami that the county is answerable for, however “there are communities inside our county that Miami-Dade County Water and Sewer and the fireplace division usually are not answerable for, and I’m not chatting with these.”
“If in case you have wells you don’t have entry to Miami-Dade Water and Sewer,” Ms. Regalado cautioned. “It’s vital whenever you have a look at hearth hydrants to additionally have a look at the unincorporated areas of Miami-Dade County…. If they’re on properly, that signifies that they don’t have entry to fireside hydrants, so you could convey the infrastructure to try this.”
Along with the dearth of entry to fireside hydrants, Ms. Regalado famous the potential for contamination of wells and that wells don’t work when electrical energy is misplaced. “I might inform you to have a look at the state of our hydrants, but in addition you’d be stunned what number of areas of unincorporated Miami-Dade don’t have hearth hydrants as a result of they’re on properly water.”
In firefighting in these areas, she stated, water should be pumped from a swimming pool or else from a particular county hearth car that brings water to the scene.
The committee directed Mr. Coley to develop a report for the total county fee on the state of county hydrants and their potential to reply in a conflagration.