HOUSTON --
A fake fire hydrant in a Spring Branch garden was painted to look like the real thing by a city of Houston worker, KPRC Local 2 reported Monday.
Debbie Vogelsang said she was concerned that painting the fake hydrant in the city's colors could cause dangerous confusion during a fire in her neighborhood.
Her boyfriend, Brian Smith, bought the old surplus fire hydrant at a garage sale three years ago, painted it bright red, and set it up next to his palm trees.
It sat there undisturbed until last week, when a city of Houston maintenance crew mistook it for a real fire plug, repainted it blue and yellow, and gave it a city serial number.
City workers also put a reflector in the street out front to let fire crews know a fire hydrant was located there for emergencies.
"I would hate for there to be a fire in the area and them to come over here and see that blue dot out there in the road and start dragging their hoses to it and just as soon as they put a wrench to it, the thing fell on the ground," Smith said.
The day it happened Vogelsang e-mailed the city and complained. The city quickly dispatched an inspector.
"I showed him it's not connected and he looks at me kind of confused and says, 'What, we need to run a water line to it or what?'" Vogelsang said.
When KPRC Local 2 asked city public works spokesman Alvin Wright how such a thing could happen, he at first was not ready to admit it actually had.
"This situation is currently under investigation. A supervisor was dispatched to take photos and determine exactly where this alleged fire hydrant is actually at," Wright said.
But a public works investigation revealed that an "over zealous" city maintenance worker did repaint the plug, creating, as Smith feared, a serious potential problem for firefighters.
"If you take the water supply out of the equation, we have a problem managing the fire. If there's a dead main, there's not an active water supply to be replenished," said HFD Executive Chief Rick Flannigan.
Flannigan said he expects the city to remove the serial numbers and the reflector by the end of the day.
The city of Houston's fire hydrants are color-coded. All are painted blue on the bottom. The color on top tells firefighters the size of the water main the hydrant is attached to. Those colors include black, white, green and yellow.
Fake Fire Hydrant Painted By City
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