ATLANTA --
Passersby tend to do a double-take at the sight of a fire hydrant half buried under some gravel near the 14th Street bridge over the Downtown Connector.
The hydrant sits right in front of the 14th Street Self Storage facility, where Caleb Platel is storing some of his belongings.
Platel said if there were a fire at the storage facility, firefighters wouldn’t get much help from the hydrant. “I don’t see how they could get to it,” he said.
CBS Atlanta took photos of the half-exposed hydrant and showed them to Atlanta’s interim fire chief, Joel Baker. “Is that usable, the way it is now?” asked reporter Rebekka Schramm.
“I’m not sure if that’s usable or not usable. It looks like, to me, it’s so far in the ground, they would not be able to hook up a fire hose to this particular hydrant,” Baker said.
The Georgia Department of Transportation recently rebuilt the sidewalk as it completed the nearby 14th Street bridge. A DOT spokesman says Atlanta’s watershed management department is responsible for properly adjusting fire hydrants for road projects.
A spokeswoman for the watershed management department said she would submit a work order on the hydrant.
“If they could take care of that today, that would really be appreciated,” said Platel.
Baker said he’s not terribly worried about the hydrant, because at least three other hydrants sit in a one-block radius of it. Still, he said he wants all of the city’s hydrants to be workable.
“We have close to 24,000 fire hydrants in the city of Atlanta and Fulton County area,” Baker said. “And twice a year, the men and women of the department, we go out and service the hydrants, flush them and paint them, make sure they’re working properly.”
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