The fire last night at the Hunt Club apartments could have been a disaster if not for the combined efforts of the Fort Wayne Fire Department, Aboite Fire Township Volunteer Fire Department and the Southwest Allen Fire District. The water pressure in the few available hydrants was close to non-existent. There is a hydrant located directly in front of the burning building, but without adequate pressure the hoses start sucking air rendering them impotent. Another hydrant located on Illinois Road (a couple hundred feet west of Hadley) was completely shut-off. While it was eventually turned on over an hour after the fire was reported, it lacked sufficient pressure. This forced the combined department tankers to continue to shuttle water from Magnavox Way and another location at Covington & I-69 to prevent the disruption of what little water was available.

In the end, the Southwest tankers dumped 12 tank loads @ 2600 gallons each or 31,200 gallons of water and Aboite dumped their two tankers (2500 and 3,000 gallon capacity) 9 times for an approximate total of over 55,000 gallons. How much was pulled off the hydrants is not known at this time. The tankers unloaded into portable dump tanks setup in the middle of Illinois Road. The water was then pumped approximately 1/4 mile across an empty field to the scene of the fire.

I have a request in with the city and Bill Etzler of Aqua Indiana to determine who was providing water to which hydrants and why there was inadequate pressure.

Here’s the list of the fire vehicles used last night to contain the Hunt Club fire.

E = Engine T = Ladder Truck

FWFD
E17
E18
E19
T19
T1
Rescue 1
E2
E5
E6
E7
SW Fire District
SW Tank 153
SW Tank 253
Aboite
Aboite Tank 183
Aboite Tank 283
Aboite E181

To view more pictures from the day after, click the above image. AWB

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 1:42 pm and is filed under Breaking News, Current Affairs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.