Now that we are officially in the winter season, you may notice our Scarborough firefighters clearing the snow around hydrants after a storm. You might wonder, in a large community like Scarborough at 54 square miles, how many hydrants do we have to maintain? The answer might surprise you. Scarborough has a variety of different types of fire hydrants: We have 701 public hydrants, 108 private hydrants, 63 holding tanks, and 19 dry hydrants for a total of 891.

Our community is so large we are actually covered by two separate water districts. The Portland Water District provides Sebago Lake water to most of the community south of the Maine Turnpike with the exception of Pine Point and Blue Point. Those neighborhoods are served from the Maine Water Company system with water that is pumped from the Saco River.

In addition to those municipal hydrants are a system of private hydrants, dry hydrants, and holding tanks. A municipal hydrant is a pressurized hydrant off one of the mains owned by one of the two previously mentioned water companies. The town pays a hydrant rental fee for each one that primarily covers a pro-rated cost of providing the water mains and capacity to assure an adequate water flow for firefighting activities throughout the community, along with a small annual maintenance allocation. A private hydrant is generally located on private property and is installed by the business owner or development where required by codes and ordinances. These are the same type of hydrants from the same water companies, but the town doesn’t pay the rental fee and the owner of the hydrant is responsible for the installation and maintenance because it is on private property instead of the public way.

North of the Maine Turnpike where we don’t have any municipal water service, the town and local developers have installed a combination of dry hydrants and holding tanks. A dry hydrant is a connection that ends in a pond, stream, river, or some other natural body of water. To access that water, the fire department uses our pumper trucks to draft water from these static sources. Finally we have a number of holding tanks which are nothing more than large underground cisterns that are designed to hold approximately 15,000 gallons of water to provide coverage in areas where there aren’t sufficient natural water sources to provide adequate water supply for firefighting activities.

Now that you know how many we have, you can better understand the effort involved in trying to keep all hydrants clear of snow and ice during the winter months. That’s where our Adopt a Hydrant program comes in. The Adopt a Hydrant program encourages citizens to help with this monumental task by “adopting” the hydrant that is closest to your home and shoveling it for us. Most people don’t think twice about the hydrant near their home, but all of us in the fire service are keenly aware of their importance when we need to fight a fire. We don’t have the time to try and find them if they are buried in the snow, or try to shovel them after they are encased in ice while responding to a serious fire. We must be proactive with clearing all of them after every storm, so our crews go out to hand shovel them and make sure they are available and ready for use if we need them.

Each hydrant that a citizen clears speeds up the work for our firefighters and helps keep our apparatus off the roads. On some hydrants, we may need to connect up to three different hoses. Please make sure to shovel an area the full length of your shovel’s handle completely around the hydrant all the way to the ground, as well as a path to the street to provide sufficient access and room to connect the hoses.

The Adopt a Hydrant program is a great public service and wonderful civic lesson to teach younger children. Please also consider clearing the snow from a fire hydrant for your neighbors who may have medical conditions, disabilities, or those who are elderly that may be unable to do so themselves. This act of kindness will benefit the entire neighborhood.

Thank you very much in advance for your help with this important process after each storm. There is no need to notify the department about a hydrant you have adopted as this is an informal volunteer program. Your help is very much appreciated, and as they say the life you help save, may be your own!

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