WINTER SPRINGS, Fla. – The City of Winter Springs has largely finished checking, testing and, if necessary, repairing all 1,200 fire hydrants citywide after three didn’t work when there was a fire earlier this year.
In March, the city ordered an emergency inspection of the hydrants and paid a contractor $153,000 to do the inspections.
Emails from the Seminole County Fire Marshal show the fire department tried to contact the City of Winter Springs as far back as 2021 for a status update on hydrant inspections. The fire marshal did not receive a response until last year.
State law requires yearly inspections.
Winter Springs City spokesperson Matt Reeser said all hydrants are now properly color-coded — painted to indicate pressure and flow — and, more importantly, they all work “without a doubt.”
“A lot of the problems we had weren’t significant problems,” Reeser said. “A lot of them were just leaky valves, couplings that weren’t working properly. Some hydrants did have to be replaced but those were a few.”
Would inspectors have discovered 27 broken hydrants if they had been inspected annually?
“Probably not, no,” Reeser said. “I think what this has shown us is the steps that we’re taking are going to save us in the long run. They’re going to save us in cost and maintaining our system.”
Reeser said the city now has a plan in place to make sure hydrants are inspected as required.
“By maintaining our program,” Reeser said. “We already started the process of putting this in the budget as part of our maintenance. This will be something we continue to do. It will be consistent. And we have a plan in place now. Now we know where everything is.”
During the inspection process, the Seminole County Fire Department had been sending as many as three tanker trucks to any fire within the Winter Springs city limits as a precaution in case the hydrant at the scene failed.
Seminole County Fire Department Public Safety Information and Education Officer Doreen Overstreet said additional tankers will still be available as needed.
“Upon completion of the contractor’s hydrant inspections and adequate/compliant reporting from Winter Springs to SCFD Fire Prevention we will resume the dynamic deployment model for Tankers,” Overstreet said. “Meaning tanker response will be dependent upon firefighters’ request, distance to hydrant (built-in computer aided dispatch), or hydrant out-of-service notifications received from the City or SCFD staff.”
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