Water for Fire – Hydrants are Nothing New
By Veronica MacDonald Ditko
An Accidental Anthropologist
A fire hydrant in Evilard, Switzerland that is painted to look like a little maestro.
All the flooding lately has got me thinking about water. Water seems plentiful in our area, but since the beginning of time, humans have worked hard to harness the water and guide it. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. Great things have come from these efforts – waterfalls to power mills, structures such as old Roman aqueducts and the Hoover Dam, as well as more sanitary drinking water and time-tested sewer systems.
People in the past have also found water isn’t always where they want or need it. Take for instance, house fires. In the past, little buckets from a well just couldn’t douse a seriously out-of-control fire.
The first fire vehicles that came onto the scene in the U.S. were horse-drawn, mostly in big cities. Then these evolved into automotives and now trucks. But just how did the people with the horses get the water? Water is very heavy, and a horse can only pull so much. Well, if you take a trip to the Paterson Museum (a gem by the way), you’ll learn how it was done.
Museum director Jack DeStefano has on display a relic of an old water pipe. But it’s not a metal pipe or a PVC pipe (of course). Pipes in olden times (and we are going back to the 17 Century) were made of wood from rot-resistant elm trees. He says parts of New York City still have these pipes. And back in the day, every home had a big leather bucket hanging in the kitchen. People would decorate these buckets as they became part of the indoor décor.
If your home did catch on fire, firemen would come to your house and dig in the street to get to the wooden pipe water main. They would actually drill a hole in the main to get to the water. People would form bucket brigades to hand buckets down the line from water-to-house. Hopefully neighbors would bring their buckets too. Once the fire was over, the firemen would plug up the wooden water main again with another piece of wood.
In essence, these plugs were the first fire hydrants. In fact, a colloquial term for fire hydrants in the US today is “fireplug.”
My neighbors have a fire hydrant squat in front of their house. While it is a pain for them to park, I’m happy it’s there. In case of a fire, there will be quick access to water. It’s an ugly reflective yellow, but it’s probably easy to see in all weather. Maybe we can petition the town to do as the Swiss do – paint fire hydrants to look little people. It’s ever so charming and decorative too just like the old-time leather buckets.
Perhaps by charming these fire tools, people thought they could chase away disaster. We can only hope.
Veronica MacDonald Ditko is originally from the Jersey Shore, but married and settled in northern New Jersey. Her journalism career started a decade ago after studying Psychology and Anthropology in Massachusetts. She has written for several newspapers and magazines including The Daily Hampshire Gazette, The Springfield Union News and Sunday Republican, Happi, Chemical Week, The Hawthorne Press, The Jewish Standard, Suite101.com and more.