Albury’s disappearing water hydrants have taken volunteer firefighters and a local publican by surprise.
Publican James Rennie said he had only realised the hydrants were gone when volunteer firefighters had pulled up outside the historic Albury Tavern and Inn to practise and could not locate them.
He discovered the hydrants had been gone for eight weeks, and in that time no-one had been notified, Mr Rennie said.
In previous years, he had seen fire trucks from further afield filling up at the hydrant throughout the night when fighting scrub fires in the region.
A fire station with disappearing water hydrants was like ‘‘a pub with no beer’’, he said.
As a dry season was predicted, he was looking at buying a trailer tank, because he was worried about his 150-year-old tavern.
‘‘I’ve spent a lot of money on this pub.’’
Timaru District Council group manager infrastructure Andrew Dixon said the fire service tanker filling point in Albury was removed when the new Downlands treatment plant and pipelines were installed.
‘‘They were not fire hydrants and could not meet fire hydrant standards.’’
Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Fenz) group manager Paul Tilsley explained the hydrants were low pressure, not for hooking firefighting hoses into, but for slowly filling a tanker with water.
Fighting a fire with one of those hydrants would be ‘‘next to useless’’, Mr Tilsley said.
The confusion had come about between Downlands Water Supply and Fenz as ‘‘somebody dropped the ball, as it were, with notifications’’, he said.
Albury Voluntary Rural Fire Force chief Tony Holtham said the crew were ‘‘disappointed’’ they were not told by Downlands of the hydrants being removed.
However, there were plenty of other places to fill their tanker up in the area, Mr Holtham said.
Filling up from nearby rivers would not be a long-term fix, as Mr Dixon said the organisation had been in communication with Fenz and was working with them to install a new filling point system at their fire station. It would be, ‘‘at council’s cost’’, Mr Dixon said. ‘‘We are currently awaiting approvals from them before we can advance further.’’
As for Mr Rennie, all he wanted was for someone to apologise and do something about it. ‘‘They’ve done a better job of covering it than fixing any of the potholes on this road.’’
