In working with the City of San Jose, California, to arrange for building permits, I have been informed that our neighborhood of Willow Glen not only has very poor water pressure but also relatively few fire hydrants. A fire hydrant helps firefighters tap into the municipal water supply to help extinguish a fire. About a month ago, Willow glen ended up with one fewer hydrants when someone’s car ran over one of only two near our house.
As a native of San Francisco, I know that the destruction of the city in 1906 was started by a major earthquake but that the subsequent fires did most of the damage. Our area of Willow Glen being reliant on just one fire hydrant (located more than 400 feet from our house) made me nervous.
For a while after our local fire hydrant disappeared, I thought that the city would fix it on their own. After a month, I failed to find any information about fire hydrants on the San Jose website. So, I sent email to our local San Jose Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio to ask for his support.
I have met the energetic and intelligent Pierluigi at a variety of local and civic events over the years. He has met with our Willow Glen Lions club several times. Whenever I send him email, even very late at night, Pierluigi gets back to me very promptly. He asked his staff member Melrose to look into the missing fire hydrant. Over the course of about week, Melrose called the Fire Department, Transportation Department, and Water Department to try to figure out who was in charge of this. She finally was able to get a fix scheduled by the Water Department and we now have a replacement. Thanks, Pierluigi (and Melrose)!
31 August 2012 update – this week, the city replaced the asphalt around our new fire hydrant with concrete:
Images Copyright 2010-2012 by Katy Dickinson
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