Andrews needs thousands of dollars in repairs to fix service
Andrews – More than 44 percent of the 104 fire hydrants that serve Andrews are out of service and require tens of thousands of dollars in repairs.
Valleytown Fire Department Chief Justin Hyde briefed the Andrews Board of Aldermen about the situation during the board’s March 7 meeting. He said 46 out of 104 fire hydrants in the 3-square-mile town are out of commission, with some in “horrible shape.”
The Valleytown Fire Department has been dealing with the aftermath of the January 2022 dissolution of the Andrews Volunteer Fire Department following a record of poor responses to fires by the 115-year-old department as well as poor maintenance of assets, including fire hydrants. When the Board of Aldermen dissolved the town’s volunteer fire department, it contracted with Valleytown Fire & Rescue for $50,000 per year. Since that time, Valleytown firefighters have inventoried Andrews’ fire hydrants, spraying black paint on the tops of inoperative units.
Black-painted fire hydrants are scattered throughout the town following the inventory. Along Bristol Avenue, for example, almost all fire hydrants were found inoperative and spray-painted black, including one on High School Drive off Bristol Avenue that serves Andrews High School.
For residents along that stretch, the black-painted fire hydrant in their front yard or a couple of houses down the street offer no protection at all, with the nearest working hydrant as much as a quarter-mile away. With approval from the Board of Aldermen, the repairs will be done in stages, with the first 20 being repaired at a price of about $26,000 with an order for 26 more to complete the repairs.
“It’s hard to put a price tag on people’s safety,” Alderman Jonathan Ellison said. The board OK’d the expenditure unanimously.
It is generally a fire department’s responsibility to check and maintain fire hydrants within its jurisdiction, but it is the town’s responsibility to replace them when necessary, Hyde said. The highest priority will be replacing hydrants near schools, churches and Main Street businesses.
Valleytown Fire is a hybrid of paid and volunteer firefighters, with 14 firefighting vehicles, including several pumpers with onboard tanks. A pumper has limited capacity, and functioning fire hydrants play a critical role in fire suppression in areas of higher population density, such as within the Andrews town limits.
Valleytown already covered about 103 square miles, so the addition of the 3-square-mile town of Andrews amounted to less than a 3 percent addition to the department’s total coverage area. Valleytown also has the benefit of a much larger budget funded by a fire tax and boasts two full-time paid firefighters on staff.
The January 2022 town meeting ended with the members of the volunteer fire department turning in bags of gear by dropping them in front of the Board of Aldermen’s table.
The Andrews Volunteer Fire Department had been plagued by years of electronic communication struggles, compounded by poor cell phone service in and around Andrews. In 2022, Mayor James Reid said a fire alarm at Andrews High sparked renewed concerns about those issues. No one from Andrews Fire responded to the call, but Valleytown sent four members of its department along with a truck.
“It was a difficult decision, but one we had been rolling around for about five years because of the response rate and other stuff,” Reid said at the time. “I think the biggest problem with the Andrews Fire Department is we just aged out.
“Everybody was up around 60 years old, and they were spending more time with their families. All the young guys were going to the Valleytown Fire Department, so they could obviously respond to fires better and more on time.”