Homeowners Look to Buy Private Hydrants After LA Firestorms

The owners of many luxury homes across Southern California are calling for one more feature after this month’s devastating firestorms: private fire hydrants.

After scores of public hydrants in Pacific Palisades had little to no water because of empty water storage tanks, residents across the region say they can’t count on city infrastructure to meet firefighting demands, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Companies that sell personal hydrants say sales are booming. The upside: they’re cheaper than having private firefighters stationed outside and easy to install in advance.

“Yesterday, just in California alone, there were about 30 orders,” Barry McConaghey, a former firefighter who owns FireHoseDirect, a North Carolina-based equipment company he founded in 2011 that sells the parts to make a private hydrant, told the Times.

Customers buy what they need — a combination of jacket hoses, nozzles, valves and adapters that, when put together, vastly increases the water flow from a homeowner’s outdoor faucet.

Prices vary. A 10-piece private hydrant set-up recommended by the Corral Canyon Fire Safety Alliance comes out to $1,571, according to the website of FireHoseDirect.

The firm has shipped recent orders to Malibu, Westlake Village, Stevenson Ranch, San Clemente and San Diego, with several customers paying more for overnight shipping.

“We see an uptick in sales when the wildfires take off,” McConaghey told the newspaper.

Private fire hydrants are legal, and homeowners are responsible for maintaining them.

They also pay for water they use, either from their own supply, such as a swimming pool or water tank, or from a city water system.

“It’s your water, it’s behind your meter,” David Whitman, whose South Pasadena-based Brushfire Battle Systems began selling private fire hydrants three years ago. “If you want to run your sprinklers during a fire, you can.

“If these hydrants were all over the place,” he said, “people aren’t going to be using stupid garden hoses — they’re going to be getting out there with a one-and-a-half-inch attack line and going to town out of a high-pressure little baby hydrant. That’s a game changer.”

— Dana Bartholomew