The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Broken fire hydrants fixed in Vernon
Backward- facing fire hydrants have been fixed to face the right way after residents complained to officials.
Sometimes a question is better answered late than never.
That’s the focus of this week’s See. Click. Fix feature.
As the Oneida Dispatch newsroom digs deeper into the pins on the online interactive map, we find some problems that are over a year old.
But that’s okay. They will be answered anyway.
More than three years ago, an OneidaDispatch. com reader pinned Route 5 in Vernon on the site’s See. Click. Fix feature.
The reader added the note, “Half of the fire hydrants appear to have been installed backwards. The four- inch outlet should be facing the road making it easy to make a connection with the fire truck when it arrives, half of the hydrants four- inch outlets face the houses or empty fields.”
Village officials said there was indeed hubbub surrounding the fire hydrant issue when they were first installed, which did in fact cause connection issues.
Since that time, the connections have since all been turned to face the street.
VERNON >>
A fire hydrant near the corner of West Seneca and School streets in the village of Vernon on Friday.
The hydrants facing “inward” was attributed to a plan design component.
The purpose of See. Click. Fix. is to empower local residents by giving them a tool to voice issues of concern regarding quality of life and safety issues in their community, said Dispatch Editor Kurt Wanfried.
“So far, we’ve been pleased with the results. Going forward, we will concentrate a lot more attention to the feature,” he said.