Very early the morning of July 20, 2004 — like in the middle of the night — I posted this here…
So about twenty minutes ago, I'm sitting here writing out notes for my Comic-Con programs when I hear (a) tires squealing, (b) the sound of something hitting something else and (c) a strange roaring sound. In that order. Out I run and I see that one block south of me, a car has smashed into the hedges around a neighbor's house. The roaring sound is water gushing because in the process, the car knocked over a fire hydrant. In fact, the rear end of the car is over the broken hydrant so rushing water is bubbling up under the car and out into the street.
I run back in, call 911 and report the above. "Was anyone injured?" a man asks me. I tell him I didn't get close enough to tell. He says they'll send someone and I run back out and hike down to the scene of the collision.
One other person is there — the driver of the car, apparently unhurt. He is smoking a cigarette and kind of half-chuckling about how his relatively-new auto is probably now a total write-off. He comes over and tells me that another driver, who was driving like crazy, ran him off the road and kept on going. I tell him what I heard and also that I reported the accident. He says, "Good, but I'm seriously drunk" — and it's somewhat obvious that he is. I am not certain I believe his story about another driver but I figure someone else gets paid to think about such things.
Three fire engines pull up. The first man off the first one asks me if I was driving the car. I say, "No, I'm the one who phoned it in. He was driving," and I point out the seriously drunk guy, who is standing there, lighting another cigarette. Firemen scramble into action, blocking off the road and then working to turn off the water. About three of them begin interrogating the driver as an ambulance arrives and I figure my work there is done. As I start for home, I run into a neighbor who says he was awakened by the crash so he threw on some clothes and came out to see what happened. I tell him as much as I know. He points out that the occupants of the house where the accident occurred are either away or very sound sleepers. There's no one outside except the driver, the firemen, the ambulance crew and two spectators (us). The neighbor and I both decide to head to our respective homes and I come in here and write this.
I just looked outside. The fire trucks are gone but two police cars are there, probably talking to the driver. The water is off. The car is still sticking out of the hedge. And I'm going to bed. Good night.
The other night, much the same thing happened. Same fire hydrant. Same gusher of thousands of gallons of water pouring out onto the boulevard. Different drunk driver, I assume. And this time, I wasn't the first one to phone it in. An awful lot of water was wasted in drought-stricken California before the fire department shut it down.
I wandered out there just as they were getting it turned off. I told a fireman that one had been sheared-off before…a little more than ten years ago. He told me, "Oh, no. I wasn't in this division ten years ago and this is at least the third time someone has knocked this one over. You must have been away or asleep the other times."
This happens a lot here but it also seems to happen everywhere. I mean, obviously hydrants are involved in accidents in about 90% of all the car chases staged for film or television but those geysers are pretty common in real life, too. I was wondering if anyone had invented a valve for these things that will shut off automatically…or can be closed by some bystander. Well, at least one person has. A quick Google search brought up the patent filing for US 6401745, the Fire Hydrant Automatic Shut-off Valve.
This looks like a great invention and if it isn't, there seem to be patents on a few other devices that do the same thing. Wonder how many times the hydrant one block south of me will get knocked over before they install an auto-shut-off device on it.