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I thought that i would give some of you a heads up about fire hydrants (or lack of) in this area so that you might look at this when buying a house.
A couple of weeks ago there was a fire at a house in wake county, outside of wake Forest where there were no hydrants. The local F.D. did a fine job extinguishing the fire, but were hampered by having to haul water (via "tankers") from the nearest hydrant which was a little over a mile away. The news media jumped on it as though it was somthing new, which it is not. It got me to thinking maybe people are just not aware of how firefighting is done in the "rural" areas here.
Wake county does not have a county wide water system, therefor we do not have hydrants outside of most town or city limits. When faced with a fire in these areas, fire depts. use tankers to haul water to the fire scene and either "nurse feed" the fist truck there or they dump water into a portable tank which resembles a folding swimming pool. This is not a new practice, it has been done here for decades, and most fire departments are well trained on how this works.
This should not discourage you from buying in these areas, just be aware of what the situation is at whatever house you are looking at.
Hope this helps!!
Good to know. I never really though about it until I was shopping around for Home owner's insurance for my new house. One of the many questions they asked me was how far the nearest hydrant was in relation to my house. Thankfully there is one about 75 feet away, but I will keep your post in mind if I ever move to a more rurla area!
I thought that i would give some of you a heads up about fire hydrants (or lack of) in this area so that you might look at this when buying a house.
A couple of weeks ago there was a fire at a house in wake county
Also keep in mind it varies by where you are in Wake County. In Cary, "all homes within the Town Limits of Cary are within 5 miles of a fire station and within 500 feet of a fire hydrant." So the higher price for Cary does go somewhere :-).
Also keep in mind it varies by where you are in Wake County. In Cary, "all homes within the Town Limits of Cary are within 5 miles of a fire station and within 500 feet of a fire hydrant." So the higher price for Cary does go somewhere :-).
...and out here on the eastern side of the county I'm 5 miles from the closest fire HYDRANT! I'm about 300 yards from an irrigation pond that water could be pumped out of though.
It does vary by where you live. Anywhere inside any town or city limits in Wake Co. there are hydrants. It's when you get outside the city limits that you lose hydrants.
The 500' spacing on hydrants is pretty standard anywhere inside any city.
I thought that everybody was asked about hydrant location when getting insurance for thier house, but by the way some people were upset it made me wonder if that was the case or not.
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