Reno fire officials say water reduced to hydrants before Alexander arson
By Brian Rosenthal
Aug. 4, 2009
Someone used a hard-to-find tool to manually reduce the water pressure at the fire hydrant nearest the Alexander apartment complex before an arsonist set the complex ablaze Wednesday night, officials said Monday.
Investigators don't know who partially turned off a crucial valve but said it was in the past year, Reno Operations Chief Joe Durousseau said. They also don't know how many hydrants were affected.
When asked if the arsonist adjusted the water valve, Durousseau said, "we don't know."
"When our inspectors inspected that property prior to the construction last year, the hydrants were functional and that was open," Battalion Chief Tamara Lopes said. "So sometime between then and the fire, the valve was partially turned off."
Firefighters switched to a hydrant a quarter-mile away, resulting in a 5 to 10-minute delay, Durousseau said. The impact of the delay in attacking the fire, which destroyed 22 apartment buildings and caused $30 million of damage, is unknown.
"There was an awful lot of fire," he said.
It is the first time a hydrant has ever been partially closed when firefighters responded to a blaze, said Durousseau, who has been with the department 25 years.
Construction on some of the complex's remaining buildings continued Monday, with workers installing roofs and planting small trees. The rubble from the fire remained.
Investigators had no other update, said Fire Chief Tim Alameda, who added this was the largest-loss fire he had seen.
A spokesman for developer AG Spanos Cos. has said the Stockton, Calif., company plans to rebuild. The spokesman could not be reached Monday.
The tool required to adjust a water valve is not sold commercially but is available to water and utility companies, construction workers, developers and fire departments, Fire Marshal Joan Presley said.
Any adjustment must be made manually, said Presley and Scott Estes, a spokesman for the Truckee Meadows Water Authority, which supplies water to the hydrants.
Those facts have narrowed the investigation, Durousseau said.
"This was somebody with some knowledge of how a system like that works," he said. "That isn't confidential information, but it's not something that most people know."
Builders have legitimate reasons to turn off a valve during construction, such as to run an electrical line for a short amount of time, Presley said. Water company officials turn off valves, but never only partially, Estes said.
Inspectors check hydrant water pressure before construction begins and before tenants move in, Presley said. Construction at the complex began about a year ago and officials were about to conduct another inspection, she said.
"We were just getting ready to do the final check on the hydrants that were up in the front, because people were about to move in to those," the marshal said.
Officials routinely check half the hydrants in the city each year, meaning all are inspected every two years, Durousseau said. Residents should not worry about problems with their hydrant because it is "extremely rare," he said.
"You might as well worry about airplanes falling out of the sky," Durousseau said. "There are a whole lot of other things to worry about than someone going around and shutting off your hydrants."