Posted on 05/18/2014 4:14:29 PM PDT by ConservativeStatement
Two Chicago men face felony charges after they were caught trying to steal fire hydrants Saturday morning in the Gresham neighborhood, prosecutors said today.
Ned D. Carradine, 50, and Russell L. Mack, 51, each face criminal damage to government property and theft of government property charges in connection to the incident, which took place in the 8500 block of South Loomis Boulevard, according to Cook County court records.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Dry wells shut off below freeze zone after use and then drain into gravel. A plunger on a brass rod which can be up to 4’ in length from the top nut where you turn it on opens the hydrant and then closes when done. And then it drains!
What thieves are after is the brass nuts on top of hydrants
to shut water on/off
Can get some good prices for brass scrap
Here in NJ couple of years ago had crack heads unbolting
sections of guard rails and taking to scrap dealers
Troopers arrested one dragging guard rail down shoulder
of interstate
Started arresting scrap dealers for possession of stolen property - kinda of hard to explain what are doing with pieces of guard rails
20 years ago a wet well cost around $1000.00!
So presumably when you see pictures of kids in the spray from hydrants on hot summer days they are accessing wet wells?
in Chicago the valve is off and under ground.. if there was water up at the top it’d freeze.
/johnny
They started stealing manhole covers and storm drain grates for a short time where I’m at..scrap companies soon wanted nothing of it.
The valve opens in to the main so that when a hydrant gets knocked off, the valve will stay or slam shut.
The stem is about 1” rod and has some pipe sleeve connectors that hold them together.
Many times the bolts inside are so rusty that when a hydrant is replaced, they unbolt the outside flange and bend it over and break the sleeve.
How far south are you? DFW is dry barrel.
The “journalist” who wrote this is typical of the barely literate idiots they are churning out of journalism school these days:
The two already had “unauthorized control” of a second hydrants....
...were each ordered release on their own recognizance....
I had a valve break on one in the winter in my yard. It quickly turned the yard into a skating rink. Fortunately the water department checked the voice mail on their emergency number on a Sunday and were able to get a crew out to fix it that day.
No depends on the freeze zone of the area they are located in! A wet well will freeze and bust in the winter. All pipe lines are engineered accordingly! Water is just supplied in a different manor. A wet well has water it it all the time and a dry well drains and is dry when you shut it off. Some areas of the country the freeze zone can be as much as 9 ft deep.
LA never freezes normally so wet wells are utilized.! What you do not see there is a pipe 6” in diameter that feeds that hydrant @ normally 160 psi. To get a spray from a hydrant it is just cracked open a bit. Otherwise it would flood the street.
If it feezed that would be hugh and series. ;)
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