Posted on 07/22/2011 5:55:24 AM PDT by markomalley
City crews scrambling to turn off nearly 2,000 fire hydrants opened by residents seeking relief from the heat required a police escort to protect them from gang members and others upset with the shutdowns.
CBS 2 found one city crew being followed by a police sport-utility vehicle as they crisscrossed neighborhoods, turning off a total of 1,921 hydrants.
Its a waste of water, and I have to do my job, said 20-year Water Management Department veteran Richard Quarles.
Quarles was surrounded by a group of people who dumped water on him as he shut down a hydrant that was spewing hundreds of gallons of water into the street.
The gangbangers and the neighborhood tough guys, they could crack you over the head with something. Anything can happen, he said.
City officials warned residents that turning on hydrants is a safety problem. Cars have a hard time seeing kids playing under the water in the street.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicago.cbslocal.com ...
It’s a shame they can’t find a compromise - this heat is miserable. Perhaps they could come up with a hydrant fitting that sprayed a mist into the air, cooling the kids without flooding the streets. It’s also a shame that the feral city thugs behave violently when they don’t get their way, but in this case it would be nice to find a happy medium.
It’s hot man! I should be able to waste as much water as I want. Specially since I’m not paying for it.
Get the new mayor to send rain and a cool breeze to the neighborhoods.
We all know everything will be perfect with the right dims in office.
sarc/off
I remember cities that fitted hydrants with sprinklers in the summer.
Then I remember cities that were livable.
Maybe the fire crews should just come in with the cops and hook up the hoses in order to give the “inner city youths” the cool water treatment they deserve.
This is very true. Passed one on Augusta and couldn’t see a damn thing through the wall of water. So I floored it like in Days of Thunder.
So do drivers.
If they put sprinklers on the hydrants, there would be fights over who got to use them. Marlin Perkins explained it all back in the 60’s.
-——they could crack you over the head with something-——
Actually, they wait 10 minutes and then turn the water back on. The turning off operation is one of futility.
The entitled class wants water.
If they worked and paid taxes, they might be able to open community centers with pools.
But that would be too much like a normal community...
the Chicago park district used to have sprinklers and such in the parks when I was a kid, but in those neighborhoods, where crime is high, the damage to the equipment makes it astronomical to maintain.
some people never learned that you don’t crap where you sleep.
also note, in the early 80’s Chicago lost a slew of law suits brought by Jesse “shakedown” Jackson, that said that there were more arrests in black neighborhoods than white neighborhoods, therefore, the police department was racist. Chicago lost every one of those suits I believe.
As a result, Chicago’s policy has been to evenly distribute cops in districts, and monitor arrests. So, you can’t, for example, have extra cops patrolling certain neighborhoods, arresting people, if there haven’t been enough folks arrested in low-crime (read white) neighborhoods.
It’s a joke, and it has lead to higher and higher crime rates.
The CHA buildings were an example of this. They were sending in squads of cops to clean them up, and the city got sued for it, so after years of loosing lawsuits, the city just started demolishing the CHA buildings. It couldn’t patrol them without Jackson and his ilk suing them.
How blacks think this benefits them, is beyond me. I would welcome extra patrols and cops in my neighborhood (and we do) when there are extra crimes. We recently (I live in a suburb now) had a rash of car break ins, and we asked for additional patrols. Our city was happy to oblige until the 3 perps were caught (crack heads).
Chicago is bizzaro world, to say the least.
But, back to your point, the park district just can’t afford to replace nice equipment every 3 weeks, oh, and the whole city suffers for this too, because they get sued that the nicer neighborhoods have nicer equipment, so those nice neighborhood parks, have to have their equipment removed (or its racist). One in particular was Paul Revere Park, right by WGN studios, not far from Lane Tech High School.
If voters don’t wise up and turn their backs on the liberal/socialist/one-worlders like the gang running the federal government now, living in urban holding pens like this will be the future for our kids and grandkids.
The federal government will gradually herd almost the entire population into these letist urban plantations by making it near impossible to live in small towns, on small farms and in rural areas.
It has already started.
I wonder what these people would say if their entire block burned down because there wasn’t enough water pressure to put out the fire.
they would sue, or get moved into better housing
these people are most likely section 8
Uh no
...hook up the garden hose at your own home or apartment connection to the spray nozzle or sprinkler or fill a cheap plastic kiddie pool or do what we did back in the day...
Find a big piece of plastic and lay the garden hose on it. Then go slide and splash all day long...
the guy who stopped to watch us that day made a fortune!
They would say the fire department was racist.
It’s their answer to everything.
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