Please post a photo of the FD ladder truck that fits into that red zone.
I’m more concerned by the subtle white hydrant. I’ve never seen one that wasn’t some garish loud color so it would be easily spotted.
Are their fire engines a tasteful light gray?
And the red zone seems to be protecting the light pole, not the fire hydrant.
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A friend of mine told a story of the time that her mom, who had emigrated to the US as a child, tried to get a birth certificate from the local official in the town where she was born. The conversation went something like this: (but in French)
“I can’t give you a copy, the last name doesn’t match.”
“Yeah, I got married, here’s my marriage license.”
“But we have no record of that.”
“I got married in the U.S.”
“But they should have sent us a notification of your marriage.”
This petty bureaucrat just could not get her head around the fact that that was not going to happen, that in the US notice of marriages are not sent to the place that you were born. She eventually got it resolved, but it wasn’t easy.
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Admittedly, painted or not, parking in front of a hydrant is a violation.
https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Why_Are_San_Francisco_Fire_Hydrants_Different_Colors%3F
For sure. If there’s no curb paint, you need to park 15 feet away. But most of the curbs near fire hydrants are painted in the denser parts of the city, and they only get a few feet of ‘freedom’ so that, I suspect, there’s more space for car parking. The main thing they need is access to attach stiff hoses to the hydrant taps. If there’s a car in the way, they will just break the windows and run the hose through the car.
San Francisco has some sort of complicated fire hydrant coloring scheme.
- Some hydrants are low pressure and tie into the domestic water supply, and need to be pressurized by a pumper truck before being used to fight fires. They are white topped.
- Some hydrants are high pressure and have a dedicated supply that is fed by gravity from freshwater cisterns high on the mountains in the city, and can be used directly without a pumper truck. They are black, red, or blue topped, indicating which of the independent cistern system they are attached to.
- If the gravity fed freshwater cisterns are depleted, there are high volume pumps that can pump salt water from the bay directly into the dedicated high pressure system.
- Additionally, there are about 200 underground cisterns scattered around the city containing millions of gallons of water located at road intersections and denoted by a big 20-30 foot wide brick circle that can be pumped to supply water for fire fighting. The fire hydrants near these are green topped.
After much of the city was destroyed by the 1906 Fire, San Francisco does not mess around with fire prevention.
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Um… the fire trucks don’t try to parallel park neatly by the curb. Ain’t no one got time for that! They just stop in the middle of the street and get down to business.
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obviating the need of a painted four foot red curb.
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If her name is Desiree, I suspect she might be originally from France and thus know exactly what awaits them there.
San Francisco’s parking enforcement gang is notorious for issuing parking tickets
The hyperbole runs deep in this one.
Of course the parking enforcement “gang” issues parking tickets. That’s, like, their job.
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fire hoses can’t just make a sharp right angle bend, though. The curb needs to be clear so that the hose can be routed directly from the hydrant to the truck.
I’ve heard if you park in front of a hydrant and the fire truck shows up and needs to use it, they’ll frequently just break your car’s windows and route the hose straight through the car.
edit: oh… I was beat to it
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There were lessons learned in ‘89 as well when the dedicated water system for fire hydrants failed.
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I’m willing to bet almost everyone who loves this factoid got it from the movie Backdraft, which made me suspect its veracity. So I looked into it. It’s rare, but it does actually happen, though!
TL;DR: The hoses can bend to go over the car, but it’s dangerous to do that because sharper bends may kink then suddenly unkink, creating a dangerous situation for the firefighters operating the hose.
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And even so, there are two kinks in the photo of that hose.
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Now, now, no kink-shaming here.
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Here in the U.K. lines are painted on the tarmac of the road, rather than painting the kerb, except in certain circumstances where single and double lines are painted on the kerbstones perpendicular to the road, to indicate loading restrictions. There have been instances where someone has parked alongside a kerb, and a council traffic team has arrived to paint parking restriction lines, (single and double to indicate no parking at certain times and no parking under any circumstances), painted up to the car, and a little bit under the bumper overhang, the a traffic warden has ticketed the car for infringing the rules that hadn’t been in force when the car was parked.
Petty bureaucracy exists wherever people are given certain limited powers then use every opportunity to stretch the rules to exercise those powers to inflict the maximum misery for the smallest amount of effort.
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