In order to facilitate the work of rescuers during firefighting in Lviv, 20 ground hydrants will be installed. The list of places where it is possible to replace underground street hydrants with above-ground hydrants was prepared by the Department of Emergency Situations in the Lviv region. As the rescuers explain, such hydrants are much more convenient for extinguishing a fire, and with their help, you can connect fire hoses to the water source much faster, thus extinguishing the fire more quickly.
As reported by the Department of Housing and Infrastructure of the LMR, a relevant commission has been created in the City Hall, which will check the identified locations and, based on a joint survey, will make a final decision on replacing the hydrant. Hydrants are usually installed on a water supply network (pipe) and it is impossible to move them, because for this it is necessary to move the water supply.
Vitaliy Turovtsev, spokesman for the Emergency Department of the Lviv Region, notes that “emergency personnel” use hydrants when extinguishing every fire in Lviv: “We use hydrants at every fire, because the water supply in the car is enough for 5 minutes of work, so hydrants play a crucial role for us “.
In addition, according to Turovtsev, in the central part of Lviv there were frequent cases of cars blocking the hatches of underground hydrants, which made access to them impossible.
The decision to replace hydrants with ground ones is made by the commission of the Lviv City Council, which includes representatives of the Department of Housing and Infrastructure, the Department of Urban Mobility, the Department of Architecture, Galicia RA, Lviv Vodokanal, and representatives of the State Emergency Service.
As the director of LMKP “Lvivvodokanal” Dmytro Vankovich commented, several tens of more than two thousand hydrants in the city will be replaced.
“We jointly, by committee, agree on the places where there is the greatest need for such hydrants and where it creates the least problems. A hydrant is the same structure as a road sign or parking barriers. This is an object of road infrastructure, not someone’s whim,” Dmytro Vankovich emphasized.
According to him, ground street fire hydrants have proven their effectiveness in many European cities, in particular, in the central part of Vienna, Prague, Salzburg, etc.
In total, there are 2866 fire hydrants on the balance sheet of Lvivvodokanal, their maintenance is carried out by the employees of the utility company.
At the beginning of February 2022, before the full-scale invasion of Russia, LMKP “Lvivvodokanal” announced a tender for the purchase of 20 ground hydrants. This was preceded by an appeal from the GU DSNS with a request to install vertical (ground) street hydrants. The price for hydrants was formed as a result of open bidding on the “Prozorro” tender procurement platform. The cost of one ground hydrant is UAH 45,780 (without VAT). The winner of the tender purchase was Scientific and Commercial Enterprise “Dnipro” LLC (Dnipro).
Yes, 4 of the twenty ground fire hydrants purchased have already been installed on the street. Lystopadovoy Chinu, 8; St. Kost Levytskoho, 95 (square); Svoboda Ave., 28; Chervonaya Kalina Ave. (near Dovzhenka Center).