This is what happens when you park your car in front of a fire hydrant and a fire breaks out.
Some stories are suggesting that the car, a BMW 3-series coupe, was only a few days old when this happened in Boston on Wednesday night. But even if it’s not brand new, i’d still love to see the face of the owner when he returned to the car. There are quite a few pictures of the car, and apparently the owner was there with his head in his hands, but no-one seems to have snapped a picture.
Not only did they bust through the windows but, as thesephotos show, they also put a nice big dent in the side panel when they were hooking up the hose. Apparently, even with the hose going through the car, there was still a kink, so a bunch of firefighters had to bounce the car a few feet to improve the position.
Awesome.
Is it just me who’s completely unsurprised at the make of car here? I know that there are assholes who drive all sorts of cars, and if i had the money i’d love a BMW 335, but in my experience the 3-series beemer does attract a disproportionate number of assholes and dangerous drivers.
I wish they had showed this picture before. I have no problem with the FFs doing this, but they, when other people asked why they couldn’t go under/over/around I didn’t believe them when they said that any extra bends in the hose would reduce pressure. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that but I didn’t know the hydrant was right there. When you only see the first picture, it just looks like another hose running around. When you see the hydrant right there, you can see they actually had no choice. The only other option would have been for them to take their truck and push the BMW half way down the block, something else I would have had no problem with.
I remember about 10 years ago finding a website with a bunch of pictures like that and showing it to a friend. She said that her dad (a FF) loved running hoses through cars, under cars (and not making sure the car owner didn’t run over them) blocking them in if they were in a fire zone so they ended up stuck at the scene until the fire trucks left a few hours later.
In one of the stories i read (can’t remember which one now), they spoke with a former insurance claims adjuster who said that the insurance company would likely pay out without raising an eyebrow.
I know the guy’s car was damaged, but i also think that a fine of $100 is too little for parking in front of a hydrant. You can argue that some parking fines are for revenue only, but there are very good public safety reasons for keeping hydrants clear, and the penalties should be higher.
Putting the outlet 5 feet in the air would make it really hard to connect a hose to and, personally, I hate it when the curb bumps out into the road. IMO, that’s dangerous. If you really wanted to do something like that you’d be better off setting hydrants back off street, on people’s front yards, but that’s ugly and you’d still need space to run the hoses to the street and for the FFs to get back and forth.
It’s a no parking zone, just don’t park there, simple as that.
I can totally believe that the fire department enjoy putting their hoses through a car when they have to - as Joey says, it’s a no parking zone for a good reason, and everyone knows that.
They do enjoy it, especially a BMW. We all enjoy it, the guy parked in front of a hydrant, that’s one of those things that just about everybody agrees should never be done, so it’s got a poetic quality to it.
Actually, it would. I’d still think the owner was a douche, because parking in front of a hydrant is a douche move no matter what kind of car you drive. I just mightn’t feel quite the same level of satisfaction as i do seeing that hose poking through the BMW.
I noticed a grammatical error in the photo caption:
“A car who parked in front of a fire hydrant had a hose run through the windows at an eight alarm fire in East Boston, April 9, 2014.”
Come on. A car isn’t a who. The driver is. The car didn’t park itself in front of the hydrant. It seems to me that “A car, which was parked in front of a fire hydrant,” should have been written instead.
I actually wondered this myself. According to some of the stories, the car was close enough to the hydrant that running it around would have led to a problematic kink in the hose. You need every bit of pressure that you can get in those hoses, apparently, and kinks are bad for pressure.
And, to be honest, even if that weren’t the case, i think that busted windows is perfectly reasonable punishment for parking in front of a hydrant. Even if they can go around your car, why should they?
If i were a fireman, and you asked me “Why can’t you run the hose around my Bimmer?”, i’d probably ask you “Why can’t you park somewhere legal?” The answer, in both cases, is probably “I could, but i didn’t feel like it.”
Iaaie and I think we would pay out on that. His deductible would apply. My question is would this be considered at fault? I’d assume so, but this is something I want to follow-up.
