The De Pere Fire Department learned a few lessons from fighting a massive fire on Broadway in April. Crews used water from the Fox River to fight the flames, which helped firefighters gain control over the blaze.
“That was the turning point in that fire fight where we were losing ground. We were able to gain control of that fire with the additional water flow we could pull from the Fox River,” said De Pere Fire Chief, Alan Matzke.
Now, Chief Matzke is looking at a way to make it easier to draw water from the Fox River by using dry hydrants, which is an unpressurized pipe used to draw water from a nearby waterway. “It looks like a white pipe typically and it will stick up out of a pond or river or lake, and there's usually a pad there next to it for the fire truck to pull up,” said Chief Matzke. “Fire truck pulls up to that device, hooks into it and starts drafting water out of that static water source.”