HILLSBOROUGH, Fla. — An early morning fire at the Pleasant Living Mobile Park in Riverview killed a man and his dog.
Neighbors at Pleasant Living, like Linda and Jerry Sult say this fire brought attention to something they never noticed; a lack of fire hydrants. But the fire department says they have plans in place for communities like this one.
"We saw tons of lights and when they stayed for so long, we knew something more was going on than just a small emergency type thing," Linda Sult said.
Linda and Jerry Sult discovered those fire trucks were responding to the deadly fire. What they didn't notice were the fire hydrants, or lack thereof.
"We did not notice that. We sent our son a note this morning and you know, with a picture of the fire down there and he says, 'I can't believe there's a park that big that doesn't have fire hydrants in it. That just doesn't make sense.' So he was shocked that there was no fire hydrants," she added.
Jerry Sult, a retired Michigan firefighter, says it's concerning.
"I was (a firefighter) back in Michigan for two years and we never went through a fire with just a tanker. We were able to hook up most of the time," he said. "I thought that for sure it was some means of water for them."
The mobile home park was built in 1972; before current codes changed where a hydrant must be.
"Now the codes read if you're under 5000 square feet and greater than 100 feet away from another structure, you don't need a hydrant area. So you see some of these big houses on the side of the road, that there's nothing near them, there might not be a hydrant close," said Rob Herrin with Hillsborough County Fire Rescue.
It's more common than you might think. Many older neighborhoods also without hydrants, especially mobile home parks, according to Hillsborough County leaders.
"Rest assured; there is water; there are other means to get water," he said.
Herrin says the workaround solution is using water tankers.
Hydrants are geotagged. That means the minute a truck leaves; firefighters know where the closest hydrant is and if a tanker needs to follow behind them. On their dash, the hydrants are shown on the GPS.
"Last night, we had three. So there was, you know, there would be one filling at a hydrant, there'll be one in transit, and there'll be one on the scene. And once that one on the scene ran out of water, the one in transit came in, the one from the hydrant became transit. And so you keep this flow going to where there's never an interruption in water," Herrin explained.
He says a fire truck can carry 750 gallons of water. The tanker holds 3,500 gallons.
Herrin's message to anyone concerned about a lack of fire hydrants:
"We exercise this a lot in the county. It's very unique in the county that we do urban, suburban and rural firefighting. And that's a very rural firefighting tactic."
The fire department says it took about an hour for 16 units to put the fire out.
