The rush to set a "new bar" on fixing fire hydrants

• From then through June, the city spent about $3.5 million more than usual fixing hydrants across its 95-year-old water system, Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) chief operating officer Sam Smalley tells Axios.
• "We've set the new bar on hydrants," he says.

State of play: Detroit's standard for an acceptable number of hydrants to be out of service in the past was 2% of the 30,000 total, or 600.

• The fire department inspects all hydrants three times a year, with the number in need of repair sometimes totaling up to 2,000 annually. Then the DWSD would go out to assess and fix them, bringing the maintenance number down to 600 or less.
• Clustered broken hydrants are the highest priority. If one is offline, firefighters can use a nearby one.

Of note: Hydrants also often break when hit by vehicles. There are around 15 high-truck-traffic spots across the city where hydrants close to the road are sometimes hit within a half day of being replaced. The DWSD is looking at relocating those.

The intrigue: The Channel 4 investigation "did prompt us to revisit our approach to hydrants," Smalley says.

• "We unleashed heaven and earth, basically drove the number down as fast as humanly possible … such that we essentially had zero hydrants out of service in what I would consider to be record time," he adds.
• Detroit has a higher number of hydrants than is standard across the Midwest because it spaces them out 300 feet instead of the typical 500, per Smalley. The city "relied upon that historically" but has now decided to make sure they all work, he says.

The latest: An internal dashboard shown to Axios Monday showed zero hydrants out of service aside from those at major construction sites.

• The map is what firefighters use to check which hydrants are operable, Anil Gosine, DWSD's strategy and process improvement officer, tells Axios.