South Baldwin VFC works with Baldwin Whitehall NHS

Early this summer, students from the Baldwin-Whitehall School District's National Honor Society began a project in conjunction with the South Baldwin Volunteer Fire Company. During a kickoff meeting, Allie Leng, the project leader from the National Honor Society met with Dean Pantages, a board of directors trustee and 2nd Lieutenant from the South Baldwin Volunteer Fire Company. The students were tasked with locating each fire hydrant in the South Baldwin area and recording the GPS coordinates of the hydrant.

The benefits of this project are broad ranging. Most importantly, it will allow the fire hydrant locations to be integrated into the mapping software that is on the laptops in the fire trucks. This will benefit not only the South Baldwin Volunteer Fire Company, but also all neighboring fire companies who respond into the South Baldwin area. Knowing the location of a fire hydrant ahead of time pays dividends when it comes to delivering the best fire protection service possible.

Here in the northeast, the snow also complicates matters when trying to locate hydrants. Many communities have overcome this issue by attaching flags or other markers that increase the visible height of the fire hydrant. This is an excellent solution, but it does not come without cost. In addition, many states have blue reflectors integrated into the road to easily locate hydrants at night. Once again, this is an added cost and there have been many recorded cases of plow trucks or other vehicles tearing the reflectors off of the road. So, as one could see, physical markers for fire hydrants do have some shortcomings… especially due to our geographic location.

Some may be wondering why knowing the location of a fire hydrant ahead of time is so important. For one thing, prior to computer software, many firefighters were taught to never pass up a hydrant when driving to a scene (within reason of course) because you never know which one might be the last. Without any other knowledge, choosing a fire hydrant that is poorly located can affect the response of other incoming fire trucks because now there is a 5 inch diameter hose in the middle of the road which cannot be driven over. In this situation, response times for assisting fire companies may be detrimentally elongated. Being able to see the fire hydrant location from a bird’s eye view on the computer can drastically improve efficiency to allow firefighters to know where the best fire hydrant is located.

The National Honor Society was approached by the South Baldwin Volunteer Fire Company for this project because many members of the South Baldwin Volunteer Fire Company were former NHS members when they attended high school and they remembered the community service requirement for NHS members. In addition to the knowledge that NHS members are among the most academically talented and committed students, the South Baldwin Volunteer Fire Company knew that NHS members could be trusted to deliver on the project in an organized and efficient manner. This was truly the embodiment of a pure community service project with benefits that could be measured for years to come.

The project is in its final phase and it took the students approximately 6 weeks to accumulate all of the data and aggregate it into a spreadsheet. The South Baldwin Volunteer Fire Company is very pleased with the results and looks forward to working with NHS members in the future.