Schaumburg-area man creates own fire dept

Peter Mitchell is only too aware that fires sometimes destroy houses.

But the last thing he ever wants to think is that there's something more he could have done to prevent it.

When he moved from Chicago to an unincorporated area outside Schaumburg three years ago, the lack of fire hydrants on his street wasn't a big consideration.

Then, within a month of moving in, a nearby house caught fire. The absence of hydrants immediately became a serious source of worry.

When he later also ended up buying the house next to his, the concern just got deeper.

Mitchell's not the type, though, to complain and wait for someone else or the government solved the problem.

After a lot of research, Mitchell decided he needed to essentially build his own fire department.

He decided to create a so-called "dry hydrant" system that would allow him to use his backyard swimming pool as a water source. He even had his pool installed on top of a hill to use gravity in his favor if he ever needed to tap into the system.

Since that was likely to take some time to set up, though, Mitchell took an interim step.

He bought his own fire truck -- off of eBay.

"It's not a fire engine. It's a water vessel," he clarifies about its intended use. "It's in my benefit to have a water supply. If there were truly a big fire and the tanker got hung up, the firefighters could use this."

Though an electrical designer by profession, Mitchell's ability to create the dry hydrant system came largely from his background in real estate, where he became familiar with the skills of other trades.

Though the dry hydrant system is now complete and fully functional, the engine he bought from Transfer, Penn., still sits in the driveway of his house next door.

The used engine cost him $5,700 up-front, with another $1,500 in transportation costs and $3,000 for additional improvements.

He recently completed the complicated permit process to build a garage for the engine. But as it likely won't happen until the spring, he's moved the engine away into storage for another winter.

"It was always my intention to garage it because fire engines do not fare well outside," Mitchell said.

But with the completion of the dry hydrant, Mitchell said his peace of mind without the engine there for the winter has gone up "1,000 percent."

Skeptical neighbors

Mitchell acknowledges that not all of his neighbors were thrilled to see his fire engine and dry hydrant system.

In fact, he acknowledges many people just thought the whole venture was "nuts."

That included members of the Roselle Fire Department, which covers his neighborhood, when he first approached them about the prospect of training their firefighters on his system.

What helped appease the neighbors, though, was his offer to let the fire department use his system to defend any home in his neighborhood against a fire -- not just his two.

While complaints about the engine have been appearance-based -- concern about the presence of a do-it-yourself fire department on the block, worries about the dry hydrant system were based instead on a fear of draining local private wells.

"When someone isn't knowledgeable about what's going on, fears kick in," Roselle Fire Marshal Thomas Biscan said.

But there is absolutely no danger of the dry hydrant draining the local aquifer, Biscan explained. The fact that its immediate source of water would be the swimming pool, not the aquifer, is only part of why this is true, he added.

Biscan agreed with Mitchell's assessment that even the amount used to fight a fire is on par with that of watering the extensive lawns of the two houses over the course of several hours.

And though it took some initial convincing, Mitchell did eventually persuade the fire department to learn to use his dry hydrant system.

Last resort

All three shifts of the Roselle department personnel recently were trained in using the dry hydrant -- the only one in the area they serve.

If a fire broke out at Mitchell's homes or at a neighbor's, it would be up to the shift commander on duty at the time to decide when or if to use the dry hydrant.

"He's given us another option," Biscan said of Mitchell's setup. "Whether we'd use it or not remains to be seen. It's a nice idea. He spent a lot of time, money and energy on this thing."

Mitchell said he's comfortable with the department's approach to using the hydrant and its cooperation from design to activation.

"We all agreed the hydrant is not a first line of defense," he said. "It's a last line of defense."