Austin Water responds after AFD struggled to find working hydrants during pawn shop fire

AUSTIN (KXAN) — As Austin firefighters arrived on scene of large fire at a pawn shop in north Austin overnight Wednesday into Thursday, crews said they ran into issues finding working fire hydrants in the area.

KXAN observed as firefighters ran a line of hose out of the parking lot and down the street to get water to their scene — they ran that line past several fire hydrants that appeared to be out of service.

Austin Firefighters Association President Bob Nicks told KXAN it’s something firefighters train for, but it’s not common.

The Austin Fire Department posted on X shortly after 2 a.m. that firefighters were on the scene of a structure fire at 805 E. Rundberg Lane with “heavy fire inside.” That is the address of Action Pawn.

AFD Division Chief Wayne Parrish told KXAN at the scene that firefighters called in additional units to look for working fire hydrants while they fought the fire.

“My guess is because of road construction happening there were many fire hydrants that were out of service. We only have one hydrant that’s been operational,” Parrish said. “We called in two more additional engine companies and with the assistance from our dispatch center, they were locating hydrants on a map. And we sent those engines to those hydrants to see if they’re working…so those engines are working to lay lines from that hydrant to our scene.”

There is construction being done on Interstate 35 in that area by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), but TxDOT said it was not responsible for the water issues.

“The TxDOT contractor and Austin Water have confirmed there were no waterline interruptions or impacts to hydrants related to the I-35 Capital Express North project,” a spokesperson for TxDOT said.

KXAN reached out to several city of Austin departments, including the AFD and Austin Water. We got the following response from Austin Water:

Austin Water is working closely with Austin Fire (AFD), Capital Delivery Services, and TxDOT to investigate the fire hydrant issues that arose in the Rundberg Lane / IH-35 area Wednesday morning. TxDOT confirmed with Austin Water that there were no IH-35 construction impacts that would have taken hydrants out of service at that time.

AW and AFD have a very robust hydrant inspection program. AFD assesses the condition of more than 30,000 hydrants within the City limits annually and shares data with AW in real time to conduct necessary repairs. No hydrants in the area had been identified as out of service or needing repairs. After yesterday’s events, Austin Water conducted a field investigation of the immediate area around the fire and addressed a nozzle repair needed on one hydrant, and identified another hydrant that had been damaged and will need to be replaced. We will continue to coordinate with AFD in the coming days to confirm that the issues they experienced have been addressed.

KXAN reached out to the Austin Fire Department for further clarification, it said in-part:

Broken down by crew it looks like this – AFD has 65 response units. There are 3 shifts. This is 195 individual crews so they each average around 140 assigned hydrants. Some get more based on density and ease of access, some get less based on their territory. They have 11 months from January to December 1^st to complete the hydrant inspection based on their schedule of training, building inspections, public education and emergency response. That works out to about 13 a month they need to complete.

AFD said the cause of the fire is still under investigation. Nobody was hurt.

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