By Berit Ann Ollestad
As the week’s third snowfall blankets the area, the Morristown and Morris Township fire departments are asking residents to “adopt” their neighborhood fire hydrants by clearing ice and snow from them.
“If we have a house fire and we can’t find the hydrant because it’s plowed in or buried in snow and it takes us 30 minutes to dig it out, that’s 30 minutes that your house will burn without water,” said Morris Township Fire Inspector William Duffy.
“We have close to 1,000 hydrants in our town, and with 16 inches of snow and six guys digging them out yesterday, we were only able to dig out a little over 170 of the 1,000 hydrants,” the fire inspector said. “We have close to 17 square miles with these hydrants.”
