Street crime

 

I had a little flare of Civic Duty last week. On my Wednesday morning walk, I noticed that someone had decapitated a fire hydrant.

Actually, the first thing I saw was that someone had knocked down a street sign in front of the Kinder Care® center:

Then I twigged to the hole where the hydrant used to be, and the tire mark that seemed to tell a story of a vehicle coming off the street, shearing off both the hydrant and the sign, then landing back on the street.

No water gushing, just the hole and one of the little flange thingies. Also—no hydrant.

Only, about 10 meters on, there it was, tossed in a little copse of trees. Presumably the miscreant thought their crime would escape notice if no one found the evidence?

Well, when I got home I called the Fairfax County non-emergency line to find out what agency handles damaged fire hydrants. Turns out it’s Fairfax Water, duh. So I called their report-an-emergency line and connected with a very nice woman named Leah. She took my information (I had to look up the address, because it didn’t occur to me that it might be useful, duh) and thanked me.

(I was a little disappointed that I had to do this by phone, because—I had all those photos. But it turned out okay.)

And blow me—Thursday morning there was a new fire hydrant:

Sign is still down—that’s obviously not Fairfax Water’s problem.

One more bit of info: while you’re on hold with Fairfax Water, they play Handel’s “Water Music”. Perfect.

 

 

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