The Mayor of East Ferris says the municipality will never face a situation where it doesn’t have enough water to fight a structure fire even though it has no fire hydrants.
Bill Vrebosch says that certainty is based on a series of holding tanks called cisterns the municipality has spread across East Ferris.
Vrebosch says because of the dispersal of the cisterns, the homes fall between a certain response and distance range from them which keeps fire insurance costs down.
He says the reservoir tanks are a common occurrence in rural communities like East Ferris where it’s not practical or possible to install fire hydrants like in urban centres.
In cases of larger structures, the cistern is on site but underground.
Vrebosch says as an example, Ferris Glen school has an underground cistern capable of holding 40,000 gallons of water.
In this instance the fire truck would just tap into a device on the surface that connects with the flow of water underground.
The East Ferris Mayor adds freezing conditions during the winter don’t pose a problem where water can’t be delivered because the cisterns are constantly monitored.
