D.C. Fire Officials, WASA Point Fingers After Blaze

As an Adams Morgan condominium building burned Monday morning, District firefighters searching for adequate water pressure opened nearly a dozen nearby hydrants, and a water agency official on the scene to help warned that a dramatic increase in water flow could break the area's antiquated and undersize water mains.

The details were presented at a D.C. Council hearing held yesterday to determine why it took more than six hours to contain the fire at the 30-unit building in the 2600 block of Adams Mill Road NW. Officials who testified also revealed major communication problems between the D.C. fire department and D.C. Water and Sewer Authority.

Problems encountered at the Adams Morgan fire have raised concerns about fighting large fires in neighborhoods served by small-diameter water mains. Of the District's 1,300 miles of water lines, 1,075 are 12 inches and smaller in diameter. City officials immediately called on WASA to update its water main replacement plan, and the agency's board of directors yesterday directed its staff to come up with a plan within a month.

At the hearing, fire officials played recordings of radio calls from firefighters describing hydrants going "dead" as it turned into a four-alarm fire. A WASA official who responded to the scene had an outdated water main map and was able to order only a slight increase in water pressure from a nearby pumping station, Fire Chief Dennis L. Rubin said.

"He said, 'I can give you five more pounds of pressure or nothing at all,' " Rubin said at the hearing, called by D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who represents the Adams Morgan area.

Attempts to draw enough water to fight the fire were not successful until an hour and a half after the blaze started and crews had unfurled 4,000 feet of hose to Connecticut Avenue and 3,000 feet of hose to Columbia Road, where 20-inch mains are located.

But WASA's chief engineer, John T. Dunn, testified that the agency had determined this week that two hydrants at Columbia Road and 18th Street NW, 600 feet from the building, were connected to 12- and 16-inch water mains. When tested Wednesday, the hydrants pumped 3,500 gallons per minute -- the amount that fire officials said they needed to put out the fire, he said.

Dunn said he had reports from the scene that a firetruck was connected to at least one of the two hydrants.

He added that sending fire crews outside the immediate neighborhood to bring in sufficient water to fight a large fire is not unusual. "In areas where you have small mains, you're able to respond to a one- or two-alarm fire," he said. "But once you exceed that, you've got to go out and bring in flow from larger mains. That's a fairly standard procedure."

Rubin said he could not immediately confirm whether firefighters used the two hydrants at Columbia and 18th streets. An "after-incident" report will outline the timeline of the fire, the response, and which hydrants were used and for how long.

"The response that all we had to do was connect to two different hydrants I find perplexing and, frankly, not true," Rubin said. "All the facilities we used did not suppress the fire in the manner they should have."

Early on, two WASA workers were at the scene, Rubin said, and "they never offered any information other than there was adequate water flow and they could only add five pounds of water pressure."