From Chad in Texas...

okay guys,

so we were working on doing some more hydrant testing this morning. we make our rounds through the neighborhoods, flush every hydrant, make sure they're well maintained and fully functional, and then on every 4th one, we take some pressure readings so we know how much water these suckers can put out.

a week or so ago, we had a housefire, and afterwards as we were disconnecting from the hydrant, we found, even though we'd flushed it beforehand, a big chunk of a cinder block lodged in between the coupling of the hose and the 4" connection on the hydrant.

this morning when we were making our rounds, we got to this one hydrant, went through the routine flushing process, and we were greeted by a nice little surprise - an action figure flew out superman style. then we had a few medium sized chunks of concrete, and then when we tried to shut the hydrant down, it wouldnt shut down all the way. something was lodged in the main body of the hydrant and kept the stem from turning. my buddy james managed to get the side cap off and found another surprise - a used to be stainless steel handle to a socket set.

later,
chad