THREE INOPERABLE FIRE HYDRANTS that hindered Stockton firefighters responding to a massive blaze at a recycling plant last week are symptoms of an ongoing problem in the city, authorities said.

Fire crews arriving at Zarc Recycling on south California Street on Wednesday night, April 2, tried to tap into hydrants but quickly discovered they couldn’t plug in their hoses. The problem wasn’t a lack of water, Deputy Fire Chief Brandon Doolan said. It was being able to access the hydrants.

To get water on the fire as quickly as possible, firefighters had to bring in water tenders — trucks filled with huge amounts of water — from other departments.

Inoperable hydrants have been “an ongoing issue in certain areas,” Doolan said. The problem isn’t usually theft or vandalism. Rather, it appears concentrated in areas near homeless camps where unhoused persons tap into the hydrants as a source of drinking or washing water. Valves are broken in the process.

A fire hydrant located on South California Street in Stockton is less than a block from the site of an April 2, 2025, fire at a recycling plant. Firefighters have been dealing with inoperable hydrants throughout the city, many of which have been damaged by unhoused people in search of water. (Google image)

When the report of a leaking hydrant is received, city workers get it fixed — only to have it tapped into once again.

“People report a leaking hydrant, but it was not necessarily leaking,” Doolan said. “A lot of times, it’s a homeless encampment where they would turn on a hydrant and just leave it running.”

Hydrants are opened by unscrewing a large five- or six-sided nut. Fire crews have the properly sized wrench. But unhoused people seeking water may use makeshift tools or wrong-sized wrenches to try to twist the nut open. As a result, “They’ve been rounded down over a period of time from overuse with the wrong tools,” Doolan said.

“People report a leaking hydrant, but it was not necessarily leaking. A lot of times, it’s a homeless encampment where they would turn on a hydrant and just leave it running.” Deputy Fire Chief Brandon Doolan

The problem is not limited to Stockton. In Los Angeles, the fire department reported 1,350 damaged hydrants in February in need of repairs, including many with damaged valves.

Besides the fire department, Stockton contracts with outside inspectors to check on every hydrant in the city once a year to make sure they are operable, Doolan said. Water companies are involved in getting them fixed too.

But, he adds, “you can have a hydrant fixed, repaired (or) replaced, and months later … it could be broken again.”

This story originally appeared in Stocktonia.