The Main Stream Media at it Again — and maybe they are right!

The La Times has an article, rather well written, that tells the cute tale of the author who decided to search the Internet to find out how far you have to be from a fire hydrant. Of course he couldn’t find it and the City got 20 Inches of browbeating and the like.

First of all, what’s the answer. I don’t have a clue, but I would say that it should be far enough so the firemen can work — The writer came up with 15 feet but not from the Los Angeles Web Site and after hours of research, hang ups, phone calling, etc.  The 15 feet sounds right, since that would give the Fire Department 30 feet to work around the hydrant.  I did find a LADOT document that had it listed at 15 feet. To get it, you have to go to the main City of Los Angeles page and put in "parking near fire hydrants". A document will come up that describes the colors on curbs and what they mean.

First of all, What’s the big deal –If you think you are too close, you probably are. A lot of the hydrants aren’t marked, so give them some space.  I know this fellow wanted to park his car there and his wife got a ticket parking too close, but give me a break. (There’s a great scene in "Backdraft" where a guy parked his Mercedes in front of a fire hydrant and the firefighters broke out both windows and pulled the hose through the front seat of the car. Well done, says I.)

Now from the point of view of the average citizen, he is absolutely right. If the citizen wants to know how far to park from a hydrant, they should be able to go somewhere on the ‘net and quickly find the answer, or should be able to make a phone call to Parking Enforcement (which should answer and then have the answers.) 

His search of the ‘net was a bit strange, since I put "City of LA Parking Regulations" and immediately got the LA Department of Transportation Parking department. OK, the regulations weren’t there, but there were a lot of contact numbers and the like.

This was a classic example of a reporter who had an idea for an article and then tweaked his facts a bit to make it better. Of course if reporters didn’t do this, there probably wouldn’t be any articles written, but I digress.

In the end, the City of Los Angeles, and probably most other cities ( I couldn’t find it easily in NYC either) needs to get their parking regulations in some sort of order and have them easily accessible.  If they are in LA, Google doesn’t know it.

JVH

I’ll bet that in a week if you put in Fire Hydrant and Los Angeles you will get this entry before you get anything from the City of LA.  Once again PT is the public servant.