Business Uses Fire Hydrant to Get Water… Who is at Fault?

Normally, when operating your business in a populated city, you’d expect some minimum amenities to be available to you. When you pay your bills, you expect to have your electric on to power whatever it is in the shop that needs to be powered and your water flowing to all of the faucets and toilets that might be inside of your facility. However, for this Detroit business, things got a little bit complicated and the owner was forced to improvise in order to get their water to his building.

Apparently, in this situation, the city was forced to shut off the water main because of a leak. Normally, this would be when they would head underground to attempt to fix the problem but with a nearby building that had pieces falling off of it over time, they feared that if they were to go underground it may compromise their safety should something heavy fall and collapse the surface beneath the building.

It was at this point that the business would be forced to put together a connection to get their water straight from the local fire hydrant. If it sounds like something that’s incredibly sketchy and should never be tried, that’s because it most definitely is. However, in a situation like this where you are left to use what you have available to you, it doesn’t look like this business really has any other option here.

In the scheme of things, the owner of the falling apart building has been warned to fix it and there are now lawsuits against him for all damages done by the dilapidated property. In the city where progress is always at a premium, situations like this really put a damper on motion in the right direction.