On Saturday, as fire and emergency crews responded to hundreds of calls, crews from Engine 30 in northeast Washington were dispatched to fill a 1,000-gallon private pool.
Firefighters said that would have required two trips.
"Our engines only hold 500 gallons, so they had to dump one tank and go back to a hydrant and fill up for another 500 and go back to dump the second tank," firefighters union President Ed Smith said. "We can't lose sight of what we're here about, and that's to respond to emergencies."
Who did it, why and who ordered it? In tax records, the owner of the townhouse at 324 55th St. NE is identified as Annie Marby, but no one at the home would talk to News4 Tuesday.
The firefighters union told News4 it is furious at the use of safety crews at a critical time.
"It's a highly unusual request -- highly unusual on a normal day, much less given a state of emergency, such as we had on Saturday," Smith said. "On average we do about 450 runs in a 24-hour period, and I would say our run volume was triple that."
Fire Chief Kenneth Ellerbe said he's investigating.
Ellerbe said his department did a great job responding after the storm.
"Well, first I would think that the fire union would be talking about the great work that their members did over the weekend responding to the storm," he said. "We don't open hydrants ordinarily for anything other than firefighting operations or training, so we've got to look at what happened, investigate it."
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The Washington Times reported this story Monday night.
