Motorist runs over fire hydrant

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A car that crashed into a fire hydrant Wednesday caused one lane of traffic on South Main in Dickinson to be shut down for a few hours Thursday.

Skip Rapp, city public works manager, said a Ford Taurus struck the hydrant near Rosie’s Food and Gas at about 11:15 p.m. Wednesday.

“What happened was the hydrant actually got sheared off down where it connects ... by the main,” Rapp said. “Our staff arrived down there and basically found water boiling up around the hydrant.”

Nothing got flooded, but the street had water pouring onto it and city employees had to clean mud off the street.

It takes a lot of force to damage a hydrant that way, he added.

“In 32 years, it’s probably the second time I’ve ever seen one broke off at the bottom like this,” Rapp said. “It’s not normal.”

City workers shut the valve off Wednesday and had to excavate the area and install a new hydrant Thursday, Rapp said. It took about four hours to replace the hydrant, which cost about $3,000 he added.

“Probably by the time we’re all said and done with the excavation and the whole work, it’ll be right around $6,000 to $7,000 in damage,” Rapp said. “I would probably guess it was right around 10,000 gallons lost or more by the time they got the call and got down there and got everything shut off.”

The police report for the accident was not finished, according to the Dickinson Police Department, so details about the crash were not available Thursday.

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