Council Member Fears For Spencer Safety Due To Faulty Fire Hydrants

A Spencer City Council member says she's sick and tired on the broken promises when it comes the city's fire hydrant system.

"We the city are not taking care of the infrastructure," says Spencer City Councilwoman Tonni Canaday.

Canaday tells News 9 the fire hydrants in Spencer haven't been tested in 10 years.

"I won't be held accountable because I didn't speak up and somebody loses a family," says Canaday, who originally served as a Spencer Councilmember from 2003 to 2007 before deciding to run again in 2011.

Canaday says at for least eight years, she was told by Spencer city leaders that the hydrants can't be properly tested because releasing the water could rupture the older waterlines.

News 9 has learned that a Spencer fire hydrant wasn't working when crews from Midwest City assisted Spencer on a fire at NE 23rd St. and Midwest Blvd. two weeks ago.

"It was leaking and it was pretty much unusable," says Major David Richardson, with the Midwest City Fire Department.

The Spencer City Manager Nicole Mukes released a statement to News 9 saying testing the hydrants and potentially rupturing a line, "runs the risk of depriving Spencer households and businesses of water service for unknown periods of time."

Mukes says she will work to find other funding resources to pay for a new hydrant system in Spencer. But Canaday says she's been hearing that for the past eight years.

"My biggest fear is that we have a fireman in the middle of the fire- and he runs out of water and we put him in danger," says Canaday.