Are fire hydrant portals considered to be obstructing or interfering with emergency services?
Itsutsume-ING
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I submitted a removal appeal for a portal that is a fire hydrant - https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/23872/invalid-portal-golden-doggie-throne. It's fancy, but I doubt it's just for decoration purposes as it's not the only such fire hydrant. Niantic said it "does not meet our criteria for removal at this time", hence the question.
Comments
As far as I'm concerned, the one time Niantic actually said something about this issue was just a "cover your as s" situation. Individual hydrants are used so infrequently that it's laughable to consider them as obstructing EMS in the same way as locations at a fire station or emergency room. I'm quite sure you won't get a response, and if so it will likely be the same kind of response as before. If a hydrant is artistic in some way it should be reviewed carefully to see if it seems more likely to obstruct EMS but is not an auto-reject.
I have submitted and had approved almost 60 artistic hydrants, they have the full blessing of the local fire department, and I'm glad that reviewers are able to make their own decisions about them.
Yes, they are considered to be blocking emergency services.
Read all about it:
Painted fire hydrants — Wayfarer (nianticlabs.com)
Painted Fire Hydrants — Wayfarer (nianticlabs.com)
Fire Hydrant: eligible or not? — Wayfarer (nianticlabs.com)
The subject has been discussed sveral other times and sometimes can be heated, but Niantic has never said anything to indicate that hydrants are eligible.
None of those links have anything Niantic has said after the 3.1 Criteria Refresh. Most of it is just discussion like this thread right now.
At one point in time, Niantic made the statement that fire hydrants should be rejected for obstructing emergency services.
This remained a top priority and was added to the criteria page within weeks.This has never been clarified outside of that Wayforum thread and we've also been told to ignore past clarifications, but also told they are sometimes still relevant, and based on answers in the past AMA Niantic seems disinterested in offering more clarifications.
I think it would be disingenuous to try and say all fire hydrants should be considered ineligible due to potential to obstruct emergency services.
I do think that the example you shared being in a fire lane puts it more on the spectrum of vehicles potentially blocking services, but it is also on a wide sidewalk, adjacent to a pedestrian crosswalk, and nearby shopping plaza. To say the hydrant blocks emergency services would also mean the nearby mural by the Cinnabon has at least a similar chance of people blocking services.
I think as reviewers we should ask ourselves if we truly believe the fire hydrant would block services or if they exist in a location that can be safely gathered at. Players are to remain alert at all times and should not be parking/leaving vehicles unattended in fire lanes.
Based on the last comment from Niantic, these should not be accessible under the interface with emergency services rejection criteria. How frequently they are likely to be used is irrelevant.
For those of you who dislike hydrants, where would you stand in this picture? Your choices are:
1) the burning building,
2) the trailmarker portal that is in all 3 current Niantic games and happens to be where the fire trucks parked, or
3) the hydrant that the fire department TOLD THE ENTIRE APARTMENT COMPLEX TO STAND AT because it is neither 1 or 2. (red text says X<-- hydrant)
If you answer anything other than option 3, please explain why. Note that "drive off" isn't an option because the fire started in the garage so the cars are not accessible.
Strawman arguments does not make devices used during an emergency override the interfering with emergency services rejection criterion.
A personal opinion from someone no longer on the Wayfarer team doesn't cut it for me. They've been quite clear that we should move away from binary yes/no style reviewing and there is no clear cut case here that these meet one of the rejection criteria so they should be reviewed on their own merit.
Rejecting a removal appeal only further highlights this.
Of course frequency matters. Any given section of street could potentially block EMS though very infrequently, most response calls don't even need hydrants. If it's never going to be used (or once every year or two), it's hardly going to matter if occasionally someone walks by and spins the stop or hacks the portal.
I think it clearly does meet the rejection criteria. Niantic have said the exact same thing for emergency defibrillator station in red telephone booths
A fire hydrant is an emergency device. A street however, is not an emergency device. Comparing the two as if they are the same is a false equivalencey.
Where in the criteria do we find the words "emergency device" ? Here's what it says:
Use for nominations that obstructs the driveway of emergency services or may interfere with the operations of fire stations, police stations, hospitals.
Streets, specifically painted fire lanes absolutely are covered under the "operations of fire stations" to at least the same extent as hydrants. Plus it says "fire stations" not "fire fighters."
If you were physically sitting on the fire hydrant and the house beside you suddenly started burning down, you would move. If the firemen showed up and started to use the hydrant, you would move.
Unlike a hospital or fire station, where emergency-related activity is performed everyday, a hydrant only comes into play in an act-of-God scenario. This is a rare, unlikely event that no one has control over. You might as well forbid any waypoints anywhere, for the same, random act-of-God events that could put you in the way when emergency services show up. It's not as if there is some kind of persistent activity going on that would conflict with gameplay, or vice versa.
Here's the official app the city made that enables people to take a geo tour of the hydrants, and one specifically dedicated to firefighters. These dudes look pretty pumped about this piece of art.
Thanks everyone for your responses. It looks to me like there is no clear yes/no policy for fire hydrants, so I will drop my appeal.
@ArabellaArdelia-PGO I'd move as far as possible from the burning building, the fire hydrant and the crowd in case things escalate 😄
‘I have submitted 60 POIs related to this topic and am therefore an expert on the subject and also completely unbiased’
and
’Behold! An imaginary scenario!’
vs
The only time Niantic has addressed it
LOL
which scenario is imaginary?
I'm sorry - were you saying that I was making up my scenario? That actually happened - I'd be happy to show you the police reports if you'd like. Here's a photo I took that day - you can see the smoke coming out of the building and me (behind the camera, not visible) clearly standing across the street from the building.
Or how about this one? I'm not going to try to convince you of its artistic merit (because I think we can agree it has none), but it looks to me like they're submitting it as a feature in a dog park. Would you reject this for OES, since it visually looks like a hydrant? Or would you review it as a proxy for the dog park it's at, the way the submitter intended?
No more biased than someone who's submitted 0 and has a strong stance against them 🙄
Does the "Doggy Poop Station" argument extend to dog pea?
It looks pretty realistic to be a non-functioning sculpture, but I might be wrong, need to see a bigger photo. If it's an actual functioning hydrant, I would reject it because title and description are deceiving, and thus it's not related to the discussion. If it really is a sculpture, then it's also not related to the discussion as this thread is about working, not fake, fire hydrants.
There's a dog pea station? Is it like a high-pressure washer?
Pretty clear from the supporting photo that it’s a realistic-looking imitation inside a dog park. And it’s relevance to this conversation is your comment tells me you can’t tell the difference.
I know Chick Pea, Goober Pea, Snap Pea, and Snow Pea. What is this Dog Pea you are discussing?
I'm deeply uncomfortable with all this talk of peas.
I think @Eneeoh-PGO should give peas a chance. That's all I'm saying.
Maybe it's an exclusive area of the dog park you can only enter if you have a Peakingese?
I would reject standard fire hydrants but accept decorated ones. That said where I live in Japan I never see decorated fire hydrants and rarely see regular hydrants. The Fire Department has special access to underground water pipes via Fire department manhole covers.