Modesto hydrant washed out job site. Business now wants $45,000 from city.

A Modesto company is asking the city to pay it roughly $45,000 because it claims its construction project was damaged by water gushing from a fire hydrant the city had not installed correctly.

G3 Enterprises — which serves the beverage and agriculture industries — filed a June 19 claim against Modesto to recover its costs. A company official clarified details in the claim but declined to be interviewed.

City spokesman Thomas Reeves said "this was a very challenging situation with several obstacles; our risk manager is investigating the claim."

G3 built a 350,000-square-foot warehouse at Whitmore Avenue and Morgan Road in south Modesto. As part of the project, the company was required to put in sidewalks and other improvements and widen the street.

The claim states that about 7 p.m. on May 9 a vehicle hit a fire hydrant on Morgan Road about 1,500 feet north of the warehouse and about 315,000 gallons of water flooded the area before a city worker turned the hydrant off about 90 minutes later. The city did not send out what are called vacuum trucks to remove the water until the next morning.

The claim states the standing water saturated the soil and caused a fire hydrant by the warehouse to fail. The claim alleges that because the city did not put in what is called a thrust block when it installed the hydrant, the hydrant's underground pipe came loose and water gushed underground from the pipe.

But that was not initially apparent because the area already was flooded from the first hydrant.

"In my opinion this (the second hydrant) is the cause of significant damages to the recently poured sidewalk, curb, gutter and (storm-water drainage) swale," Dan Castro with Dellabarca Design & Build wrote to G3 Enterprises in a letter attached to the claim. Dellabarca is the general contractor on the project.

Castro wrote that when Dellabarca workers showed up at the job site May 10 the area was flooded and they started using pumps to remove the water. He wrote that city workers then showed up because their system indicated there was a leak. The city also helped remove the standing water.

The claim states city workers discovered about 10 a.m. that the second hydrant had failed and at a some point turned it off. The claim also says later that day city workers put in a thrust block to prevent the pipe from coming loose again. Castro wrote that the city had installed the hydrant a few weeks before it failed.

The claim states the water from the second hydrant undermined 40 to 50 feet of sidewalk, curb and gutter, wiped out 25 to 35 feet of sidewalk, and created a huge hole, with the mud from it spread out over a large area.

G3 Enterprises is asking Modesto for its costs, including renting and running pumps, cleaning up the mud and muck from the roadway that was ready for paving, replacing damaged or missing sidewalk, curb and gutter and for the paving contractor having to reschedule its work.