You know what a fire hydrant looks like. You pass by them every day, and they’re all painted to be a highly visible red. Or is it yellow? Wait, maybe they have other colours on them too?
If the subject of fire hydrant colours has ever crossed your mind, you might have assumed (as I did) that they’d be covered somewhere in the Fire Code. In fact, the code is completely silent on hydrant colours, and it’s up to individual municipalities and their fire departments to decide how hydrants should be painted. This leaves a lot of room for variation!
Even setting aside exceptional cases — like downtown Quesnel’s artistic hydrants, or that time an Abbotsford neighbourhood got gold-plated hydrants — there’s a wide variety in the colour schemes used across municipalities in BC.
The non-standard standard
A document called NFPA 291, published by the US-based National Fire Protection Association, is the closest thing there is to a standard fire hydrant colour scheme. It recommends that:
[P]ublic hydrant barrels are to be colored their characteristic chrome yellow. … The tops and nozzle caps are also painted under a capacity-indicating color scheme to provide simplicity and consistency. This scheme consists of Light Blue [for hydrants that can pump 1500 gallons per minute], Green [1000-1499 gpm], Orange [500-999 gpm], and Red [less than 500 gpm].
ANSI, describing NFPA 291
Although many NFPA standards are incorporated into the Canadian Fire Code, the NFPA 291 colour scheme is purely voluntary.
Many municipalities incorporate the recommended flow rate colours into their hydrant designs, but only a few — notably Kelowna, Chilliwack, and Merritt — implement the full standard including the chrome yellow body.
Vancouver
In the city of Vancouver, most fire hydrants are painted entirely red. Each hydrant has a label indicating the flow rate (as per the NFPA 291 colour code) and an alphanumeric identifier that can be looked up on the on the city website to find the make, model, and installation date.
Downtown, you’ll also see fire hydrants of a different colour. These large blue hydrants are part of the Dedicated Fire Protection System, an auxiliary network that can supply enough water pressure to reach the tops of high-rise buildings. The network was built to withstand magnitude 8 earthquakes after the successful use of a similar system in San Francisco.
Burnaby
The city of Burnaby might have a claim to the province’s most distinctive fire hydrants. Their red, white, and green colour scheme isn’t found anywhere else in BC.
The Burnaby tricolour apparently only applies to public hydrants. The shopping centres at Market Crossing, for example, installed boring red fire hydrants on their parking lots.
Kamloops
My hometown of Kamloops mostly paints its hydrants yellow with a white bonnet.
The largest port of a Kamloops hydrant exhibits another colour code that can be found across the province. The main cap can either be yellow or black depending on whether it is threaded or uses a Storz connection.
Hope
Downtown Hope’s red hydrants have little antennae attached to make them more visible, especially in cases of heavy snow.
Across BC
As much as I’d like to travel around the province taking pictures of fire hydrants, this post needs to be published at some point. I therefore took to Google Street View to survey fire hydrants in each of the 75 most populous BC municipalities.
| Municipality | Body | Cap | Bonnet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abbotsford | ⚪ White1 | 🔵 Blue | 🔵 Blue |
| Armstrong | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow |
| Burnaby | ⚪ White | 🔴 Red | 🟢 Green |
| Campbell River | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow |
| Castlegar | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| Central Sannich | ⚪ White | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| Chilliwack | 🟡 Yellow | NFPA2 | NFPA |
| Coldstream | 🟡 Yellow | ⚫ Black | 🟡 Yellow |
| Colwood | ⚪ White | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White |
| Comox | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | ⚪ White |
| Coquitlam | 🔴 Red | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow |
| Courtenay | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | ⚪ White |
| Cranbrook | 🔴 Red | 🔵 Blue | 🔵 Blue |
| Creston | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| Dawson Creek | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | ⚪ White |
| Delta | ⚪ White | ⚪ White | NFPA |
| Esquimalt | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔵 Blue |
| Fernie | 🔴 Red | Silver | Silver |
| Fort St John | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow |
| Hope | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| Kamloops | 🟡 Yellow3 | 🟡 Yellow | ⚪ White |
| Kelowna | 🟡 Yellow | NFPA | NFPA |
| Kent | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | ⚪ White |
| Kimberley | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| Kitimat | 🟡 Yellow | NFPA | NFPA |
| Ladysmith | 🔴 Red | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow |
| Lake Country | 🟡 Yellow | NFPA | NFPA |
| Langford | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| Langley | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | ⚪ White |
| Maple Ridge | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | ⚪ White |
| Merritt | 🟡 Yellow | NFPA | NFPA |
| Mission | 🟡 Yellow | 🔵 Blue | 🔵 Blue |
| Nanaimo | 🔴 Red | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow |
| Nelson | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| New Westminister | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | ⚪ White |
| North Cowichan | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow |
| North Sannich | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | ⚪ White |
| North Vancouver | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | ⚪ White |
| Oak Bay | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | 🔴 Red |
| Osoyoos | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow |
| Parksville | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | 🔴 Red |
| Peachland | 🔴 Red | NFPA | NFPA |
| Penticton | 🟡 Yellow | NFPA | NFPA |
| Pitt Meadows | ⚪ White | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| Port Alberni | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White |
| Port Coquitlam | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| Port Moody | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| Powell River | 🟡 Yellow | NFPA | NFPA |
| Prince George | 🟡 Yellow | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| Prince Rupert | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | ⚪ White |
| Qualicum Beach | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| Quesnel | Decorated | Decorated | Decorated |
| Revelstoke | 🟡 Yellow | 🟢 Green | 🟢 Green |
| Richmond | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | ⚪ White |
| Saanich | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | 🔴 Red |
| Salmon Arm | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow | 🟢 Green |
| Sechelt | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | 🟢 Green |
| Sidney | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | ⚪ White |
| Smithers | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow |
| Sooke | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| Squamish | 🔴 Red | ⚫ Black | 🔵 Blue |
| Summerland | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White |
| Surrey4 | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White | 🔴 Red |
| Terrace | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow | 🟡 Yellow |
| Trail | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| Vancouver | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| Vernon | 🟡 Yellow | NFPA | ⚪ White |
| Victoria | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| View Royal | 🔴 Red | 🟡 Yellow | 🔴 Red |
| West Kelowna | 🔴 Red | 🔵 Blue | 🔵 Blue |
| West Vancouver | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| Whistler | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red |
| White Rock | 🔴 Red | 🔴 Red | ⚪ White |
| Williams Lake | 🟡 Yellow | 🟢 Green | 🟢 Green |
The above table is not foolproof. It is hard to tell, for example, whether Williams Lake has adopted a uniform yellow-and-green colour scheme for aesthetic reasons or it just happens to have a lot of 1000 gpm hydrants painted according to NFPA 291.
I also saw one instance of a hydrant in Comox that appears either yellow or red in Street View depending on the angle; one image was taken in 2012 and the other in 2022, and the hydrant had apparently been repainted in the interim.
Conclusion
Fire hydrant colours are left to each municipality, and frequently lack public documentation. I’ve done a quick survey of what’s out there, but I’ve surely missed many exceptions, oddities, and quirks in each municipality. Pay attention to the hydrants in your neighbourhood and you’ll surely notice something interesting!
- Some hydrants in Clearbrook are red with green bonnets. It is possible that this was the colour scheme used in the District of Matsqui before amalgamation with Abbotsford. ↩︎
- In this table, “NFPA” means that the colour is blue, green, yellow, or red depending on the flow rate — or, at least, that Street View shows hydrants with at least two of those colours. ↩︎
- Kamloops’ website says that some of its fire hydrants are red if they don’t have a 4″ port. ↩︎
- Surrey’s website says that some of its fire hydrants are green, but I don’t know where they are. ↩︎