I've got a feeling that there are so many false fire alarms that fire crews probably don't bother getting out the hoses until they see smoke at least.

Remember the truck has a couple of minutes supply of water onboard, so hooking up to a hydrant immediately isn't the top priority anyways.

You don't need to get out the hoses to break the windows. You just need to have the FD drive by and break the windows, then receive an unexpected higher priority call so they just jump back on the truck and drive away to that next call. Hell, you don't even need to send a truck. Allow the citizens to take civic pride in their city and institute a "no charges will be brought" type of situations for breaking windows of cars illegally parked in front of hydrants.

> Allow the citizens to take civic pride in their city and institute a "no charges will be brought" type of situations for breaking windows of cars illegally parked in front of hydrants.

Fun. Then we get kids putting a cardboard box over the hydrant and playing "what box?" after smashing your windows.

Varies by municipality: when parking anywhere, look for blue reflectors in the middle of the road. There's usually one or two per street. They denote where the fire hydrants are so the FD can easily find them when cars block curbside visibility. You can use the same feature to avoid hidden hydrants yourself.

>look for blue reflectors in the middle of the road.

In marching band, we referred to those as Smurf Shit, and the drum captain would whack the snare a particular way to let the rest of the band know of its presence so nobody tripped over it

Not sure I'm in love with the idea of emergency services spending a bunch of time breaking windows and putting hoses through a car.

Although not in love with fire hydrants as a revenue source either.

Until a panel van parks there.

You can cut a hole through a panel van with a standard tool in the firefighter arsenal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_rescue_tool

That doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be easy to toss a hose through it without delaying the fire response.

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/work-van-full-debris-its-way...

Hydraulic cutters are slow AF and they're not going to remove bulk material that is in the way.

The whole point is it's done when it's NOT actually an emergency; they just do it because it's parked wrong.

I'd prefer my local fire department keep their staff and equipment available for emergency use, not for parking enforcement.