In Prince Edward, Ho Man Tin, Kowloon Tong and Central, you can still find a few unusually large fire hydrants. These thick cylinders with twelve water outlets stand about 120 cm (4 feet) tall, several times larger than a normal fire hydrant. Why are they so huge and what were they for? 

It was difficult at first to find any reliable information about them. Several posts on social media described them as “heavy draw-off fire hydrants” and said that they were installed under the flight path of the old Kai Tak Airport. However, all online sources seemed to point back to a single post on the now defunct forum www.28.discuss.com.hk by username fl3698 in 2009, which provided the locations, serial numbers, and photos of 12 surviving heavy draw-off hydrants. But was it correct? 

We decided we could not rely on a single anonymous post, so we went to the public archives in Kwun Tong. There, in a stack of old Fire Services Department Annual Reports we found one paragraph from 1961-62:  

“The probability of fire following an air crash in the Kowloon flight funnel has caused concern since an investigation made two years ago showed an inadequate water supply. It was agreed with the Water Authority that special heavy draw-off hydrants were needed on a 30″ high capacity main which runs through the funnel. Designed by the Water Authority, these special hydrants are now being manufactured locally and should solve the problem when they have been installed at strategic points.”

This confirms that heavy draw-off hydrants were initially installed in case of a plane crash, and dates the earliest ones to the early 1960s. Further digging revealed that the first one was installed at Choi Hung Road in 1962-63, and the last few were probably installed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  

These annual reports and other Fire Services documents also provided some important context surrounding the decision to install heavy draw-off hydrants, explaining why they were the best solution at the time. 

Air crashes were surprisingly frequent

While air travel is very safe today, this was not the case in the 1950s. In 1951, an RAF Vampire jet crashed into Kai Tak New Village on Clear Water Bay Road after over-shooting the runway. In 1953, an RAF aircraft crashed into a farmhouse just outside the airport, and a US Lockheed Neptune bomber crash-landed on the runway and caught fire. In 1956, a small RAF training craft crashed into a hillside in Ap Lei Chau; the body of the pilot was found on a first floor verandah some distance away. Two aircraft fires of unspecified cause were logged between 1958 and 1960, but the details were apparently too insignificant to describe. 

Serious accidents continued to occur into the 1960s. In 1961, a US Air Force plane slammed into Mount Parker in foggy conditions, killing 14. In 1965, another US military plane veered into the water off Kwun Tong shortly after take-off, resulting in 59 fatalities. In 1967, a Thai Airways International flight crashed into the harbour while trying to land, killing 24. Later that same year, a Cathay Pacific plane slid off the end of the runway while trying to abort a take-off, causing one death. Only in the 1970s did the number and seriousness of aviation accidents begin to decline. The authorities’ concern about a plane coming down in the middle of the city was therefore entirely justifiable, and fire safety officials viewed Hong Kong’s rapidly growing population density with alarm. 

Water shortages were constant

Water shortages were an ongoing problem throughout the 1950s and 1960s. People still remember the drought of 1963-64 because it was so severe that the water supply was restricted to just 4 hours every 4 days. However, smaller-scale water restrictions occurred with regularity throughout the entire period, so firefighters faced the very real prospect of arriving at the scene of a fire and finding the hydrants dry. To get around the problem, “the Water Authority provided turn-cocks at the fire stations to allow water valves to be operated during the hours when the water supply was restricted.” 

“Turn-cock” is an old-fashioned word for a person who is employed to turn water valves on and off. In other words, the Water Authority sent staff to run out ahead of fire fighters and turn the water supply on. Still, the annual report of 1956-57 drily noted that these arrangements “do not prove entirely satisfactory, as in the early stages of fire fighting, water restrictions do retard operations to a certain degree”. 

Even when there was no rationing, some fire hydrants did not provide enough water pressure, especially in hilly areas. And by the early 1960s, the government was becoming concerned about the condition of numerous underground water tanks that had been installed for firefighting purposes a decade earlier but were now falling apart. 

The heavy draw-off hydrants provided the most cost-effective solution to all of these problems. They were connected to high-capacity trunk mains that could provide 2,000-3,000 gallons (9,100-13,600 litres) of water per minute, and would be unaffected by water rationing. And while the Fire Services Department would have preferred to keep the old tanks as a back-up in case of a burst main, the government decided that heavy draw-off hydrants would be cheaper, and that the likelihood of water mains being damaged during civil disturbances was low enough that it would not be worthwhile to repair the tanks. 

The government also decided to expand the salt water flushing system to provide supplementary fire fighting support. While salt water mains could not provide nearly as much water pressure as they were designed for toilet flushing and not fire fighting, they could still be helpful in the first minutes of a fire response. In the end, only a few heavy draw-off hydrants were connected to the salt water mains, including one in To Kwa Wan (no. 31 on the map below). Salt water hydrants are painted yellow.

The Kai Tak flight funnel

The flight funnel was defined as a zone of safety 2 degrees on either side of the route pointing towards the runway’s centreline and half a degree above or below the correct glide slope, extending out to 3 miles (4.8 km) from the landing spot. Where exactly was the flight funnel in the early 1960s? 

Reclamation on Kai Tak’s iconic runway was completed in 1958, redevelopment of the old airfield began by 1959, and the new passenger terminal opened in 1962, so by the time the heavy draw-off hydrants were installed, the new runway was in use. 

Kai Tak was a famously challenging airport to land at due to its position in a dense urban area with hills immediately to the north. Most of the time, the winds favoured landing from the northwest, but because of the hills, planes could not approach the runway head-on. Instead, they had to execute a sharp right-hand turn over Kowloon. 

From 1974 onwards, Hong Kong had an Instrument Guidance System (IGS) that enabled pilots to approach the runway without being able to see it until they were over Kowloon. Planes would come from the west over North Lantau and Tsing Yi, then turn 47 degrees to the right upon sighting Checkerboard Hill. 

However, in the 1960s, pilots had to keep the runway in their sights during the entire landing approach. To do so, planes flew in from the southwest over Cheung Chau, Stonecutter’s Island, and Mei Foo before making an even sharper 90 degree turn towards Kai Tak. This Swissair promotional film below shows a plane landing on this approach in the early-to-mid-1960s. 

The known and unknown locations of heavy draw-off hydrants

So how closely do the positions of heavy draw-off hydrants match up with the 1960s flight funnel? It is hard to evaluate this question because we do not have a complete data set. Several hydrants in Lai Chi Kok, Sham Shui Po, Prince Edward, Kowloon Tong and San Po Kong line up quite closely with the flight path, but others do not. (This in and of itself does not mean they were unrelated to the Kai Tak safety plan, since a plane is not guaranteed to fall directly downwards if it lost control.) However, we no longer know where the majority of heavy draw-off hydrants were located, including most of the initial 14 that were placed “between the airport and a line approximately at Tai Hang Tung Road” as a matter of high priority. 

What we do know based on various documents is that a total of 31 heavy draw-off hydrants in Kowloon and 4 on Hong Kong Island were approved. 28 of the 31 in Kowloon were part of the flight funnel coverage plan, and in mid-1963, the government proposed to place seven more in other high risk areas, bringing the total to 35. 

At the time of writing, the locations of just 16 are known, including 14 of their serial numbers. As mentioned earlier, twelve heavy draw-off hydrants were documented in the 2009 forum post, and we managed to discover an additional four through archival research. While we found documents discussing the installation of heavy draw-off hydrants, the maps showing all of their locations unfortunately do not appear to have been preserved.

Hong Kong’s water supply became more reliable after the 1960 Dongjian Water Agreement, and the last bout of water rationing took place in 1982. Following the airport’s relocation to Chek Lap Kok in 1998, there was no longer a need for extra-large fire hydrants. Over the years, they have been gradually removed. Today there are only four left: one at Lyndhurst Terrace in Central, one on Cornwall Street in Kowloon Tong, one on Boundary Street in Prince Edward, and one on Waterloo Road in Ho Man Tin. In fact, according to Google Street View, the caps of the one at Lyndhurst Terrace (no. 3) have been painted blue since 2009, indicating that it is no longer in service. The few that have survived to the present day are a reminder of a time when officials lived in dread of planes falling out of the sky. 

Sources:

fl3698, 《啟德機場遺物：重型街井》(“Relic of Kai Tak Airport: Heavy Draw-off hydrants”), forum post, www.28discuss.com.hk, 7 August 2009, archived by Internet Archive Wayback Machine 4 July 2012. 

Fire Services Department, Annual Departmental Reports, 1956-57 to 1967-68, Hong Kong Government, Government Records Service HKRS41-2-199-1. 

Fire Brigade, Annual Departmental Reports, Hong Kong Government, Government Records Services, 1951-52: HKRS41-1-6531, 1952-53: HKRS41-1-7640, 1953-54 HKRS41-1-8078, and 1954-55 HKRS41-1-8447.

Alastair Todd, Colonial Secretariat, “Water supplies for fire-fighting”, (181) GR/3/5851/59 III, 17 July 1964, Hong Kong Government, Government Records Services, HKRS287-1-688. 

C.E/D., Memo 282, File No. 1492/50, p.38, Hong Kong Government, Government Records Services, HKRS287-1-688.

Civil Aviation Department, “Civil Aircraft Accident: Report on the Accident to Caravelle III HS-TGI near Hong Kong International Airport on 31th June 1967”, Hong Kong Government, 1967.

Civil Aviation Department, “Kai Tak Airport 1925-1998”, 1 September 2021, HKSAR Government.

Aviation Safety Network, “Hong Kong: 232 Occurrences in the ASN Database”, 2025. 

Marnix Groot, “Photo Feature: Hong Kong Kai Tak in the 1960s”, 28 February 2009, AirportHistory.org

Stellar_G. “How To: Kai Tak (For All Flight Sims)”, October 2020, World Flying Community.