I don't know if this is still relavent or not but when my dad, many years ago, was on the volunteer fire department, they used to use the tanker truck to get water and take it to the fires. The tanker truck got its water from any source available, whether that was a pond, lake, county drain, etc... In other words they didn't need a dry hydrant. They just ran a hose from the tanker truck to the water source and sucked the water out. The end of the hose did have a screen on it but that was it. No Hydrant needed.
