When flames start roaring through your home, that might be the first time you ever think about the fire hydrant up the street.

That could be a grave mistake, considering what KIRO Team 7 Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne uncovered during three months of exhaustive research.

We analyzed tens of thousands of hydrant maintenance and inspection records to see how often they break down.

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SEE TEAM 7 INVESTIGATION Video: Hydrants Found Broken, Unchecked

Our exclusive data shows about one out of every 10 hydrants might not work when firefighters need them most.

Melissa Buyukcetin knows what those failures can mean. When fire erupted at her Bellevue home last July, family pets, Paris and Cooper, didn't make it out alive.

911 audio tapes tell a chilling story.

Dispatch: “The caller on the line is trapped inside her house and it's on fire.”
Girl: "I have two dogs!"
911: "OK, what's on fire there at your house?"
Girl: "I don't know. I just woke up. Everything's on fire!"

Melissa's 13-year-old daughter nearly died, but escaped at the last second by jumping from a second floor window.

Records show the Bellevue Fire Department didn't arrived for about eight minutes, then ran into another critical delay: a broken hydrant.

Buyukcetin says, "They (the firefighters) were very much frustrated. The fire is going on. They know they are losing time. They are losing time and, for them, time is everything. Every second, every minute. It just grows bigger and the minute it catches on fire, it's so fast."

Firefighters say nothing here could have been salvaged, even if the hydrant had provided water, but Melissa wonders.

"As you see, I lost everything. Pictures, memories. Maybe one of those could have been saved." Melissa tells KIRO Team 7 Investigators, "Now, when I'm passing by the fire hydrant, I'm really thinking if this one works."

Under the Open Records Act, KIRO Team 7 Investigators acquired 50,000 fire hydrant inspection and repair records from area cities, including Bellevue.

Bellevue owns 5,229 hydrants. Three thousand five hundred thirty-eight of them were inspected in the past 20 months (January 2005 to August 2006). That's about 68%. The national standard is 100 percent once a year.

We also discovered several dozen hydrants, including one hidden under bushes, which had no record of inspection or repair for up to 10 years.

Bellevue's Utilities Manager Mike Jackman, responded to our find saying, "What we've done is gone out a re-inspected every hydrant that we couldn't confirm was done within the last two years. We're 99 percent certain they were. We just don't have the data to confirm that."

Bellevue inspectors actually visit hydrants every 2 1/2 years, and when they do show up, we calculated 9.52% of the hydrants are malfunctioning.

"We look at our operating procedures all the time," says Jackman. "If we get to a point where we think it warrants going to one year, we'll certainly consider that."

At least Bellevue residents know their chances. Tacoma residents aren't that lucky. The water department (not firefighters) inspect hydrants about every four years, not even close to the national standard set by the National Fire Protection Association.

Benny Boggan lives in the Hilltop area. He tells KIRO Team 7 Investigators, "It puts everybody in danger. That's not good."

Community liaison Julie Jensen adds, "That's something we never even thought about!"

In Everett, firefighters do an annual "visual inspection" of their 3,000 hydrants. They don't test to see if water comes out. That might explain why we found just 91 repairs in three years. Our research found, that at their current pace Everett inspectors will test hydrants just once every ten years.

By comparison, Seattle's inspection and repair services are outstanding. They inspect every hydrant every year.

But here's the catch: Hydrants break down at an abnormally high pace.

Since 2000, our exclusive data analysis shows one out of every three fire hydrants needed a major repair -- more than 6,000 in all.

In the last year alone, one in 10 needed a significant repair.

Lt. Herald Webb, who is in charge of inspection at his Seattle fire precinct, had no idea the stats were that high.

"That would really scare me and surprise me," he said.

The worst kind of breakdown is a bad main stem. Firefighters crank open the long rod to get water to flow into their hoses. Seattle had 1,041 failed or leaking main stems in just six years.

Lt. Webb says, "You're going to have bad hydrants. They're mechanical. Something is going to go wrong with them, but we lessen that number by inspecting them once a year."

Some Seattle hydrants have been fixed eight, nine, 10 times, including this beat up old piece of cast iron outside Gordy Jarnig's welding business.

"I really never thought about it, to tell you the truth, but I mean, I'd be worried if it didn't work."

Because of these break downs, some area fire departments carry about 500 gallons of water in the first engine. They tell me, if the first hydrant jams up, that 500 gallons is usually enough to knock down the flames, until they run long hoses to another hydrant up the street.

Our investigation doesn't end here. KIRO Team 7 Investigators have created an interactive Web site for you to find out if the hydrant in your neighborhood has been inspected or repeatedly repaired.